Organizations of any size and in any industry need to comply with the quality management principles in order to stay competitive. Therefore, the EFQM excellence model was selected to analyze such an organization as the government of Dubai. The principal functions of this institution include environmental control, public health and safety, urban planning, waste management, and food safety.
The EFQM excellence model allows determining both the levels of excellence and the areas for further improvement. It is based on nine key factors divided into two groups – enablers and results. The effectively implemented enablers result in expected outcomes for the organization.
The enablers group comprises five criteria: leadership, people, strategy, partnerships and resources, products, and services. The government of Dubai organization has solid competencies in leadership, but they do not correlate with strategic direction. Second-line leaders are not well-trained and qualified, so they do not possess strong leadership skills. Furthermore, there are some issues that require the tight cooperation of leaders between the entities.
The lack of leadership actions also result in the limitation of alignment with stakeholders, the absence of a change management plan, and insufficient internal and external communication plan assessment. Another enabler is a strategy that is developed on the current and future needs of all the governmental entities. The strategy also considers the results of PESTEL and SWOT analyses even though they do not utilize intelligent data collection techniques.
Moreover, the government has failed to set explicit goals, lacks proper risk assessment and emergency management plans. The next enabler is people who constitute the human resources as the most valuable asset of the organization. To plan and manage people, the government utilizes modern technology and training courses, encourages personnel to participate in decision-making, and guarantees monetary and non-monetary rewards. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of such innovative initiatives is not properly assessed. Products, services, and processes as enablers are not efficient in this organization because they are cost-ineffective and often do not meet the clients’ expectations and needs appropriately.
The results of the government of Dubai reveal whether various parties are satisfied with its operations and whether this organization implements all enablers effectively in the way of reaching its goals. Results are directly dependant on the responses of people, society, customers, and business. Customer results depend on the following parameters: overall satisfaction, service delivery, transparency, and the quality of services.
Unfortunately, some negative trends are shown, while positive dynamics are prevalent regarding the performance indicators. Another criterion of the resulting group concerns people and their responses regarding motivation, engagement, learning and development, transparency, and communication. The survey conducted by the third party revealed that ninety-five percent of the employees were satisfied with their work. The training courses and effective communication obtained the highest score, while transparency levels require further improvement. As for the society results, some positive tendencies were noticed in this section.
For instance, the number of community initiatives has significantly increased, while suppliers’ performance was also improved. While all the factors of the results’ group are primarily measured based on surveys, business performance can be assessed by the organization itself using financial, cost reduction, investment, operational, and strategy roadman plan KPIs. Overall, the government of Dubai has elaborated on several best practices and benchmark standards but has not still applied any of them to the performance indicators results and outcomes.