The Business Fitness Test

 

Take our online business fitness test and get insight into what's holding you back from performing at your peak. This test is recommended for businesses that have been trading for at least 5 years and have a minimum of 5 employees or senior management structure already in place. 

Business excellence is not easy to achieve. It requires a culture of continuous improvement focused on all activities and interactions with customers, suppliers, employees and partners.

Based on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, our Business Fitness Test will challenge the current way you do things, providing a quick snapshot of your business' current health and capabilities.

We'll send you a report highlighting the business drivers you can act on immediately as well as some suggestions for improvement.

 
 
 
 
 

 

 
The test measures performance on a wide range of key indicators and provides a quick and accurate assessment of your business' current capabilities. These details on the left are needed to send you the results. So take the test and find out what is holding you back from performing at your peak.
 

Leadership and Strategy

Is your business’ vision, mission, strategic direction and performance expectations communicated and known by all employees?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you have a vision, mission statement and/or a clear strategic direction?
  • Do you have a system for communicating your organisation's strategic direction (e.g. via meetings, newsletters, internet, posters and videos)?
  • Do you have a system for monitoring how your business' strategic direction is understood (e.g. via team meetings, talking to staff, and employee surveys)??
  • Do you communicate your present performance and future performance expectations?
  • How often is it communicated and how effectively is it communicated?
 

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Please choose the answer that most accurately describes your business as it is today. Ignore questions that are outside your scope of knowledge. Prompts are available alongside each question to help you to understand the question and the possible factors to be considered.

 

Do you have an effective process for formulating short and longer-term strategies?

 
 
 
 
  • Does your business have a planning process (meetings, written documents, etc.), which sets long and short-term goals?
  • Do you identify the things that the business must do well in order to succeed (e.g. attention to customers/markets, products/services, human resources, research and development, etc)
  • Do you fully consider your operational capabilities and resource requirements when planning?
  • How do you know if your process is effective or not? (e.g. Do you regularly review the impact of your strategies and revise your strategic planning process accordingly)
 

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Do your departments, teams, and employees have missions, plans and performance targets aligned to key strategic objectives?

 
 
 
 
  • Are your strategies cascaded down throughout all units and levels of the business?
  • Is your mission, strategic objectives, and business plan communicated to and understood by all employees?
  • Do you integrate your action plans into all levels of everyday activity?
  • Do you have a process that ensures all employees are working towards the business' goals?
 

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Customers and Markets

Do you gather relevant information from your customers, on your competitors and on potential and emerging markets, and use it when developing and reviewing your strategy?

 
 
 
 
  • What is your process for understanding customer requirements and expectations?
  • Do you have a process for identifying potential new customers (internal or external)?
  • Do you identify competitive threats as well as competitors that are most vulnerable?
  • Do you study competitors' past actions to help predict their future behaviours?
  • Do you have a process that assures that the information you have on your customers, competitors and markets is accurate and realistic
  • Do you have an approach for incorporating the above information into your strategy?
 

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Do you define who your customers are (from which market segments) and clearly identify their needs?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you define customer groups for all products or services?
  • Do you segment your customers into logical groups based upon common characteristics?
  • Are you proactive in selecting particular markets or customer types?
  • Do you understand the needs of your different customer groups?
  • Do you specify who will not be your customers?
 

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Do you effectively determine key product and service features and their relative importance to customers?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you identify key product and service features?
  • Are your key product and service features prioritised in terms of customer importance?
  • Do you undertake customer requirement research for all customer market segments and products/services?
  • Do you develop reliable customer ratings of specific products and service features and the relationship between these ratings and the customers' likely market behaviour?
 

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Do you have an effective process in place to build customer loyalty and retain current business, as well as generate positive referrals?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you understand your customers and their future needs?
  • Do you identify requirements for building customer relationships that may include product knowledge, employee responsiveness and various customer contact methods?
  • Do you train all customer contact personnel in "care" techniques to facilitate good customer relationships?
  • Do you provide sufficient numbers of staff to maintain effective customer contacts, and are you doing something to improve their retention?
 

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People

Do you have human resource plans for staffing, selection, training, involvement, empowerment and recognition that are aligned to meet your strategic objectives?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you have policies and/or plans for staffing, selection, training, involvement, empowerment and recognition?
  • Are your personnel plans completely integrated into your planning systems and keyed to short and longer-term objectives?
  • Are your human resource plans and skills mix needs reviewed regularly?
  • Do you specifically align remuneration, redeployment, redundancy and other terms of employment with your policies and strategies?
 

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Do your compensation, recognition and related reward/incentive practices reinforce high performance in-line with your policies and strategies?

 
 
 
 
  • Does your organisation recognise and reward high performers?
  • Is your reward system aligned to your goals and strategies?
  • Does your recognition process publicity acknowledge outstanding team and individual performance or achievement?
  • Do your employees believe that your incentive and reward system is fair?
  • Do your employees participate in creating, implementing and improving the recognition and reward system?
 

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Do you identify characteristics and skills required by potential employees and do you have an effective process for ensuring that new recruits fit these requirements?

 
 
 
 
  • How do you decide on what skills and characteristics new recruits need?
  • Are your personnel resourcing plans and skills mix needs linked to your long-term objectives and reviewed regularly?
  • Is there evidence that recruits are fulfilling your expectations of them?
  • Do you measure the effectiveness of your recruitment process?
 

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Are your employees training and education needs assessed in order to develop their knowledge, skills and capabilities to meet the current and future needs of your organisation?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you identify the current and future skills and capabilities required by your organisation (e.g. might include computer and Internet literacy)?
  • Do you identify training and education needs? (E.g. by appraisals, skill shortages, structured review)
  • Does the organisation have a structured training/education curriculum for training all levels and functions of employees, and is that curriculum based upon a thorough analysis of employee training needs?
 

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Are key factors that affect employee well-being, satisfaction and motivation determined and monitored to improve the work environment?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you survey, or otherwise obtain feedback from your people and ensure that it is used to make improvements?
  • Do you collect and analyse data on employee morale, absenteeism, turnover, safety, grievances, involvement, empowerment, recognition and training through company data, surveys, reviews and exit interviews?
  • Are shortfalls in employee satisfaction addressed immediately and resolved with a high priority?
 

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Systems and Processes

Do you effectively identify and define key design and production/delivery processes and understand how these processes interact?

 
 
 
 
  • What are your key processes? Where are they defined? Are they flowcharted? Are there procedures for them? Are all staff aware of them?
  • Is there a method for identifying processes that are key to your success?
  • Do you identify and analyse the inputs and outputs of these key processes so that you can understand how they add value and interact?
 

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Do you have a well-defined approach for designing a new product or providing a new service that considers quality, design to introduction time, operational requirements, transfer of learning from past projects, cost control and best working practices?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you involve many people from different sources (production staff, customers, and engineers) in the design process when the input will be most valuable?
  • Do you use a cross-functional approach, where all functions work together to help ensure the creation of products and services that meet customer needs?
  • Do you systematically evaluate your design process to improve quality and shorten the design to introduction cycle?
 

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Do you continuously review and improve your support services and internal customer satisfaction?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you assess performance against internal customer requirements and work to improve the relevant processes?
  • Do you use benchmarking, competitive comparison data or information from customers of the process to gain insight to improve processes?
  • Do you review new technologies and consider innovative approaches in order to improve your support services?
 

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Information and Performance Measures

Do you have effective processes for ensuring that customer information is used to continually improve your products and services?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you undertake and analyse customer research to determine customer requirements?
  • Do you use data on future customer requirements to design new or enhanced products/services?
  • Has your organisation recently developed new or significantly improved products as a result of this?
  • Does your information on current and future requirements feed directly into your business planning process?
 

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Do you track daily operations and overall organisational performance using a full range of information (financial, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, environmental, suppliers, key processes)?

 
 
 
 
  • What information do you collect on a regular basis?
  • Does this include measures for tracking short-term and long-term performance?
  • Are these items regularly on your boardroom agenda? (financial, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, environmental, suppliers, key processes)?
 

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Do you ensure that the comparative data you use is reliable, relevant and interpreted correctly?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you have clear and logical criteria that are used to select organisations for competitive and benchmarking comparisons?
  • Do you systematically evaluate and improve the scope, sources, relevance and use of competitive and benchmarking data?
  • Do you systematically analyse competitive/benchmark data to identify opportunities for improvement and potential benchmarking partners (organisations to learn from)?
  • Do you ensure that users of comparative/benchmarking information are informed if there are any limitations with the data? (e.g. differences in formulae, timeliness, samples sizes)
 

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Is your performance measurement system current with your business needs and direction in all areas?

 
 
 
 
  • Is your performance measurement system measuring your achievement against strategy?
  • Does your data collection and analysis system support your organisation's improvement objectives and focus on up-to-date customer-orientated measurements?
  • Do your metrics provide a good mix of measures of past, present and future performance?
  • Do you ensure consistency of measures across business units and locations so that differences in performance can be identified and addressed?
 

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Sustainability

Do you address and minimise the negative environmental and community impact of your products, services, processes and sites?

 
 
 
 
  • Do you identify your potential negative impacts on the environment and community?
  • Do you make best use of material resources using inventory control, waste management, and conservation of global resources and other practices?
  • Does your product/service design take into account such issues as user safety, reduced packaging, recycling and repair/reusability?
 

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1 questions to go!

 
 
 

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