Every spa and wellness center want to be a high-performing organization, but what does it take to put structures of best management and practices in motion?

Since the early 1990s, several authorities around the world conducted research with high-performing organizations to define their common characteristics. The resulting excellence models were comprised of principles that described the organizational culture and best management practices that were used across key management areas.

This image depicts an integrated excellence model. The inner ring depicts the principles, culture of excellence, and the middle and outer rings describe the key management areas that include the best management practices.

For micro-size organizations (1-25 employees) there are 51 practices and for larger organizations there are about 102 practices.

Exceptional traits of business management are all inclusive.  Attention to excellence include how employees, customers, community and the environment is treated are all factors in a company embracing best standards of practice.

• Consistent Governance
• Trust in Leadership
• Customer Service
• Employee Engagement
• Constant Improvement in Systems
• Ethical Supplier Relationships
• Resource Management
• Accurate Systems of Measurement
• Financial Security for Employees and Stakeholders

Maintenance and Creation of Best Practices Include: 

1. Design and documentation of key processes.
2. Process monitoring to ensure quality service standards.
3. Monitor and control processes to ensure system standards are met consistently (including safety, product, service and environmental protocols.
4. Ensure processes are in place to anticipate or adjust for change (legislation, expansion, exit strategy and competitive response).
5. Take fair and transparent corrective action when problems occur.
6. Prevent recurrence of problems by making changes to processes.
7. Analyze processes on a regular basis and make changes aimed at continual improvement.
8. Communicate changes in process to all employees that touch the process.
9. Involve customers, suppliers, and/or partners in designing and analyzing processes.
10. Use external data to compare performance to other organizations (e.g. benchmarks).

Measurements

Measurement is important to monitoring, controlling and improving work processes. The following measures are found in excellence models and are used by high performing organizations around the world.

They are particularly useful when measuring performance internally, and when bench marking with other organizations externally:  Cycle time for response and turnarounds, for fixing service errors, responding to product defects or service errors.

High quality of service is paramount when considering sales processes, refunds, warranty claims, repairs, replacements and service re-do protocols.  Measurement of success and failure as a springboard to constantly improving external and internal practices is essential for the ethical and thriving brand.