“The classic Q jobs are dying out!”

Who cares?

Jobs come and go. This has been the case for thousands of years and will continue to be the case. Jobs related to quality are also coming, going and changing. What is the relevance of that? Not much for outsiders, as the German economy, let alone the global economy, depends on the Q professions. The question of changing and displacing the Q-professions is really relevant, especially for those who work in these professions. For them, the question is whether The current job has a future, what value it will have and what career development opportunities exist. The second group of interested parties is Organizations whose customers are Q professions can be assigned. This includes, for example, a German Society for Quality (DGQ) or CAQ software providers such as Babtec GmbH or IMS software providers such as Modell Aachen GmbH. For these organizations, the question is whether their community will even exist in the future in the form we know it today. At DGQ, this question is existential; among software providers, there is a good chance that quality data processing and process management will continue to be relevant, but will be driven by other professional groups.

Study setup

The Q-Beruf-Study by Modell Aachen GmbH is based on Data from the most popular German professional social media platform XING. The basic assumption is that XING with 16 million users in Germany represents a useful picture of the labour market. If the number of people working in defined job titles is now evaluated over time, significant trends can be identified over the years. The search results include both male and female job titles. It should be borne in mind that the population of people who have a profile on XING has also grown over time. From the start of the Q-Berufe Study by Modell Aachen GmbH 7/2019 to today, this is an increase of 10.5% [2]. If the growth/shrinkage of the group of a specific job title is now to be determined, the growth of this 10.5% must be normalized.

A second less important but still interesting factor results from the distribution of how large the proportion of a professional group in Germany is in relation to the total XING users in the DACH region. There are obviously typical German job titles here, which are completely unusual in Austria and Switzerland.

The results — the losers

The keyword “quality management” in the job title is stable at -0.2% in standardized terms, “quality manager” is even growing at 4.5% over the last two years. It is therefore not to be assumed that the topic of quality management will die out in the next few years. The community is inherently stable. However, there are losers among the Q professions. Really relevant is the “QMB” and the “QM representative”, which have shrunk by 28.1 and 25.2% in two years. In absolute terms, the total amount of 900 QMB lost in German-speaking countries within two years. This can be explained by the fact that the QMB is no longer explicitly required in ISO 9001 as such a designated body. This does not mean that the tasks of the previous QMB have been omitted. Only the job title is omitted in many places. With linear extrapolation, it can be assumed that this term will no longer exist in 8 years. If it is also assumed that the job titles on XING are frequently adjusted by the respective users with a significant time delay, the extinction of this job title can also take place much faster.

It is likely to fall into the same category “Q-Manager”, which at 45.6% has the strongest shrinkage Of all job titles, however, with originally around 250 hits, is not as common.

It is also noticeable that the terms “Head of Quality Management” and “QM Manager” shrunk by 15.7% and 26.0%, respectively are (in total absolute -300) while “Head of Quality” remains fairly constant. Especially with regard to the statements made by Mr. Weber as an expert in the field of quality professions, it is likely that the structural structure of quality management is increasingly being dissolved in favor of roles that ensure quality in the specialist areas. There is also a shift towards the English name.

Other rapidly shrinking Q occupations include “KVP”, “EFQM”, “SixSigma” and “TQM”, which indicates that they have reached the end of their life cycle are. Their total number is also already very low.

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The results — the winners

It is noticeable in the evaluation that the Quality assurance professional groups are positioning themselves significantly more strongly. So can “Quality Assurance Staff” and “Quality Assurance Specialist” grew by 1.8 and 8.7%, respectively. There therefore seems to be a trend away from the often rather nebulous perception of quality management towards tangible quality assurance.

Die The strongest growing professional group is “Compliance” with 15.2% standardized growth in two years. Increasing legal and normative regulations have already suggested this trend. It will be exciting whether the job profile of compliance manager is developing so strongly and comprehensively that QM systems will increasingly be regarded as a subset of compliance in companies in the future. From my point of view, that would be a sad development.

A surprising figure is the increase in people with the job title “Organizational Development” with a growth of 139%. However, this value appears to be more an effect of a change in XING's search algorithms. Under “Organizational Development”, all hits with “Personnel Development” are also found in 2021, so that the result is severely falsified. However, it should be mentioned here for the sake of completeness.

In conclusion, it seems typical German job titles to give. First and foremost, there is the “QMB” with 98% German XING user, followed by Information security officer with 97% and Data protection officer with 95%. We Germans seem to love the commissioners. In Switzerland and Austria, these job titles are virtually non-existent. But “complaint management”, “quality engineer” and “quality assurance employee” also appear to be typical German job titles.

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conclusion

DGQ can breathe a sigh of relief: Q-munity as a whole is stable. CAQ manufacturers have a strong target group with strengthened quality assurance roles. EFQM, TQM, KVP and SixSigma seem to have reached the end of their life cycle, at least as job titles. For QMBs and people who hold or strive for QM management functions, the air is getting thinner. These job titles are shrinking quite a bit. If you simply follow the results of this study, developing these people towards compliance, quality assurance or perhaps organizational development might be a good idea.

For us at Modell Aachen GmbH, the results of this study mean that the job titles that drive the topic of “management system” in companies are increasingly shifting without the topic losing relevance. On the contrary — according to various studies and in our own experience, the importance of process-oriented management systems in companies remains high and continues to rise sharply, not least due to increasing digitization pressure.

[1] QZ 9/2019 “Get out of your comfort zone! ”
[2] https://de.statista.com/themen/746/xing/