"Global Excellence, Barbadian Traditions"
NISE - National Initiative for Service Excellence
A Summary of the Initial Five Year Plan
Objective
The overall objective of the NISE is to raise the level of service and competitiveness in Barbados to World Class levels of excellence. This is a national initiative which has the full support of the Social Partnership and is designed to embrace every Barbadian and will involve:
- a national, results-oriented campaign for Service Excellence to raise the consciousness and commitment of the people of Barbados to the need for giving excellent service.
- all industries, sub-sectors and interest groups within the public and private sectors in a sustained drive to achieve internationally recognized excellence throughout the Barbadian economy and society.
- provision of educational, training, production systems and processes to support the change in practices needed to achieve service excellence, at both the organizational and individual levels.
- a unified, national platform that recognizes and celebrates service excellence, that meets or surpasses international standards and that makes Barbados significantly more competitive.
Benefits
The national vision for Barbados is to be a fully developed society that is prosperous, socially just and globally competitive by the year 2025. The national strategic plan embodies the theme "Global Excellence, Barbadian Traditions", which conveys the message of a Barbados that is a successful and globally competitive society, fully integrated into the world economy, but at the same time capable of preserving and strengthening its own identity, enterprise, national sovereignty, and traditions
NISE will enable greater understanding of the varied requirements for different sections of the community, including customers, employers, employees and the general public, who will benefit from the implementation of improved systems of service delivery and closer working relationships and integration.
The benefits will be tangible and represent improved quality of service and value for money to customers. Employers will enjoy greater profitability resulting from greater focus on customer service, improvements in systems of management and motivation of the workforce. Barbados as a whole will become attain a higher level of international competitiveness
In short, the national objective to improve the quality of life for all of us in Barbados will be achieved.
Action - the heart of the initiative
An action plan has been designed to achieve and sustain the national benefits over the long term. The plan, which will be subject to modification as the initiative progresses, will include:
1. Measurement of customer perception of service and product quality;
2. Measurement of current level of actual service and product quality in enterprises;
3. Identification of international best practice standards;
4. Analyses of the gaps between Barbados current service and product quality levels and international benchmarks;
5. Strategies for closing the gaps that exist from time to time;
6. Training materials and programmes;
7. Motivational and attitudinal change programmes;
8. Process and organizational reviews to identify and assess constraints and impediments to improved or international quality and productivity standards;
9. Redesign of process and organizational systems to remove identified constraints and impediments and to facilitate the achievement of international quality and productivity;
10.Assistance in the commissioning of the redesigned systems and processes;
11.Performance appraisal schemes that incorporate employee and managerial performance in the area of achievement of international level quality of product/service and productivity; and
12.Compensation systems that reward employees and management adequately for achievement of international level quality of product/service and productivity.
Management of NISE
It is important to understand that the implementation of the National Initiative for Service Excellence involves all of us. Each individual and organization will be required to play a part in changing the ways that we do things.
The NISE Management Team will provide the national leadership to guide and manage the process. This will involve initiating the actions identified above at the national level and ensuring that these actions are implemented at the organizational and individual levels. An ambitious objective with corresponding ambitious results.
Financing of NISE
The NISE programme is estimated to cost in excess of $3.5 million in the first three years. The Government and Private Sector have agreed to jointly fund this investment in equal amounts.
Reproduced from Business Barbados 2006 with the permission of Caribbean Business Publications.
For more information, please visit the NISE website.
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