# OQM in Practice: Organizational Quality, Values, and Improvement > Understand what OQM measures and how to turn employee perspectives into organizational improvement. Clarify its role alongside operational quality management. - Publisher: OQM International - Language: en - Published: 2025-07-18 - Updated: 2026-09-30 - Canonical: https://oqm-international.com/en/journal/oqm-organizational-quality-values-and-improvement/ - Image: https://oqm-international.com/journal-images/oqm-im-unternehmen-qualitaetsmanagement.jpg OQM stands for Organic Quality Management. It uses an employee survey to examine the organizational conditions that support or obstruct people's contribution. The full assessment contains 80 questions across eight factors and takes about 10 to 25 minutes per participant. The name can cause confusion: OQM is not an ISO 9001 certification, a replacement for a quality management system, or software that automatically monitors product defects. Its focus is organizational quality as experienced by employees. That perspective can still be useful to a business working on service quality, cooperation, or dependable processes. If unclear priorities, weak handoffs, or a lack of trust repeatedly interfere with the work, another procedure may not address the whole problem. ## Organizational quality and operational quality are different views Operational quality management addresses how products and services meet requirements and how processes are maintained and improved. [ISO's overview of quality management](https://www.iso.org/quality-management) describes that broader system of processes and procedures. OQM adds a different source of information: employees' experience of eight organizational factors. It does not perform a compliance audit, certify a product, or establish that a regulated requirement has been met. Neither perspective should be dismissed. Clear procedures and professional expertise remain important. So do the conditions that allow people to apply them consistently, raise concerns, and coordinate across boundaries. ## What the eight factors cover The [OQM homepage](https://oqm-international.com/en/#how) explains the assessment and its process. Its eight factors are: * **Empowering leadership:** whether leadership enables people to contribute and take responsibility. * **Strengths-based contribution:** whether people's abilities fit the work they are asked to do. * **Inspiring vision:** whether direction is understandable and meaningful. * **Effective structures:** whether responsibilities and processes support the work. * **Shared values:** whether values are credible in the organization's experience. * **Integrated teams:** whether people support one another and work together. * **Customer-focused service:** whether the organization attends to customer needs and commitments. * **Trusting relationships:** whether relationships support constructive collaboration and conflict resolution. The profile highlights relative strengths and the factor needing particular attention. Treat that result as a starting point for inquiry and prioritization, not proof of a single cause behind every business problem. ## Five principles for values-based improvement **Use values to guide choices.** Explain what the organization wants to contribute and how it will handle competing priorities. A value becomes useful when it changes a decision, not only when it appears in a statement. **Involve people who know the work.** Employees can identify practical constraints and improvement opportunities that may not be visible from a management report. Participation needs a clear scope and a genuine response. **Make processes serve a purpose.** A procedure should clarify work, protect important requirements, or reduce avoidable uncertainty. Review unnecessary friction without removing controls whose purpose remains valid. **Build in learning.** Compare intended changes with actual experience. Make it possible to identify mistakes and revise assumptions without turning every review into blame. **Consider the wider effects.** A change that makes one team faster can add work elsewhere. Examine consequences for employees, customers, partner teams, and other relevant stakeholders. OQM is not an environmental or social-impact certification. ## Six steps for using OQM constructively ### 1. Clarify the question and the scope Begin with the issue you want to understand: cooperation, leadership, unclear direction, or another organizational pattern. Identify which teams should participate and which decisions the findings will inform. Explain what is open to change and what is constrained. Clarify the survey setup, reporting groups, confidentiality protections, and who will receive results. Do not assume that every small subgroup can be reported separately without making people recognizable. ### 2. Establish a shared starting point The full survey provides a structured employee perspective. OQM offers different views of results, including a national benchmark and an inside view. Agree on the appropriate approach and keep it consistent for follow-up comparisons. Review participation and context before interpreting a result. A score does not replace discussion, and a difference between groups does not automatically explain its cause. Combine the profile with relevant operational evidence. ### 3. Create a useful dialogue around the findings Invite employees and leaders to examine recognizable situations behind the patterns. Ask what supports good work, what repeatedly obstructs it, and where perspectives differ. For an illustrative service business, a weak result around structures might lead to discussion of unclear ownership between sales and delivery. The next step is to investigate the handoff, not to label the employees uncooperative. ### 4. Prepare leaders to support the change Managers need to understand their role in the conditions being examined. If people are asked to take responsibility, leaders may need to change approval habits, information access, or the way they respond to concerns. Use [leadership development tied to everyday work](https://oqm-international.com/en/journal/leadership-development-that-changes-daily-work/) to connect reflection with practical behavior. A workshop alone cannot compensate for unchanged incentives or a lack of authority. ### 5. Design and test a focused improvement Choose a priority, identify an owner, allocate resources, and agree on evidence of progress. Involve the people who perform the work and those affected by it. The service team might test one named handoff owner and a shared definition of a complete customer brief. This is an illustrative intervention, not a claimed client result. Its value should be checked through actual experience and operational evidence. ### 6. Review and sustain what helps Use routine check-ins to review the selected action. A broader reassessment after around 10 to 12 months can contribute evidence about organizational trends, as described in OQM's process. The appropriate timing depends on what could realistically change. Keep participation scope and interpretation consistent where possible, and document relevant changes in context. A later score alone does not prove that one initiative caused the difference. ## Measure outcomes without attributing unsupported features to the tool Operational measures might include errors, rework, response time, or customer complaints. Workforce measures might include turnover and the experience of collaboration. Choose measures related to the problem and use the systems that actually record them. OQM does not automatically collect all of these indicators. Its survey results are a separate source that can be considered alongside them. Do not present the profile as a comprehensive business-intelligence dashboard, employee performance score, or guarantee of financial return. Measure the intervention as well as the outcome. If the agreed change was never implemented, an unchanged survey score says little about whether that change would have helped. ## Common obstacles and how to address them **Limited time:** Prioritize a small number of actions and make room for them. Adding improvement work without adjusting capacity can undermine the effort. **Skepticism:** Explain the purpose and limits honestly, invite questions, and show what happens to the findings. Do not label every concern resistance. **Missing expertise:** Involve suitable internal or external support for survey interpretation, facilitation, and the technical or professional aspects of a proposed change. **Disconnected methods:** OQM can inform organizational-development work or a team's improvement discussions. It does not replace the specific processes required by another management framework. Keep responsibilities and evidence clear. ## Choose a useful first step OQM Pulse offers a free first look with eight of the 80 questions and a short summary. It is not the full organizational assessment or a national benchmark. Use it to explore the questions, then decide whether a broader process fits your needs. For a fuller example, [view the sample OQM profile](https://oqm-international.com/downloads/muster/en/oqm-80-profil.pdf). To plan an assessment, [learn how the process works](https://oqm-international.com/en/#how) or [book an introductory conversation](https://oqm-international.com/en/#contact). Our guide to [organizational development](https://oqm-international.com/en/journal/organizational-development-beyond-the-org-chart/) explains how to connect the findings with the wider system. ## Related articles - [Organizational Development: More Than a New Org Chart](https://oqm-international.com/en/journal/organizational-development-beyond-the-org-chart/) - [The OQM Improvement Cycle: Six Steps from Survey to Change](https://oqm-international.com/en/journal/oqm-improvement-cycle-six-steps/) - [Strategic Business Growth: Build Capacity, Not Just More Work](https://oqm-international.com/en/journal/strategic-business-growth-organizational-capacity/) ## Languages - [en](https://oqm-international.com/en/journal/oqm-organizational-quality-values-and-improvement/) - [es](https://oqm-international.com/es/revista/oqm-calidad-organizacional-valores-mejora/) - [de](https://oqm-international.com/blog/oqm-im-unternehmen-qualitaetsmanagement/)