"Employees as Customers Judging Quality," by John B. Harer

I've taken a short hiatus from writing this blog, but am getting ready to ramp it up again. My new research project is going to address the use of internal customer service assessment surveys to gauge customer satisfaction with services provided by technical services and library systems and to identify potential areas for process improvement. I'm planning to use this blog to document my literature review. The first article I'm reviewing is:

John B. Harer. "Employees as Customers Judging Quality: Enhancing Employee Assessment." New Library World 109:78 (2008): 307-320.

Harer used an interesting approach to this topic. First he makes the point that many libraries follow the business world in implementing various management techniques, such as Continuous Quality Improvement and Total Quality Management. There is a focus on continually improving processes and output, and assessment is an important aspect of evaluating their success in doing so. Harer mentions that many libraries are using tools such as the LibQual surveys to assess quality, and makes the point that extending such assessment tools to library employees is a logical next step.

What's interesting to me is that instead of simply asking libraries whether they survey their employees on their views on quality, Harer looks at existing employee satisfaction survey instruments at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions and analyzes whether they ask questions that get at the employees' opinions about quality. It seems like a roundabout approach to get at this information. Nevertheless, Harer solicits participating in his study from the 96 U.S. ARL academic library members, and receives responses from 30 of them. His responses include one employee satisfaction survey, four organizational climate surveys, eight exit interview surveys, 11 employee self-assessment evaluations, and three administrator evaluation surveys. Thirteen libraries responded that they did not have or use such instruments.

From this point forward in the article, Harer limited the discussion to the four organizational climate surveys that were submitted, and found that only one of them specifically asked employees for the opinions regarding quality, although the two example questions provided addressed the needs of the user.

As I mentioned before, I think this is an interesting approach. I'm interested in another angle: employees' satisfaction with the services they offer each other. Obviously, the end user benefits from our output, whether that's in items processed or services offered. But our more immediate customers in libraries are each other, especially for technical services and library systems units. For example, bibliographers are customers of acquisitions departments. Bibliographers put their requests in to acquisitions staff, which are then responsible for carrying out those requests. Circulation staff might ask for an item to be rush-processed, so they are customers of cataloging staff. Even within a single department we are dependent on each other. When we ask for help on a tricky problem, does it get answered in a timely fashion, or did it sit on someone's desk for a month? These are all ways that we are dependent on each other. Our personal assessment can demonstrate overall satisfaction with the services that we provide to each other and identify areas in which we can improve. Improving services to each other will by extension provide better service to our users: the faculty, staff, and students who rely on our services for their teaching and research needs.

I agree that employees can provide important feedback regarding quality, but I think a more direct route is preferable. Internal customer services assessment is one more tool that we can use to improve our work and services.