Journey to Excellence

The excellence agenda in the Gulf countries is increasingly changing the context in which governments operate and serve their citizens. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, is seeking to position its economy among the most successful economies of the world by 2030. The UAE government is setting its Excellence Programs as a key priority in order to improve their overall performance, quality and customer experience and become more competitive.

To this end, several initiatives were set up in the 1990s, such as excellence awards, recognition programs, excellence standards and e-government initiatives that have improved service quality, efficiency, customer experience and most importantly, competitiveness. Excellence awards in the UAE are being awarded to entities demonstrating a consistent engagement to good practices and promoting sustainable organizational excellence across the emirate.

Most of the excellence awards and frameworks in the UAE are based on the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM), which is a practical, nonprescriptive framework that provides a holistic view of the organization and allows leaders to understand the cause and effect between their actions and the results they can achieve.

The EFQM Excellence framework is based on nine criteria, five of which are ‘enablers’ (what the organization does) and four are ‘results’ (what the organization achieves.) The five enablers are leadership, people, strategy, partnership and resources and processes, products and services.