ASQ InfVoices – Quality Society Membership and Volunteer

Mr. Bill Troy raised the October topic of ASQ Influence Voices entitled “Recruiting Members and Volunteers Amid a Changing Landscape”. He found that “the pool of traditional members is diminishing quickly as demographics continue to shift” through the report from the Center for Association Leadership. He would like Influential Voices bloggers to discuss how do we encourage people to join or volunteer? As well as, how do local trends impact your association?

This topic reminded me that I had read the article named “A Call to Revitalize the Quality Professional” written by Scott D. Dalgleish in 2002. Dalgleish claimed the quality professionals had lost much of their effective; so that the consequence is the membership in ASQ had been steady decline for several year (form 1998 to 2001). Therefore, I would like to discuss the membership trend of Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) and compared with the trend of ASQ. The following diagram showed HKSQ membership variation from 1992 to 2014. About ten years ago, Dr. Aaron Tong (Former Chairman, HKSQ) had told me that Hong Kong’s quality management had behind America’s one up to five years. Decline of membership was also observed in HKSQ from 2002 to 2004.

In 2006, I was nominated to be Vice Chairman of HKSQ. HKSQ introduced two certification schemes that one was Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB) by Karson Chui (Former Chairman, HKSQ) and the other was Laboratory Quality Specialist (CLabQS) by me that continuous improvement of the membership number. After that I introduced social media through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for discussion quality issues since 2009; as well as, sharing all HKSQ and quality related activities through my blog. The critical event was Asia Network for Quality (ANQ) Congress which was held in Hong Kong in 2012 when I was Chairman. After that our member increased again.

Recently, we invited potential young quality professionals to join HKSQ executive committee as co-opt members so as to arrange new type of activities such as Quality Life Series included Dialogue-in-the-Dark Experience, Oyster Shucking and Wine Pairing Workshop, and The historical visit to Sheung Wan Hong Kong Island for the past 100 years. Networking with international quality professionals were continuously and provided high value added free seminar time to time.

My opinion on keeping membership and volunteers that HKSQ events should be both Professionalism and Fun! In order to attract new volunteers, we formed two sub-committees named “Innovation” and “Testing & Certification” in this year.

Reference:
A View from the Q - http://asq.org/blog/
Dalgleish Scott D. (2002) “A Call to Revitalize the Quality Professional” ASQ – Annual Quality Congress, Denver, CO, Vol. 56, No.0 May 2002, pp581-593.
(Dalgleish said it is no woder that the ASQ membership has been o a steady decline after a major increase in membership during the height of the TQM movement. See the following diagram)