"What does your company Quality Policy mean to you?"
I dont like that question because it seems like a platitude. Words dont mean anything. 50% of people get divorced after swearing to God that they wont. Actions are what should be audited - not touchy-feely stuff.
Well.... I think it came from "...if you have a quality policy what good is it if all of the employees don't know what it means...". Remember, this was some years ago. Also, compare it to the idiocy of asking multiple employees to *recite the quality policy verbatim*, as was mentioned earlier. Even having to have a "quality policy" was (is) BS because they are are always BS required statements the sincerity of which are often quite questionable. (As to divorce, I always think of Newt Gingrich and his second wife... "Yeah, so you have cancer and are in the hospital. I met a prettier and much younger gal so here are the divorce papers I filed. I gotta go now. I have Bill Clinton to go after because he lied about getting a BJ and I want to see to it that he is impeached for that. Goodbye, you old cancerous bag." And Gingrich claims he's a Christian...)
And typically the follow-up question is how the employee may interpret the policy
= "What does the company quality policy mean to you?" And, whether by requirement or otherwise, what good
is a quality policy if employees can not say what it means to them {and how it affects them and how it applies to them}?
But I have asked that question during an audit, after I uncovered situations such as:
You're promoting "gotcha" audits. Such situations should have been identified in appropriate audit areas, in my opinion, not by coincidence when asking about a company's quality policy. I maintain my long held belief that quality policy statements are BS. What a company does, whether they explicitly state it or not, is what is important in my opinion.
I think I will continue to tell people this however. The main reason: I think it helps to remove fear.
As I have said, to remove fear you have to bond with the employees, including those who are on the floor doing the actual work. Now, it you
really want to eliminate fear (and put an auditor {or auditor
s} on the defensive), you can do what I did in a number of companies. We had t-shirts printed up with the company logo on the front and on the back it said, in BIG letters: "Audit Me! I'm Ready!" which even top management wore. I may still have one or two somewhere in storage here (I keep souvenirs...). Expensive, but fun and it really motivates people.
Also see:
ISO Motivators - Ideas for visual aids throughout the plant and
Informational - Is Identification of Risks and Opportunities required for QMS Processes? (I've mentioned the t-shirt bit before)
the audit prep I did was not that great for his style.
Preparation for an audit should
never have anything to do with an auditor's "style".
