Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award - Assignment Example

Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award (SKEA) s Submitted by s: Introduction The Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award is a brainchild of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1999 as an outline; a framework and an approach for incessant improvement that seeks to enhance the competitive nature of Abu Dhabi’s business sector as well as the greater UAE. The distinctiveness of the SKEA initiative during its inception was the fact that it was the inaugural program in Abu Dhabi to have complete alignment with global best practices and adaptation to the EFQM excellence model (Cohen, 2012, p. 336). All other local awards that were established in Abu Dhabi including Sharjah Ajman and RAK followed this example. Nonetheless, SKEA maintained its competitive edge through developing into the main natural distributor and representative of the real owners of Europe’s excellence model including the European Foundation for Quality Management. Furthermore, SKEA has also been a trailblazer in the preparation of the first Arabic form of EFQM 2013 model that has got the approval of the rest of the countries that speak Arabic with local distributors and representatives along with experts in organizational Excellence industry. Introduction to the chosen model The business excellence model associated with SKEA involves engaging clients in their attempts to seek excellence through four phases and has had successful deployment in numerous firms, which have gone on to win awards of excellence in the last decade. The main goal is to provide supporting services, facilitation as well as management of coaches along with all those who take part in the journey to excellence. The approach that is comprised of four stages includes analysis and awareness where a GAP analysis is undertaken before a report is delivered or presented based on the evaluation along with an action plan in the form of a recommendation. The second stage entails the implementation of initiatives through initiation and support of plans the will execute a quick win to result in the most successful perceived improvements. These initiatives are also supposed to instigate longer-term excellence programs while gathering evidence of the strong points that will be identified. In this phase, the consultants work together with the developers of criteria and executive representatives every month in the implementation of identified initiatives. The third stage is submission where the consultants back up the internal team in writing up the excellence award submissions. The final stage is the mock assessment where the consultants train the managements together with the criteria owners using a mock assessment to make sure that all of them have an awareness of the processes during site visit assessments. It also covers the nature of questions, which will be asked in order to ascertain readiness, develop confidence and make sure the participants have practiced. Background of the organization Throughout the long history of SKEA from its inception, more than ten thousand organizations in the United Arab Emirates have employed its model of Excellence and a huge number of them participate every year in assessing its cycles (SKEA, 2015). Numerous others have been identified as the recipients of the SKEA awards that are conferred on them by his Excellency the prince of Abu Dhabi, who is also the Patron of the Award. The vision of the SKEA awards is to enable the citizens and organizations in Abu Dhabi and the rest of the United Arab Emirates to improve how they perform as well as their level of competition in order to achieve a topnotch standard for the business community as a whole. The mission of SKEA is to work in cooperation and collaboration in order to provide the required support to the business community in the United Arab Emirates, especially in Abu Dhabi, as it seeks business excellence through the broadly promoting, adapting and adopting innovative practices. The innovative practices it seeks are of excellent standard involving methodologies and facilitation of implementation as a blue print for incessant improvement. The main objectives of the program include providing systematic approaches that seek to develop people through training and education as well as encouraging the management of processes and continued improvements in practices that seek to more efficiencies, efficacy and productivity. The program also seeks to raise the degree of awareness of the business community in regards to all issues that relate to quality and excellence of the business in principle and practice, and creation of ambassadors of excellence who have the capacity to spread the message more broadly throughout the entire business community. Additionally, it seeks to provide exceptional programs in regards to organizational assessment as well as instruments that measure performance and approaches which will develop a local foundation for qualified assessors as far as the excellence of businesses is concerned. It is important to note that the program is more than an award, as it is a complete program offering all the appropriate products and services linked to quality and excellence. These products and services include training of licensed assessors, programs that guide journeys to excellence along with courses the create leaders for excellence which are meant for the senior executives together with other members of management teams in the firms that have operations in the United Arab Emirates. This is in additional to other appreciation initiatives such as the committed to excellence and the recognized for excellence, which are global EFQM products that seek to encourage firms in the United Arab Emirates to maintain their efforts towards achievement of excellence. All the programs that are provided by the SKEA are in both English and Arabic languages while having the same credentials that international recognitions associated with EFQM have (Educators, 2015). Lastly, the SKEA program seeks to be a partner as well as strategic supporter making sure that organizations get state of the art instruments required to assist them attain their own development in regards to knowledge base and skills. This state of the art instruments are also supposed to facilitate the development of attitudes and development systems in relation to efficiency and efficacy so that they can be able to achieve the outcomes the wish for. Improvement through the BE model The SKEA initiative looks for candidates who have a chance of winning awards in its annual ceremonies while at the same time introducing new categories that include excellence in leadership, service to customers and communities, and those that have been exceptional in corporate social responsibility. Presently, its existing awards are categorized as diamond, gold and silver with the sectors that are considered for the awards being industry, health, tourism as well as services (Ibtikar.biz, 2015). These awards can be won by businesses of all sizes regardless of the fact that increasingly more medium and small businesses are gaining ground to account to almost thirty percent, which is a growth of about five percent every year. Policy makers in the UAE have been depending on the comparatively small businesses to play a part in the overall development of the economy of the nation. Small and medium companies make up eighty-six percent of the entire workforce of UAE’s private sector with almost three hundred thousand companies being considered as part of the SME sector. The UAE is particularly focused on giving its nationals an opportunity to start their own businesses with various big companies promoting the initiative through the invitation of SMEs to become their suppliers. This has assisted the award to become more effective in its role in the private sector in Abu Dhabi while improving its contributions towards making economic development more sustainable. It has increased the level of efficiency and efficacy that has assisted in curtailing costs and improving the quality of commodities that are consequently produced. Companies have to register for the awards though submitting their participation documents, which then go through a process that assesses and evaluates them. Conclusion Mounting pressures are influencing organizations, regardless of whether they are private or public, to seek ways of delivering persistent improvements. The excellent models like the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award among others is among the best examples of blue prints and influential models which endeavor to achieve actual and continual improvements. Even though this model is different from other models, it shares some common characteristics with them with the excellence model consulting services including trainings in awareness as well as assessment. There are also training is in initial assessment, priority setting, execution of action plans as well as coming up with the submission documents for the award office. Even though the SKEA awards are not accompanied by any monetary compensation and have no monetary, the value is inherent in the actions of the organization in regards to self-assessment. The model that exists, put in place by the committee, assists and makes it possible for organizations to maintain their focus on priorities and activities that will improve them. The organizations that embrace this model will become aware of its powerful method of motivating people and at the same time assisting them to direct their endeavours towards recurrent and progressive improvement effort. There is a general acceptance that the advantages and benefits such approaches far outweigh any expenses associated with it. Bibliography Cohen, E. 2012, Issues in informing science and information technology, Informing Science Press, Santa Rosa (California). Educators, A, 2015, Business Excellence Model EFQM-2010, DQA, SKEA, Excellence Award Consulting/ AFOES Consultants. [online] Afoes.ae. Available at: http://www.afoes.ae/solutions/consultancy/strategic-management-consulting/business-excellence-consultancy/ [Accessed28 Mar. 2015]. Ibtikar.biz, 2015, Business Excellence. [online] Available at: http://www.ibtikar.biz/en/business-excellence/63.aspx [Accessed 28 Mar. 2015]. SKEA, 2015, [online] Available at: http://www.skea.ae/English/Criteria/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2015]. Read More