Bronze Silver Gold
Embedding Continuous Improvement in Your Organization Using the Bronze-Silver-Gold System
How the Bronze-Silver-Gold system works
The embedding of a continuous improvement culture is predicated on two mechanisms – project-based activity and self-assessment against a predefined set of performance-related behaviours, which have been graded as ‘Bronze-Silver-Gold’.
In simplistic terms, ‘Bronze’ level is about ‘doing what we are supposed to do well’ and creates a ‘quality service’ mindset; ‘Silver’ is about ‘improving our processes and quality to better satisfy customers’ and will see the introduction of problem-solving behaviours, tools and techniques to team; ‘Gold’ level represents world-class practice as a recognisable description of daily activity in the organization.
Figure 1: Schematic of the Bronze-Silver-Gold levels of performance
Figure 2 (below) illustrates the ‘audit cycle’, which gives rise to a number of actions which are designed (by the orientation of the audit at Bronze Level) to develop the mindset of Continuous Improvement by focusing on improvement in the five qualifying requirements, namely:
- Workplace – how we take pride in our working environment
- Our role – how we contribute to service provision
- Performance – how well we perform
- Flexibility – how we work flexibly
- Procedures – how we do our work
Figure 2: The audit cycle
Figure 3: Audit results – a typical radar chart
The actions are executed by the workforce, both management and operational team. During the Bronze phase, the company's Continuous Improvement agents (coached by the BHW consultant) conduct a series of workshops. This combination of audit-workshop-action is what affects a change in the cultural mindset of the team.
Figure 4 shows the overall BSG road map for the Bronze phase:
Figure 4: BSG road map – Bronze phase