QA for All: How to Foster a Teamwide Focus on Quality
Quality assurance works best when it’s an everyday instinct among the entire team. Building that kind of culture starts with commitment and a strong example. When leaders consistently model attention to detail, create systems that support quality and reinforce its importance in daily conversations, high standards become second nature.
Below, members of Business Journals Leadership Trust share practical strategies for making quality an inherent part of your organization’s DNA. From automating documentation processes to addressing it in performance evaluations, these tips can help you embed QA into every part of your operations.
1. Pay attention and set the tone for your team.
Quality isn’t a checklist. It comes from the people who care and stick with it. Leadership needs to show up, be engaged and set the tone. When teams can actively see leaders paying attention, making smart decisions and problem-solving, that mindset spreads. You can’t fake it; you need strong leaders who demonstrate pride and presence and bring continuity to build a culture where quality lasts. – Bill Rokos, Parsec Automation
2. Automate documentation processes.
One powerful way to make quality assurance part of daily culture is to tie documentation directly to automation. When documentation becomes the input for automated workflows, accuracy and clarity are no longer optional; they’re essential. This approach builds quality into the process itself. Teams are more likely to maintain up-to-date, detailed documentation when it directly impacts how systems function. It shifts documentation from a passive record to an active driver of execution, making quality a built-in expectation rather than a separate task. – Matt Bratlien, Net-Tech
3. Make it part of performance evaluations.
Aside from making quality a core corporate value, leadership must make quality a rated factor in performance evaluations. Accountability is key to communicating what is important. If it impacts an employee’s rating and pay, they will pay attention to it. If it is background noise, they will focus on what they are evaluated on. Accountability means both incentives (such as awards, raises, promotions and bonuses) and discipline (up to and including termination). Once an employee gets an award or is publicly recognized for quality work and another is demoted or fired for poor quality work, the whole team will understand that quality is the paramount value. – Amy McDougal, CLEAResources, LLC
4. Weave quality into standups and reviews.
To make quality part of the culture, start by weaving it into daily routines. In standups or reviews, ask how the work holds up in the real world. When people know that level of follow-through is expected, they start building with that in mind. It will set a higher bar without needing a new process. – Zain Jaffer, Zain Ventures
5. Emphasize double-checking work, and leverage automation.
To make quality assurance an integral part of organizational culture, it must be embedded into the daily workflow. Emphasize a habit of double- and triple-checking work, minimizing errors, and leveraging AI or other tools to streamline and automate quality checks wherever possible. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne Advertising
6. Conduct after-action reviews to assess quality.
The best way to build quality assurance into corporate culture is to do after-action reviews to learn lessons on how your quality could be improved. Then, you can create an action plan to execute the improvement. – Tracy Imm, Tracy Imm Worldwide, LLC
7. Incorporate it into your vision, mission and core values.
The best way to build quality assurance into corporate culture is to incorporate it into the vision, mission and core values of the organization. The VMCV stack should inform hiring, employee development, sales, marketing and even operational decisions. Leadership must regularly communicate when it’s working well or not working and celebrate exemplary behaviors (with or without rewards). – Kent Lewis, pdxMindShare
