Organizations are being encouraged to use the Fiji Business Excellence Awards to identify weaknesses and improve performance through an independent assessment of their operations.

Fiji National University’s National Training and Productivity Centre Manager Quality Awards, Viliame Waqalaivi, says the programme gives applicants an outside perspective on how effectively they operate.

He says 22 organizations have applied for recognition this year, including four new applicants including two family-owned businesses and a government department.

“So every organization is evaluated against six categories. And the first six categories are called process categories and also the results category. So the first six and the results, they have two different assessment dimensions and every organization that applies for recognition in the Fiji Business Excellence Awards is evaluated against the six using the assessment dimension called Approach, Deployment, Learning and Integration, ADLI and results.”

He says the organisations receive feedback from trained assessors, helping them examine whether their systems and quality initiatives are delivering sustained results.

“Because we have this as a set of national recognition awards, you know, there’s a lot of importance that we place on the awards.That’s how we promote it to organizations because it’s a good way of having an external group of people coming in to evaluate your business as opposed to, which we also encourage, doing self-assessment, you know to look at where you are in terms of the framework that we use right across the country.”

Waqalaivi says the assessment goes beyond individual achievements, examining how organisations implement processes, learn from experience and maintain results.

FNU Senior Public Relations and Communications Specialist Christal Kapoor says participation by family-owned businesses in this year’s awards is an encouraging sign.

“There’s a few family-owned businesses that have come on board, which is quite promising because in the future we’re planning to also expand the Fiji Business Excellence Awards to micro, small and medium enterprises as well, giving them an opportunity to improve their service delivery as well as come up with new innovative solutions to problems that businesses in Fiji face.”

The 27th Fiji Business Excellence Awards will be held at the Sheraton Fiji Resort this Saturday.