5 Ways to Get Employees Engaged in Process Improvement

Businesses in virtually every industry wrestle with how to engage teams in efforts to improve business processes. Even once they do get employees involved, it’s often a challenge to sustain the momentum.

The good news is that given the chance, most employees do want to have a voice in process improvement. Management just needs to make it as easy as possible for staffers to do so.

Here are 5 ways to engage employees in business process improvement:

1. Put People First

The outstanding qualities and talents of your team members could provide the organization new ideas that could be innovative or useful to level up your services and products. Take the time to inspire and engage tenacious, passionate people who will happily take the lead on your process improvement efforts. Ensure that workers have proper training, ongoing support, and the resources they need to get involved with continuous improvement initiatives.

2. Let Go

Empower your employees and let them explore. You have to give your employees venue to experiment, to try and test their ideas. No one will take risks in the company if they feel there is lack of support and understanding. Innovation has a process, one that is flawed and has moments of glaring imperfection.

3. Make Involvement Easy

Allow your team members to have fun in the workplace. Sometimes, when the work environment is too serious and too strict, it can hinder creativity and continuous improvement. Having fun during work allows employees to be more relaxed yet productive and that is when they begin to be inspired and produce new and exceptional ideas. Needless to say, a stressful work environment doesn’t give one the frame of mind to think of doing things differently. The employee would only look forward to the end of the day.

4. Encourage Collaboration

Process improvement is a team effort, so it is essential to let everyone know “we’re in this together”. An efficient way of encouraging continuous improvement in the workplace is to set up cross functional or continuous improvement teams. Teams will be tasked to come up with ideas how to enhance work processes.

5. Lead and Communicate Expectations

Managers and team members should communicate expectations on a regular basis. Communication lines are open so that all parties can respond and ask for clarification if need be.

It is important not just to involve the organization’s leadership team in process improvement communications, but to make sure their support is visible to the entire operation. It also helps to build up a strong champion or network so that momentum can be maintained in all areas of the business.

Start your process improvement efforts with people being your top priority. The momentum you gain will embed a process improvement culture and position your organization to achieve your goals, whether they’re tech-related or people-centric initiatives.