Cross-Functional Secretarial CQI team at CRL, 1992
Front (L-R): Wanda Bell WL; Patty Drew, WL; Judith Simpson, WL; Lynn MacDonald, CRL; Cheryl Rohrig, WL; Louise Wachsmann, CRL
Middle: Michael Stephens, WL (facilitator); Bonni Morel, CRL; Carol MacDonald, CRL;
Donna Burgoyne, WL
Back: Danielle Laurier, Ottawa (team leader); Bonnie McDowall, WL; Gwen Vader, CRL; Connie Nagy, CRL; Joan Hampshire, WL; Trudy Ingram, CRL; Yvonne Rawlingson, Ottawa
Every organization that hopes to succeed needs to be open to change if it is to survive over the long term. In the early 1990’s, “Total Quality Management (TQM)” theories of organizational effectiveness were sweeping business thinking. The purpose of TQM was to focus more acutely on customer needs, and to involve everyone in the company in identifying constraints on standard processes and in continuing efforts to make improvements. This was a fundamental shift from the top-down directional management style previously common across many industries. A core tactic of the TQM improvement approach was the creation of inclusive teams across a company to look at how common processes were organized, with a view to making them more efficient and reliable.
AECL was caught up in the mood of the times, and created its own version of TQM called “Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI)”. In 1992 AECL formed a Cross-Functional Secretarial CQI Team across the Chalk River, Whiteshell and Ottawa sites. The team had the mandate not only to identify and help resolve company-wide secretarial and related administrative issues, but also to be a resource for other company systems or groups. In the spirit of TQM, the team was customer-driven by secretaries, other employees, and senior management, which was called upon the support the team’s proposals. At the time the company was divided into “Organizational Units (OU)”, and each OU had a secretarial team that provided regular reports on emerging issues to their representative on the OU cross-functional team. The cross-functional team then analyzed the issues to find common, cross-unit and company-wide problems. By sharing information about solutions developed in separate OUs, the team promoted universal adoption of good ideas, to avoid re-inventing the proverbial wheel, and to foster optimal solutions.
The team carried out most of its work remotely because of the great distances between the sites, but did once meet face-to-face at the J.L Gray building in Deep River. To reach secretaries throughout the company, the group maintained contact with existing problem-solving teams and offered them assistance in getting responses to proposals. The cross-functional team formed itself into smaller issue teams to lead and coordinate efforts on particular issues. Four of these issue teams addressed needs for a secretarial handbook, creation of a secretarial fill-in process that provided opportunities to broaden experience, preparation for the introduction of a new Graphical User Interface (GUI) word processor system, and ways to improve communication across the company. Suggestions and comments from concerned employees were always welcome.
The introduction of CQI thinking led to a change in management approach, process improvements across the company, and greater recognition of the key roles played by the people and systems supporting the cutting-edge researchers in the company.
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