Human Resources
It’s all about our people … being creative!
By Danie Vermeulen
Our employees are our most valuable asset, right? Sure, but the creativity of our employees makes them even more valuable! But how do we attract and retain the right employees, and how do we keep them motivated to use their creativity when our once adequate processes and procedures can’t keep up with changing customer demands?
The team at the Kaizen Institute and many of their clients know from experience that the right employees can be coached, encouraged and relied upon to develop and use their own creativity to obtain everyday and everywhere improvement … or ‘Kaizen’.
At the same time the employees’ creativity can be channelled to keep business processes ‘fresh’, relevant and efficient to stay ahead of customers’ changing needs.
Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. Japan-based Kaizen Institute founder Masaaki Imai says Kaizen is “everyday and everywhere improvement by everyone”. This Kaizen approach which was pioneered in the workplace by Toyota over the last sixty years has contributed directly to their sustained success and track record.
Kaizen and ‘lean’
More recently, Kaizen has also become known as ‘lean’ and it is indeed making a serious comeback as a management philosophy, because it is not the next ‘flavour of the month’ management fad, but instead it is simply ‘getting back to basics’.
These powerful lean principles and techniques are no longer only used in the automotive and manufacturing sectors. Many services organisations are catching on to the fact that the same Kaizen/lean principles and techniques can and should be used in their own businesses.
There are many great recent examples of how retailers, hospitals, banks, universities and government departments are reaping benefits from introducing the lean concepts.
What does it mean?
In its simplest form, Kaizen is about a few key principles – like ‘flow’, standardisation, elimination of specific types of ‘waste’, visual management, ‘demand pull’ and of course it relies very strongly on employee involvement.
Let’s look at a simple example. Walk into any office or workplace and ask people to describe the standard way that they use email in their company. You can be sure that you’ll get many different answers as well as a lot of uncertainty! Different styles and formats, different types of archiving, variable response times, personal preferences, bad habits, and varying levels of competency are not uncommon.
The impact of this lack of standard is much greater than most people realise. The loss of productivity due to rework, wasted searching time, not to mention the frustration of employees and customers, quickly add up to real financial losses.
The email example is obviously a very simplistic one. We know that the same principle applies in every other business process – from inward goods and despatch, warehousing, production, service delivery to administration and planning.
Training the Kaizen way
We can enable employees to address these types of challenges for themselves by training and coaching them to use Kaizen techniques like workplace organisation and standardisation (‘5S’); waste elimination and process flow. The right tools and the opportunity to design and agree to their own better ways of doing their daily jobs will ensure that employees become more interested and motivated. They accept and enjoy this challenge to use their creativity – it happens every time.
If this is done well, it will lock in good ‘habits’ and standards, and ultimately it will create a lasting culture where employees are equipped and encouraged to automatically and continuously improve their own workplace and processes. At the same time it will keep processes, services and products fresh and more attractive to clients and customers.
That sounds like a win-win outcome in anyone’s language!
Danie Vermeulen is the CEO of the Kaizen Institute in New Zealand. He can be contacted at dvermeulen@kaizen.com or visit www.nz.kaizen.com