World Quality Day was first introduced in 1990 by United Nations to increase worldwide consciousness of the essential contribution that quality makes toward a nation's and organization's growth and prosperity. The term quality is everywhere, in all aspects of life. For organizations, however, deploying quality advances is a prerequisite for creating a sustainable business.

In a global economy where success depends on quality, invention and sustainability, World Quality Day is your chance to reinforce these as the foundations of your organization and focus on the importance of quality. This years Quality Day theme, "Out of Crisis" focuses on what a fit organization looks like and the role that quality management professionals play in facilitating fitness, from aligning the organization’s processes to its strategic goals, to ensuring that the organization and its people consistently understand and can deliver on stakeholder needs, to helping the organization look at processes, and prioritize and deliver improvement.

There are many ways organizations can raise awareness of quality in and around the workplace. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Promote quality internally

In order for quality to become an important focus of business it needs to be something that is valued by the whole organization. Make employees aware of what quality means to your organization and show them how they can contribute. Here are some ideas for initiatives:

• Organize joint workshops with clients and internal staff to focus on the practical realization of quality.
• Conduct and provide training courses on quality for all employees.
• Quality suggestion competition - staff come up with ways of improving quality approaches internally. Including small presentations, videos and handouts containing articles from quality gurus.
• Give teams a tin of Quality Street, but before anyone can have any they have to come up with three ways in which they can improve quality in their work and how these ideas can be implemented on World Quality Day.
• Create a quality group where they plan fun activities throughout the year to raise awareness.
• Place posters around the workplace and hand out World Quality Day promotional packs to help spread the word.
• Hold lunch and learn sessions for a general monthly discussion of quality.