The World Quality Week is an annual campaign promoted by the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI), a British institution that globally represents the profession of quality management. The aim of this week is to raise awareness about the importance of quality for organizations’ success and for people’s well-being.
The Chartered Quality Institute is the driving force behind quality improvement. In practice, it is a community of professionals passionate about quality. Through this community, the CQI offers training, certifications, and resources to help organizations achieve excellence in quality.
Thus, the organization plays a key role in empowering professionals in the field by providing the tools and knowledge needed to drive quality within their organizations.
Theme of Quality Week 2025: “Quality: Think Differently”
In 2025, the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) invites us to go even further with the theme “Quality: Think Differently” (or “Quality: think differently” in the original English). This phrase is a call for a true mindset transformation.
The goal is to challenge traditional approaches, question the “it’s always been done this way” philosophy, and explore new perspectives that place quality at the center of strategy, innovation, and sustainable value creation.
Unlike the two-component structure of the previous year, the 2025 campaign is built on three fundamental pillars that guide organizations on this journey of rethinking quality:
1. Alignment: connect quality to business strategy
Quality cannot be an isolated department. To think differently, it is crucial to ensure that all quality initiatives are intrinsically linked to the organization’s strategy and context. This means embedding quality into decision-making processes across senior leadership and operations.
This ensures that it contributes directly to the company’s resilience, competitiveness, and long-term objectives.
2. Performance: Go Beyond Metrics, Manage Risks
Thinking differently about performance means adopting a proactive stance. Instead of only measuring outcomes, it is necessary to understand and respond quickly to risks that impact quality. It is about creating a culture where data-driven insights guide problem prevention and drive continuous improvement, turning quality management into a lever for operational excellence and consistent value delivery.
3. People: engage and empower every employee
This is the most revolutionary pillar: quality is everyone’s responsibility, not just a specific team’s. Thinking differently is about breaking down silos and promoting an inclusive quality culture where every individual feels ownership and accountability for quality in their daily tasks, regardless of role. By fostering collaboration and sharing best practices, the organization builds a collective mindset that sustains long-term excellence.
This new theme encourages us to see quality not as a cost or a mere compliance requirement, but as a strategic potential to be explored. It is an opportunity to reimagine processes, engage teams and use modern tools to build more agile, innovative and future-ready organizations.
Read more: 7 quality management trends and tools for 2025
How can my organization reach its competitive potential through Quality?
Quality Week reinforces how investment in quality management is one of the main factors that determine the value perceived by customers and influence their satisfaction and loyalty. Additionally, it helps reduce waste, rework, complaints, and risks, thus improving the organization’s overall efficiency and profitability.
But how to achieve and maintain a high level of quality in an increasingly dynamic, complex, and demanding environment? This is where quality management comes in — the set of principles, methods, tools, and processes aimed at ensuring and continuously improving the quality of an organization’s products, services, and processes.
It involves everything from strategic planning to operational control, including leadership, organizational culture, people engagement, data analysis, innovation, and learning.
Quality management also requires a systemic and integrated view of all aspects that affect it. This means considering the needs and expectations of stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, regulators, the community, and the environment. Only then can quality management create value for these stakeholders, generating mutual and sustainable benefits.
How to participate in World Quality Week 2025?
World Quality Week 2025, which takes place from November 10 to 14, is the perfect occasion for your company to embark on a transformation journey. Under the theme “Quality: Think Differently”, the invitation is to go beyond commemorative events and use this date to sow a new mindset.
Success lies in adapting activities to your context, but with a clear purpose: challenge the status quo and engage your organization in the three fundamental pillars of 2025.
To provide inspiration, we have gathered ideas that will help you incorporate Quality Week into your company, encouraging everyone to think innovatively:
1. Do prior planning
First of all, set clear objectives that link the week’s activities to your business strategy. Engage senior management from the start to show that quality is a strategic priority, not just an operational matter. Communicate how each action contributes to the company’s larger goals.
Define the objectives, target audience, schedule, budget, resources, and responsibilities for the activities you plan to carry out during these days. Align your actions with the theme proposed by the CQI and with your company’s strategy. Communicate and engage those involved and obtain senior management support.
2. Host talks, workshops, webinars, or podcasts
Take advantage of this week to share knowledge and experiences about quality with your employees, customers, suppliers, or partners. You can invite internal or external experts, present success cases, show market trends and novelties, discuss the challenges and opportunities of quality in your area of operation, among other relevant topics.
3. Create challenges that stimulate a new perspective
Create playful and interactive activities to test and expand people’s knowledge about quality. You can design Q&A sessions, practical challenges, simulations, or scenarios related to quality. One option is to reward participants with gifts, certificates, or other forms of recognition.
4. Carry out a collaborative audit
Make the audit cease to be a punitive activity and become a learning experience. Hold an “open audit” or a “transparent process day”, where process owners present their workflows and invite other employees to identify improvement points and potential risks. This promotes collective ownership and continuous improvement.
5. Implement an innovation project in quality
Use the week to launch a specific project that applies “thinking differently.” It could be automating a manual report, reviewing a metric that doesn’t generate insights, or applying a root cause analysis tool (such as the 5 Whys or an Ishikawa diagram) to a chronic problem. Show quick wins to kick off a virtuous cycle.
6. Recognize and celebrate change agents
Create an award to recognize not only those who meet targets, but those who think differently. Value employees who brought new ideas, questioned obsolete processes, or helped colleagues see a problem from a new angle. This reinforces that innovative behavior is valued.
7. Promote roundtable discussions about the pillars
Organize guided discussions about the three pillars. Ask teams: “What does ‘Alignment’ mean for our daily work?” or “How can we take more responsibility for quality?” These conversations strengthen the culture and generate valuable insights.
These are just some ideas to get started. The important thing is that each activity is an invitation to rethink, reinvent, and reimagine the role of quality in your organization. Don’t miss this opportunity to inspire your team and start a lasting change that goes far beyond a week on the calendar.
Quality as an ongoing commitment
World Quality Week establishes itself as an annual beacon for organizations seeking excellence. Its impact transcends the five days in November, inspiring lasting transformations.
Each edition reinforces that quality has stopped being an isolated function and has become a corporate strategy. The movement creates tangible value when integrated into organizational culture.
The discussed pillars converge on a common goal: aligning people, processes, and technology. This triad forms the basis for modern, competitive management.
The diversity of possible activities allows any company to adapt the celebration to its reality. The essential thing is to use this moment as a catalyst for concrete improvements.
Organizations that embrace this cycle of continuous evolution strengthen their resilience and competitiveness. Thus, quality becomes the smartest of investments.
SoftExpert remains a strategic partner on this journey, offering technology to operationalize the concepts discussed. The future belongs to companies that turn principles into constant practice.
Continue reading: What is quality control and how to implement it in your company
FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions about World Quality Week
Below you will find frequently asked questions and answers about World Quality Week:
World Quality Week is a global annual campaign promoted by the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) that aims to raise awareness about the importance of quality management for organizational success and social well-being. It is a period dedicated to celebrating achievements, sharing best practices, and promoting a culture of excellence within organizations.
In 2025, World Quality Week is celebrated from November 10 to 14. Although this is the official date set by the CQI, many organizations extend activities throughout the month to maximize engagement and the impact of initiatives.
The theme for 2025 is “Quality: Think Differently” (“Quality: think differently” in the original English). This proposal invites organizations and professionals to challenge traditional approaches, rethink established models, and adopt new perspectives that place quality at the center of sustainable value creation.
The 2025 campaign is structured around three interconnected pillars: Alignment, which focuses on integrating quality into business strategy; Performance, which encourages proactive risk management and continuous improvement; and People, which emphasizes engaging all employees as responsible for quality in their daily activities.
There are various ways to participate, from holding talks and workshops to implementing specific improvement projects. The important thing is to adapt activities to the company’s context, always focusing on promoting reflection and action around quality principles.
Participation represents a strategic opportunity to reinforce a quality culture, identify improvement opportunities, and align teams around common objectives. Companies that actively participate often observe greater employee engagement, process improvements and strengthening of organizational competitiveness.
Definitely not. The initiative is relevant for organizations of all sizes and sectors. Small and medium enterprises can adapt activities to their reality and resources, focusing on practical actions that generate immediate impact on their processes and customer satisfaction.
Platforms such as SoftExpert Suite offer complete tools to automate quality processes, manage risks, and promote continuous improvement. These solutions facilitate the implementation of the principles discussed during Quality Week, turning concepts into sustainable practices in everyday organizational life.
