Whether your company has ten employees or 10,000, coming up with an employee engagement strategy can be a challenge. Keeping everyone connected is especially challenging with limited in-person activities due to COVID. It's easy to fall back on the same old engagement and training activities, but they tend to lose effectiveness with too much repetition. Don't worry; we've got your back. Here are 22 ideas that can help you improve employee engagement in 2022.

We often get questions about whether the Lean process improvement methodology can be applied in the financial services industry. Because of its manufacturing roots, many people assume that it doesn't apply to banking or other services-oriented sectors. However, because banking is very process-intensive, the Lean continuous improvement approach can generate significant operational improvement and waste reduction. That's why many financial institution organizations have implemented Lean in one form or another.

The Lean management methodology, also called Lean Production or Lean Manufacturing, was first developed based mainly on the management techniques of Toyota and other Japanese automakers; it was primarily used in manufacturing. Today, the approach has been embraced by almost every industry. Along the way, improvement management software has been developed to support the strategy. When we chat with people about Lean management systems, we are often asked some standard questions. Here are the answers.

Today, organizational culture is a top concern for many business leaders. This is because they have realized that to sustain growth and remain competitive, a culture in line with the strategic objectives is necessary. Financial results are significant, of course, but getting to the next level depends on building a high-performance environment in which innovation can thrive.

Team members may be able to talk about how they experience the culture. Of course, the experience of individuals is essential, but what defines culture is the patterns of behavioral norms in an organization. 

Six Sigma and Lean manufacturing are business methodologies focused on improving the quality of goods or services an organization produces by reducing variance in the production process. Leaders know that when a production process lacks the stability to create high-quality output consistently, it will continue producing defective products until someone intervenes and improves the process. Reducing variation requires constant monitoring and measurement as systems tend to erode if not kept in check.

Over the years, Six Sigma and Lean practitioners have developed a set of workplace organization techniques and tools that address control, problem-solving, and improvement to eliminate defects and waste. Here are a few of the most essential.

Investing in software to support your Six Sigma initiatives is an effective way to ensure that you get the most out of the methodology. In addition, setting up a structure for improvement makes it simpler for people throughout the organization to participate in and effectively oversee continuous process improvement efforts.

Organizations that leverage Six Sigma software collect more opportunities for improvement, implement more solutions, and see a higher ROI for Six Sigma. Several solutions on the market were either developed as Six Sigma management tools or repurposed as such, so we thought it might be helpful to identify some of the most critical capabilities that you should look for when evaluating this type of technology.

While there are several Six Sigma software solutions on the market, they are not all the same. The best platforms for this type of improvement include:

Kaizen management can give your company a significant edge over your competitors. It involves lean operations and continuous improvement, two vital factors to be effective in today’s economy. Another essential component is empowering your team members to participate in finding the opportunity to improve.

Following a kaizen management style involves a shift away from many of the principles of traditional business management models.

There are dozens of tools and techniques used by organizations to support their continuous improvement efforts. The most successful companies pick a few methodologies that work well for them and execute them consistently. If improvement work slows down or a new challenge arises, they experiment with another technique. Whether you are just getting started with structured improvement or if your practice is mature, you might consider adding a tool known as the Kanban methodology. This post will cover the meaning of Kanban and a few of its key advantages.

The DMAIC cycle is often called Six Sigma’s roadmap to improvement. It is one of the core tools of the methodology, but organizations also use it as a standalone improvement technique. We have clients in almost every industry, from healthcare to construction, who have achieved quantifiable impact against core business metrics by using the DMAIC approach. 

Here are some of the questions we get asked about the DMAIC cycle most often.

Whether you’ve read volumes about various business methodologies and the philosophy of continuous improvement or just a few articles, you can’t be blamed if you’ve started to wonder if Toyota developed every improvement technique.

They certainly contributed a lot but, companies like Motorola, General Electric, Nike, and others have enhanced thinking about the power of positive change. In fact, these days companies far outside of the manufacturing sector including those in healthcare, construction, and higher education are finding new ways to inch closer to business process perfection.

However, there is no denying that many of the tools and techniques that businesses of all sorts find useful were developed as part of the Toyota Production System.

The A3 management process is one example.