Given the ever-growing pressure within organizations to minimize costs, the only sustainable way to reduce costs is to motivate your employees through Lean process improvement.
Lean is a process improvement methodology used in business to support organizations in adjusting and managing processes to achieve operational efficiency. The key objective of Lean is to reduce costs through the elimination of wasteful work activities to maximize customer value. Wasteful activities, such as reworking products or assignments, repairing defective parts or waiting for a machine to start up, are negatively linked to an employee’s job satisfaction and performance at work. Lean helps to address day-to-day hurdles that employees face in their jobs that lead them to feeling less motivated in the workplace. Implementing Lean will motivate your employees to become engaged and involved in operational improvement at your organization, with a major advantage being that Lean can be applied to any industry.
Lean has its largest impact on your organization by instilling a culture of continuous improvement among your employees. The methodology places a lot of focus on supporting workers to help them become flexible, motivated team members who are continually working to make day-to-day operations more efficient for not only themselves but for the company as a whole. Most people want to do a good job and achieve results; Lean helps employees to learn how to identify opportunities for improvement in order to find more meaning and value in their work. When employees are rewarded for their insight and ideas by being involved in designing and implementing process improvements, they are more likely to hold greater loyalty to the company and be more motivated to seek ways to better the company.
Your employees hold valuable knowledge that can be converted into cost savings for your business. They can provide insight to operational challenges and offer solutions to day-to-day problems that are connected to larger problems that result in costly expenses for the company. These opportunities for improvement can include initiatives such as modifying the layout of a manufacturing plant to decrease wait times, streamlining administrative tasks to reduce processing times and implementing ergonomic best practices to improve work conditions. The next time you run into an operational problem at work, go to the best source of information to gain a better understanding of the processes – your employees.
Motivating your employees through Lean will encourage them to continually be involved in driving process efficiencies and operational improvement, which will result in increased job satisfaction and performance as well as sustainable, impactful organizational changes that will help you meet your current and future business objectives.
Are you interested in motivating your employees through Lean? Get in touch with us to learn about how we can help you install Lean at your organization.
