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Our clients often find that the biggest challenge during their lean enterprise transformation is engaging employees in the daily habit of continuous improvement. 40 years ago, Taiicho Ohno, the architect of the Toyota Production System (TPS), recognized how vital this is - he stated that "the heart of TPS is management's commitment to empowering employees with the daily practice of continuous improvement".
Yet, a recent Gallup poll revealed that only 26% of U.S. employees are fully engaged at any time. At the other end of the spectrum, 19% of employees are actively disengaged, meaning they intentionally act in ways that negatively impact their organizations. It's estimated that the annual cost nationwide of this actively disengaged group exceeds $300 billion.
Clearly, for most American companies engaging employees remains an unfulfilled challenge. So the questions remain: How can your management team engage employees in the behavior of continuous improvement? How do you specifically measure and encourage this behavior? What are you doing to capture this unique competitive advantage - the hearts and minds of your people?
One way we measure employee engagement with continuous improvement is by tracking the number of ideas implemented per employee per month:
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The average for all US companies is less than 1 idea per employee every 6 years. |
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The benchmark for success with our clients is 2 ideas per employee every month. |
 Our clients achieve this level of success through a simple yet constantly improved process we call Engaging Employees that was originally inspired by Toyota. By using this process, Technicolor with 1,800 employees generated 20,000 ideas, implemented over 7,400 of them, and saved the company over $10 million within a year. This is not a suggestion program, and the process is so efficient that there is no burdensome review and approval process for management. Rather, this is a process for company-wide cultural change that engages all of employees as active problem solvers.
Contact us to discuss how we can help coach your executive team with its lean transformation, and help you engage your employees with continuous improvement to achieve competitive advantage.
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