During a roundtable discussion at the 2026 Lab Manager Leadership Summit, laboratory leaders explored a longstanding quality management question: should organizations focus on stabilizing compliance systems first, or build a broader culture of quality that naturally supports long-term compliance over time?
The discussion, led by Lab Manager editorial director Scott Hanton, centered on how leadership expectations, employee engagement, and proactive quality practices influence how laboratory teams approach audits, documentation, and continuous improvement. A strong consensus emerged that organizations can significantly strengthen compliance outcomes by building a workplace culture in which employees understand not only which procedures to follow but also why those procedures matter.
Diagnosing internal quality culture
Hanton highlighted a practical benchmark for workplace culture: "Culture is what people in your lab do when nobody's looking."
When leadership is absent from the room, an organization's true culture becomes most visible. In weaker environments, employees may be more likely to take shortcuts or bypass documented workflows to save time. In contrast, a resilient quality culture ensures that staff members remain intrinsically focused on following established procedures properly, prioritizing long-term workflow integrity over sheer speed.
Managers can evaluate how employees perceive internal quality systems by implementing a simple word-association activity centered on CAPA (corrective and preventive action). Hanton explained that if you use the word CAPA in a circle, the gut reactions of your staff will immediately reveal the health of your quality culture: "Are they going to say blame, punishment, failure, loss of job? If they say those things, you do not have a culture of quality. Or are they going to say … learning, improvement, progress, opportunity? If they say those things, you have a very strong culture of quality."
Rather than treating CAPA solely as a disciplinary mechanism, framing corrective actions as tools for system optimization helps teams eliminate defensive operational barriers and permanently resolve process vulnerabilities.
Scaling quality oversight without expanding headcount
Expanding a quality program does not require building an oversized, costly internal compliance department. For instance, a participant from Sentara Health noted that their organization manages 20 laboratories across its network with a lean core quality team of only five individuals. This contrasts sharply with larger reference systems that require up to 50 full-time equivalents just to manage the IT demands of standalone information systems.
The organization achieves this operational efficiency by embedding dedicated quality coaches—or quality representatives—directly within standard laboratory teams. These employees continue to perform routine testing workflows while simultaneously serving as localized floor resources for internal audits, documentation support, and immediate quality-related questions. They receive targeted, high-quality education, attend recurring alignment meetings, and reinforce compliance expectations through daily peer interactions. Identifying employees who are naturally engaged in continuous improvement and elevating them to quality ambassadors leverages peer-to-peer enthusiasm to resolve performance variances more effectively than centralized corporate oversight alone can.
Reframing external audits as operational assets
Cultural maturity also dramatically influences how laboratory teams perceive external regulatory inspections. While labs often become overly focused on strict compliance checklists and backward-looking mistake management, Hanton shared that he always encouraged his team to view audits as an invaluable form of outside assistance: "I always felt in my lab that when an auditor came, it was free consulting. I didn't have to pay. I got lots of feedback. Sure, I got some paperwork. But it was free consulting. We're going to be improved after this."
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This shift in perspective marks the transition from a reactive quality system to a proactive operation. While standard compliance frameworks naturally look backward to dissect past errors, an active quality culture emphasizes anticipating future processing vulnerabilities and addressing structural problems before they manifest as analytical failures.
Driving compliance outcomes through leadership consistency
Managers fundamentally shape laboratory culture by clearly communicating operational expectations, reinforcing good practices, and responding constructively when errors occur. Employees are far more likely to report issues transparently when an organization treats mistakes as data points for optimization rather than as grounds for automatic punishment.
When fear dominates a facility, workers instinctively push mistakes under the rug, creating a self-propelling cycle of hidden liabilities and long-term regulatory risk. Ultimately, a sustainable quality system depends on an organization's willingness to learn. By aligning leadership consistency with peer-to-peer engagement, lab managers can move beyond the stressful cycle of audit preparation and build a workforce that naturally sustains operational excellence.
This article was created with the assistance of Generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing.
