Quality culture: take the pulse with the AFNOR barometer

What is a culture of quality? Definition

Quality is no longer the exclusive domain of quality control specialists! Indeed, the days when the subject was limited to:

• In terms of product nonconformities
• Customer satisfaction
• Operated by a single person.

In the workplace of 2025, quality is more closely aligned with the broader concept of performance—including non-financial performance—than with the strictly technical notion of compliance. As a result, it affects everyone in the organization. 

Just like the  culture of food safety with regard to food safety, a culture of quality is the intellectual extension of quality as defined by the ISO 9001 standard. To the extent that the next version of this voluntary standard , scheduled for 2026, will devote a significant portion of it to this topic. Experts have been waiting for this. Offering quality professionals a new approach to quality—one that moves beyond their traditional scope—was a need that was clearly evident in a study conducted by the AFNOR Group in 2023 in collaboration with the BVA Institute, titled Quality around the world, trends and paradoxes .

In 2025, the group devoted an entire white paper to quality culture, entitled "How to measure quality culture?", and free download .

A corporate culture of quality: a foundation of shared values

According to Vincent Blache, an expert on this topic at the AFNOR Group, the quality culture is a unifying foundation of values, behaviors, and skills shared by everyone in the organization.
Integrating it into every level of an organization—whether large or small, public or private—is essential for:

• Optimizing performance on a daily basis to serve our customers and stakeholders
• Ultimately, ensure the organization's long-term viability. 

A culture of quality is therefore everyone’s responsibility—from senior management and the quality manager to employees and managers alike. It must bring together all stakeholders within a company. It is based on the implementation of best practices that inspire and foster employee engagement. 

A strategic lever for sustainability and reindustrialization

One quality culture This commitment therefore goes far beyond the scope of formalized quality systems, becoming an integral part of the company’s very DNA. This is an interesting point to consider at a time when France is seeking to shift into high gear in terms of reindustrialization, with AFNOR arguing that a sound reindustrialization policy ...requires, among other things, a solid quality policy! “Many manufacturers made the decision to commit to this approach a long time ago, and they are now reaping the benefits,” explains Franck Lebeugle, director of standardization activities at AFNOR, in a Opinion piece published in Les Echos on March 18, 2025 .

What is the AFNOR Quality Culture Barometer?

The AFNOR Quality Culture Barometer is a tool for measuring and evaluating quality culture. Simple and precise, it is designed to be collaborative in order to engage all stakeholders within an organization, including employees and managers. 

Using it within a company allows you to: 

• Assessing perceptions of quality
• Identify areas for improvement and pain points
• Compare ourselves to other organizations in the same industry. 

To implement it, tests were conducted at several large companies. The goal was to roll out a quality culture barometer that was as effective as possible and tailored to the needs of organizations. 

Quality Culture Barometer: Where Did It Come From?

Presentation of the AFNOR quality barometer by Vincent Blache in Reims in November 2024. Credit: AFNOR/DR
In 2022, a voluntary standard set out a series of recommendations for understanding, evaluating, and improving the quality culture organizational: l ISO 10010 . But we needed to go further, particularly by offering a tool to assess the degree to which employees have embraced and feel a sense of ownership of our company’s quality culture:

• Without leaving anyone out
• Without the temporary, expected, selective, and non-anonymous nature of an audit. 

That is what the Quality Culture Barometer which AFNOR will launch in 2025.

What is the ISO 9001 standard, and what are the pillars of quality?

Before introducing you to the AFNOR Quality Culture Barometer, we should first take a look at the ISO 9001 standard , which is set to be updated in 2026. Its purpose is to guide organizations and management teams in establishing a sustainable quality management system (QMS). To this end, it is based on several pillars: 

• Customer-focused
• Leadership
• Staff involvement
• Process-based approach
• Continuous improvement
• Evidence-based decision-making
• Stakeholder Relationship Management.

These pillars serve as guidelines to help companies unite their teams around a   strong culture of quality.  

 How was the AFNOR Quality Culture Barometer created?

The AFNOR Quality Culture Barometer is based on a full-scale pilot project launched in 2024 with six manufacturers. All shared the same desire to engage their teams across all departments in the assessment and promotion of their culture of quality and performance. These six beta testers are: 

• La Française des Jeux
• Pierre Fabre Laboratories
• Michelin
• Naval Group
• Nigay
• Soitec.

“For us, who build military ships designed to last at least forty years, the issue of knowledge transfer between generations is clearly part of the quality culture “We need to be able to continue serving our customers even after the employees who helped design the product have retired,” explains Christophe Perrin, Naval Group’s quality director in Lorient. It is therefore very much a matter of practices, behaviors, and skills.
The AFNOR Quality Culture Barometer was presented at the EOQ 2024 European Quality Congress in Reims in mid-November 2024. It is now available:

• In freemium mode to test a single-site assessment for fewer than 80 employees
• Upgrade to Premium to delve deeper into the analysis of the ISO 9001 quality culture. 

How can you measure quality culture using the AFNOR barometer?

The survey is based on online quality culture questionnaires. It can also be supplemented by individual interviews with 

• Influential leaders 
• Collective intelligence workshops.

“There are many different perspectives, and the interplay of these issues brings to light aspects that traditional quality assurance tools cannot reveal,” explains Vincent Blache.

How can you foster a culture of quality and performance using the AFNOR Barometer?

The results of the AFNOR barometer allow you to: 

• Identify strengths and areas for improvement
• Compare different websites or organizations
• Compare ourselves with other companies in the industry.

You can visualize all of this in the form of diagrams and compass roses, with the added bonus of calculating a NPQS (Net Promoter Quality Score)—an indicator that measures employees’ likelihood of seeing themselves as quality ambassadors and declaring themselves ready to improve quality. The next step is to turn that willingness into action: this is where the AFNOR Group’s coaching and support services come in, backed by its team of quality experts. A special e-learning course on quality culture will also soon be available at AFNOR Skills.