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7. August 2009 by Aidan.
It used to be that we all just went along happily doing our job until 5pm and then we left for home. No-one really bothered us as we went about our job.
Then someone somewhere decided that we needed to be told how to do our job safely. The government got on board with enough legislation to make it a full time job and suddenly every medium sized company and above had a Safety Officer. Safety standards and metrics were established to ensure that performance could be measured. There were safety conferences for the safety officer to meet other safety officers and swap stories about safety and the average worker suddenly discovered that we were doing our job all wrong and were lucky to be alive. Over time, the concept of health and safety became embedded into the culture of companies and safety became the responsibility of every employee and not just a Safety officer.
Quality had a similar life-cycle. Again it started with a small number of practitioners and consultants working with companies who were open to the concept of improving the quality of their operations to make themselves more competitive. The position of Quality manager was established and standards and metrics were established and put in place. Eventually it became clear that Quality was everyone’s responsibility and again it became embedded in the culture of companies.
Now it’s the turn of service innovation and service design. There is an explosion in this area at the moment, both in academic research and in companies with expertise in these areas. Progressive companies are starting to wake up to the benefits of applying proven design and innovation techniques to optimise their service models. There is a lot of discussion about the right language, metrics and standards that need to be applied to this arena. In addition, some companies are now recruiting Directors of Service Design. It’s an exciting time to be involved in this area but it is also just a matter of time before some of these techniques and standards become embedded into the culture of successful companies, which should ultimately benefit the customer and the companies willing to invest in this area.
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