Developing a culture of continuous improvement is one of the most important things you can do for your employees, and your business. Empowering people to make daily improvements to their work increases job satisfaction, productivity, and retention. It shows that you respect your employees and value their contributions to making your business better, and gives you more eyes and brains focused on increasing the value you provide to your customers. Really, it's a win-win.
Increasing job satisfaction isn't just a nice thing to do - it makes financial sense, too. According to the U.S. Department of Labor and Statistics, turnover can cost an organization 33% of an employee’s total compensation, including both salary and benefits. Although some turnover is enviable, engagement programs have been shown to combat it. For example, the Society for Human Resource Management found that companies with strategic engagement and recognition program reported a mean employee turnover rate 23.4% lower than retention at companies without such a program.
If you work at a company that doesn't value employee engagement in continuous improvement, the following steps to improving your life will sound pretty familiar to you. If you're the leader of such an organization, I'd suggest changing the way you manage improvement - before too many of your employees make it to steps 27, 28, and 29.
Do your daily work
Realize something you just did was wasteful
Decide that you want to improve the process
Get up from your desk
Look for your boss
Get distracted by the fresh pot of coffee
Talk to Jerry while you pour a cup
Go sit down
Remember why you got up in the first place
Get up from your desk
Look for your boss
Give up on the hunt
Write him a lengthy email explanation instead
Get back to work
Realize you did the wasteful thing again
Refresh your inbox to see if your boss gave you the ok to make the change
Refresh
Refresh
Go find your boss
Explain your idea
Get permission to submit the idea for consideration in next month’s Continuous Improvement Team meeting
Fill out a proposal
Do the wasteful thing for a month
Attend the meeting
Find out that your idea was rejected in favor of ideas with direct a financial impact
Feel the frustration mount as you continue to work inefficiently
Use your free time to search monster.com
Heck, who are we kidding. Search monster.com all the time.
Get a job somewhere with a real culture of continuous improvement