The importance of standards
I was so delighted to read that Tractivity has announced a partnership with Accountability and that its focus will be on standards.
Everyone is always in favour of standards. It sounds the right note and resonates as a commitment to quality. But it has not always been a popular idea, and progress has been notably faster in some sectors than others.
Technical environments where international trade relied heavily on common terminology and interfaces were in the vanguard. ISO 9001, on quality management, remains the most widely adopted of all.
Heavily regulated industries are also deeply committed to standards. They include healthcare and pharmaceuticals, aerospace, food and agriculture, energy and telecommunications.
More recently, concern for the environment and climate change have led to a range of international agreements and standards to promote sustainability and help preserve ecological and biodiversity.
Where standards struggle
However, the most difficult area to develop and implement standards has been in professional services.
Traditionally, we might have defined these as outcomes delivered by people – notably with specialist qualifications in finance, law, medicine, engineering, or maybe just management consultants. It is not hard to see why standards are a challenge when cultures, language and much else are locally distinctive.
But increasingly, what’s offered is a mixture of people, processes and technology. In that mix, the opportunities for idiosyncratic behaviours become narrower, and there is a growing space for standards that influence market expectations and help deliver more consistent performance.
So, no matter how good the individuals who deliver a service are, what now matters are the information they use, the technology they harness and the processes they follow.
Assurance of professionalism
Consider your ‘independent financial adviser’ – a growing army of those who help some of us manage our financial affairs. Gone are the days of the friendly Bank Manager, and finding someone with the expertise to perform this task may not be straightforward.
No doubt you will browse the internet, look at various recommendations, and seek assurance that a potential adviser has the recognised qualifications and experience. This is the external evidence that he/she has been trained to a stipulated level and normally to best practice standards.
No one anticipates that, as a prospective client, you will need to quiz potential advisers, double-check that they will be using the best available data, or observe proper confidentiality protocols.
The existence of a credible qualification should do the talking for them. That is the nature of professional standards. They are a form of quality assurance. Something you can take on trust and be sure that you are dealing with responsible people who know their job and adhere to certain performance…or behaviour.
Behaviour
The way in which people or organisations conduct themselves is important. It sets the tone for your relationship; it underpins mutual confidence; it helps you find out if you share critical values.
We all know of companies or bodies who suffer from a poor reputation. What once was ‘word of mouth’ is now systemised by customer satisfaction websites like Trustpilot or by customer reviews.
Having adverse comments or poor ratings can significantly affect the bottom line, so it’s natural that good companies or public bodies will invest seriously in confidence-building. If an industry has bad press or suffers a dip in trust, notice how frequently the response will be to introduce new standards and help market players conform to remedial actions or activities.
The normative effect
When products fail to meet a technical standard, you just don’t use them. It’s often a direct yes or no.
But with professional services, they are more likely to take the form of guidance documents or codes of conduct. Very few are enforceable; there is a very high bar, for example, to being struck off a medical or a legal register.
And the process for determining non-compliance is tortuous. Witness the difficulties Members of Parliament encounter when determining if a politician has broken their ethical standards.
Instead, what professional standards achieve is to influence expectations. They condition the relevant market to operate in a particular way. They establish new ‘norms’ of behaviour and can be used by market leaders to create ever-higher levels of performance.
This is especially valuable for processes that are relatively complex or have not previously been subject to a standards-based approach.
Stakeholder engagement standards
The way in which organisations interface with their stakeholders matters, and although many have just made it up as they go along, the time is right to move towards a more standards-based approach.
The truth is that stakeholder engagement is a relatively new set of disciplines, and many reputable bodies have developed their own particular style of working. Some are better than others.
But over time and with staff turnover, those who originated the processes are followed in post by those who may have lacked the contextual knowledge that informed the original process design. It can lead to peculiar and idiosyncratic practices, which may be at odds with contemporary stakeholder expectations.
Having standards can help. Relationships between individuals and their organisations can be an ultra-sensitive area, with ethical questions, confidentiality and other issues lying in wait for those who are either careless or inexperienced.
Standards need to be at just the right level. Strong on matters of principle but flexible and not over-prescriptive on matters of detail.
The Accountability AA1000 is a highly regarded document that has stood the test of time. Encouraging its wider use in the UK will help improve the standards of stakeholder engagement, and that will provide the opportunity for Tractivity to offer more relevant support for the process.
What we now need is an industry-wide discussion of how best to use this initiative to improve the skill level of practitioners and leverage best practices to improve the levels of trust between organisations and their stakeholders. And as we know in this business, trust is everything.
Written by Rhion Jones
Rhion Jones was the Founder Director of the Consultation Institute and is an acknowledged authority on all aspects of public and stakeholder engagement and consultation. He advises Tractivity and contributes expert analysis and commentaries on current issues.
Rhion now publishes thought leadership articles regularly as the Consultation Guru.