Employee Engagement & Process Improvement

Building on our discussion of high-performing teams, let's explore the interplay between employee engagement and streamlined workflows. Traditionally, we’ve prioritized defining roles and responsibilities before optimizing processes. While this approach has yielded some success, a more effective strategy is to cultivate engagement first.

By fostering a culture of engagement, we can identify top performers and leverage their insights to enhance work processes. A previous example highlighted how empowering a frontline supervisor transformed team dynamics. As leaders, we can partner with engaged team members to provide coaching, feedback, and support.

Once trust and buy-in are established, we can introduce tools like a "Day in the Life Of" (DILO) exercise to uncover inefficiencies. DILO helps identify:

• Role ambiguity
• Redundant tasks
• Time-wasting activities
• Overlap and gaps in responsibilities
• Skill underutilization
• Opportunities for improvement

With these insights, we can collaborate with high-potential employees to implement process improvements through:

• Targeted coaching and mentorship
• Cross-functional process mapping
• Root cause analysis using Ishikawa (Fishbone) diagrams

Remember, process improvement is an ongoing journey, not a one-time project. Developing workstreams should become a common practice and the more your team participates in these activities, the greater the engagement obtained, hence the synergy between these two priorities.