GRQC is your trusted partner on the path to sustained excellence.
GRQC helps area organizations achieve sustained performance excellence by helping their leaders and teams learn and adopt best practices in improvement processes and organizational culture. We offer a broad range of easy-to-access services to meet the needs of all organizations, regardless of size, sector or experience with continuous improvement.
Announcing the 2025 GRQC Performance Excellence Awards!
The Greater Rochester Quality Council (GRQC), an affiliate of the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce, is pleased to announce the 2025 Performance Excellence Awards. The GRQC Performance Excellence Award Program helps organizations in all sectors of the economy gain valuable insights into strategic areas of their operations, connect with like-minded leaders in high performing organizations, and earn formal recognition for achieving excellence through continuous improvement methodologies.
For more information about the awards, please click below.
Greater Rochester Quality Council events, programs and initiatives are supported in part by the Greater Rochester Chamber Foundation.
Join us for upcoming events!
Wed, May 28Designing group experiences that work -- for people and performance
Coming up in 2025:
-
April - Quality at Every Touchpoint: Service Excellence Strategies for any Organization
-
May - Group dynamics and facilitation
-
June - Development of the Conscious Leader
And more. Check back for details!
Learn About Partner Programs and Events
Upcoming PEN Webinars
We are pleased to invite you to these upcoming Thursday morning webinars from Performance Excellence Network (PEN).
Leading through Crisis: A Panel Discussion - April 17
There’s a lot going on these days. A lot. Businesses and organizations are facing increasing uncertainty and a growing number of complex challenges. But while navigating today’s complex challenges may be the most difficult ever, leaders still have businesses and organizations to run, customers to serve, teams to manage, and goals to achieve.
This panel discussion will feature a panel of leaders from different types of organizations (to be announced soon!), exploring ways to navigate today’s challenges. Topics will include
-
best practices in leading through crisis
-
tips on effective two-way communication
-
how to rapidly shift strategy or change how you implement action plans during a rapidly changing environment
-
how to manage and engage an anxious workforce
-
how to manage change, including minimizing the impact of necessary workforce reductions
Explore how to sustain your organization and how to ensure your own resiliency through what likely is a period of constant change and shifting challenges.
Click here for more information and registration.
Best Practices in Building and Maintaining an Inclusive Culture - May 1
Regardless of what you call it, an organization’s success depends on having an engaged workforce. The workforce must also have a safe, trusting, inclusive, and cooperative environment – a culture that capitalizes on and supports the diverse backgrounds, characteristics, knowledge, skills, creativity, and motivation of its workforce, partners, and collaborators.
The discussion will feature a panel of leaders from different organizations and will be moderated by Dr. Lanise Block of Sankore, who will first share her insights on the value of having an inclusive culture and how leaders can navigate today’s more challenging environment to build or maintain such a culture. The panel will then explore methods, tools, and best practices that lead to inclusion, as well as what has worked (and what hasn’t) in improving organizational results.
Come explore how your team and organization can continue to build a better culture in today’s changing environment.
Click here for more information and registration.
MCC's Course Offerings for Learners with Various Objectives, Schedules and Budgets
The Econonic & Workforce Development Center of Monroe Community College offers easy-to-access programs for people with a wide variety of learning needs, schedules and budgets. Here are some of their offerings.
MCC Corporate College provides education and training for individuals, offering both self-paid and employer-paid options for professional development. Many offerings are delivered virtually. To access the course catalog, click here.
The Finger Lakes Workforce Development Center is designed to focus on rapid training, retraining and upskilling of technical middle-skilled workers in demand by local employers. Through innovative partnerships and technical programming, the FWD Center is a catalyst in developing our region’s economy. Employers and individuals, click here for more information.
Local companies need a workforce skilled in robotics and automation and MCC’s new micro-credential, offered through the Engineering Technologies department, will have you ready to join that field with an exciting career in just 11 weeks! You’ll earn while you learn—tackling a paidwork experience while taking special college courses, earning college credit and be job ready when you’re done. Click here for more information.
RIT|Certified - Upcoming Belt Programs
Yellow, Green and Black Belt certification via an academic (for-credit) pathway are available every semester. Use the following links for information about these programs:
Click here to visit the RIT|Certified website and search for courses.
View presentations and videos from recent
GRQC programs
New York’s SMART I-Corridor: the Buffalo-Rochester-Syracuse Tech Hub
The NY SMART I-Corridor, spanning the Rochester-Buffalo-Syracuse super-region, is among a dozen regional tech hubs to receive first-in-the-nation implementation funding to activate an innovative growth strategy. Its vision is that, by 2034, one in four American-made chips will come from within a 350-mile radius of the NY SMART I-Corridor – cementing our region as the epicenter of U.S. semiconductor production.
This region is already home to five cutting-edge semiconductor fabrication plants, including Micron’s Syracuse megafab – the largest semiconductor facility in the nation - and around 100 innovative supply chain firms. Driving this success is a first-of-its-kind coalition of over 100 institutions, united by a bold vision - to redefine the future of technology. Joe and Ben describethis innovative approach and its implications for US manufacturing and the upstate New York economy.
Click below to view the presenter slides from this event.
Click below to view the Zoom recording of this event.
Managing Stress and Maintaining Well-Being in Disruptive Times
In modern life, rapid change and disruption are more and more the order of the day. As Jo Saxton, a nationally known speaker, author, and leadership coach said in opening her February 6 podcast, “Well, January was a long year, wasn’t it?”
Dr. David Pierce (Rochester Regional Healthcare) and Dr. Jessica Shand (UR Medicine) talk about their life journeys in medicine, and share their insights into how they maintained their well-being by focusing on what is truly important and all that entails. In addition, they share evidence-based techniques from the medical community and from distinguished authors that can be applied in any setting.
Click below to view the presenter slides from this event.
Click below to view the Zoom recording for this event.
GRQC Resource Center
GRQC is your resource for tools and templates, case studies, local consulting resources, and links to industry-leading websites to aid you in your pursuit of performance excellence and quality improvement. Click on the links below to access information.
Download favorite tools of GRQC Board members
Dowload presentations from recent GRQC events.
Visit these websites for useful tools and templates.
Check back often to access new material that you can use!
Tools You Can Use - Free From GRQC!
GRQC has assembled a searchable library of tools developed by our members, partners and friends, and is offering them free to website users. Find tried and tested tools, templates and information about a wide variety of quality processes: control charts, FMEA, Lean, Pugh matrix, and many others. You can search the library by keyword or by sector (business, healthcare, education, etc.). When you find what you need, simply click on the tool name to download it to your PC.
Click the button below to go to the webpage Homegrown Tools in the GRQC Knowledge Center, and take advantage of the expertise of our members and friends.
Find Resources You Can Use On The Job
2024 Performance Excellence Awards Recognizes 22 Award Winners, Including Three Platinum Award Recipients
An enthusiastic crowd descended on the Memorial Art Gallery October 16 for the 2024 GRQC Showcase and Performance Excellence Awards. The attendees networked with friends and colleagues in beautiful surroundings, learned about this year's winning projects and several organizations highlighted in the exhibit hall, and enjoyed an informative keynote address by Christina Gullo of True North Executive Solutions, LLC. And for the second consecutive year, three organizations won the coveted George K. Hansen Platinum Award!
Click below to meet this year's winners.
Click below to view photos from this exciting event.
Teams from Hillside, Rochester Regional Health, and UR Medicine won the George K. Hansen Platinum award, which indicates a level of excellence so extraordinary that it is normally awarded only every few years. It was a bittersweet moment for many in the hall - joy over celebrating the extraordinary accomplishments of these local organizations, tempered by sorrow over the passing of George Hansen, who contributed so much to Rochester's quality community over the years, and whose name the award bears.
The GRQC Performance Excellence Award Program helps organizations in all sectors of the economy gain valuable insights into strategic areas of their operations, connect with like-minded leaders in high performing organizations, and earn formal recognition for achieving excellence through continuous improvement methodologies. A GRQC review team, including experienced Malcolm Baldrige examiners and past Empire State Advantage and Partners in Performance Excellence examiners, evaluates each application using a simplified version of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award scoring guidelines. “GRQC is a beacon to local organizations seeking to be the best versions of themselves,” said Mark Gruba, who served as the emcee for the event.
Click below to view the list
of award winners and their projects.
Be a Part of GRQC's Mission - Volunteer!
Would you like to partner with GRQC to advance performance excellence in the community without making a long-term commitment? We have just the thing for you – volunteering to help one of our committees! GRQC has eight committees that help us achieve our strategic objectives. These committees are staffed by GRQC Board members and volunteers. We invite you to visit our new Volunteer Opportunity website page and reach out to any of the committee contacts to lean more or to express your interest. Volunteer opportunities are open to GRQC members and non-members alike. We’d love to have you join us!
Become a GRQC Member
GRQC benefits its members through a wide variety of program activities and membership services, including:
-
Participation in GRQC Workshops and Programs.
-
Participation in GRQC’s community projects.
-
Interaction with leaders and innovators regarding best practices in quality.
-
Contributing to making the Greater Rochester area a community of excellence.
-
Opportunities for networking with other organizations on the journey to excellence.
Our Champion and Advocate Level Members
