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Mastering Process Improvement: 5 Strategies for Working Smarter, Not Harder

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Efficiency is paramount in staying ahead of your competition. Mastering process improvement is not just about working harder—it’s about working smarter. By adopting the right strategies, you can streamline operations, boost productivity, and drive meaningful change within your organization. Let’s explore five essential strategies for mastering process improvement and achieving sustainable success.

Question the Status Quo

Challenge established processes by asking critical questions. Take a deep dive into the workflow and identify any bottlenecks or redundancies that may be hindering productivity. Are there manual tasks that could be automated? Are there unnecessary steps that can be eliminated? By questioning the status quo, you can uncover opportunities for improvement and innovation.

“Once I understand how something is done, I can ask ‘why is this step needed?’” Said Tahirah Thomas, a Senior Manager of Operations in the Chicago, Illinois area. “Should this step be here instead? Is there a step missing? Then you can run tests, analyze the data, and create and implement a new process.”

For example, consider implementing process mapping techniques to visualize current workflows and identify areas for optimization. Engage team members in brainstorming sessions to gather insights and perspectives from those directly involved in the process. Encourage a culture of continuous improvement where everyone feels empowered to challenge existing norms and contribute ideas for enhancement.

Secure Buy-In Through Communication

Implementing process improvements requires buy-in from all stakeholders, including team members, managers, and other departments. Effective communication is key to gaining support for proposed changes and ensuring a smooth transition.

Start by clearly articulating the rationale behind the proposed improvements and the potential benefits they offer. Highlight how the changes will positively impact both individual roles and the overall success of the organization. Address any concerns or resistance to change by actively listening to feedback and addressing them transparently.

“It’s about how you sell it and the way you approach it,” said Thomas. “You tell them how this process will be easier and you show them how.”

Consider hosting workshops or training sessions to educate team members about the new processes and provide opportunities for them to ask questions and provide input. By involving employees in the decision-making process and demonstrating a commitment to their success, you can secure their buy-in and foster a culture of collaboration and accountability.

Empower Talent Development

Invest in the growth and development of your team members to unlock their full potential and drive organizational success. Provide opportunities for training, mentorship, and skill-building to enhance their capabilities and expand their expertise.

Encourage a culture of continuous learning where employees are encouraged to seek out new challenges and develop new skills. Offer cross-functional training opportunities that expose team members to different aspects of the business and broaden their understanding of the organization as a whole.

Recognize and reward employees who demonstrate initiative and a commitment to personal and professional growth. By investing in talent development, you not only empower your team members to excel in their roles but also cultivate a pipeline of future leaders who are equipped to drive the organization forward.

Prioritize Customer-Centricity

Put the needs and preferences of your customers at the forefront of your process improvement efforts. Take the time to understand their pain points, preferences, and expectations to tailor your processes accordingly.

Implement customer feedback mechanisms to gather insights and identify areas for improvement. Whether through surveys, focus groups, or direct communication, solicit feedback from customers to understand their experiences and identify opportunities for enhancement.

“I hold myself to a high standard and I think of myself as the customer,” said Thomas. “How would I feel if this was happening to me? That’s how I teach my staff.”

Focus on delivering exceptional service that exceeds customer expectations at every touchpoint. Empower your team members to take ownership of customer interactions and proactively address any issues or concerns that may arise. By prioritizing customer-centricity, you can build trust, loyalty, and long-term relationships that drive sustainable success.

Celebrate Success and Foster Accountability

Recognize and celebrate achievements to reinforce a culture of excellence and motivate team members to continue striving for greatness. Whether through formal recognition programs, team celebrations, or individual shout-outs, acknowledge and appreciate the contributions of your team members.

Provide regular feedback and coaching to help employees understand their strengths and areas for improvement. Set clear goals and expectations, and hold team members accountable for their performance. Encourage a sense of ownership and responsibility for outcomes, and empower employees to take initiative and drive results.

“If you keep letting them know that they are doing something well, it makes it easier to tell them when there’s an opportunity to improve,” said Thomas. “People don’t have confidence when they think no one sees them, and developing that talent is developing tomorrow’s leaders.”

By fostering a culture of accountability, you can ensure that process improvements are effectively implemented and sustained over time. Celebrate successes along the way to keep morale high and inspire continued efforts towards excellence.

Mastering process improvement requires a combination of analytical thinking, effective communication, talent development, customer-centricity, and accountability. By adopting these strategies, you can streamline operations, boost productivity, and foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within your organization. Remember, working smarter, not harder, is the key to achieving sustainable success in today’s competitive business landscape.

Top Recruiting Mistakes To Absolutely Not Make

The hiring and recruiting process is an important process that an employee will remember forever. Hiring managers and recruiters have to constantly create effective strategies in order to find, attract, and maintain the interest of the right candidates and ultimately land job placements for organizations.

The process of recruitment may seem a simple process. However, there are often many mistakes that are made in the recruitment process that typically stretches the recruitment process for many months where on average it only takes 36 days and, in worst-case scenarios, costs an organization the ‘right candidate’.

Here are some critical mistakes that recruiters and organizations often, and should never, make in trying to hire the right candidate.

Not Capitalizing On The Job Description

In creating the job description for an open role, organizations sometimes make the mistake of creating a job description that is entirely too long, difficult to comprehend, and fails to create a sense of excitement and optimism about applying to the role. The job description should be very specific, yet in a way, communicate the culture of the brand. This also helps in attracting the right culture fit to your organization.

For job description success, the description should thoroughly explain all areas of the role, the qualifications that are required and most desirable for the role, the purpose of the role and the department, and the competitive perks/benefits offered to the employee. Lastly, most employers fail in the area of taking a realistic approach. The job description should have realistic qualifications geared towards a candidate that actually DOES exist instead of those who do not.

Settling For Less

Knowing your worth as a member of your organization is extremely important. Often times, candidates that are not well equipped to handle the responsibilities of the role are hired which ultimately comes at a cost to the company. Why? Well, for many reasons, such as management leaders not wanting to hire someone that can be a threat to their job security, an overly-lengthy hiring process at the expense of trying to find the right candidate, and not having many candidates to choose from.

The truth of the matter is, companies need fresh, new talent that has the potential to become leaders in order to remain competitive and create an opportunity for business growth.

Rejecting The “Overqualified”

Many companies avoid hiring candidates they deem are overqualified for the role. In actuality, hiring a candidate that has more experience, a higher degree, has worked for larger organizations, etc. can have a major impact on your organization. The sole reason a hiring manager may avoid hiring this individual is the thought of the candidate potentially leaving the organization for a better opportunity. That should never be the case.

In recruiting, you can avoid this by investing in employer branding. Employer branding consists of strategies designed to paint a positive image of your company as an employer and a great place to work and ultimately catch the attention of the best candidates in the marketing. Employer branding exists as an effort to attract them, land them, and most importantly, retain them. Done right, you can hire an overqualified candidate and not worry about potentially losing them by preaching the perks offered at your company that are most important to these candidates, such as the room for growth and advancement and continuous learning.

Allowing Unconscious Bias To Influence The Hiring Decision

Unconscious bias in the recruitment and hiring process is the forming of an opinion on a candidate and his/her ability to work or fit within your organization’s culture based on an immediate first impression. Unconscious bias comes in many different ways such as making judgments and choosing not to hire because of age, gender, social class, race, or religion. This can be seen as early as the stages of first hearing the name of the candidate or seeing a picture of the candidate.

Unconscious bias hurts the chance of diversity in the workplace. Studies show the significant relationship between business growth and diversity. Diverse teams tend to perform significantly better than less-diverse teams in business, and eliminating unconscious bias from your hiring and recruiting practices can ultimately turn into better hiring decisions and a positive impact on your company’s revenue. And, if proven by the candidate, can lead to legal trouble based on discriminatory practices.

Unconscious bias is a huge mistake that a lot of hiring managers and recruiters tend to make. Becoming aware of the potential biases, addressing them, and monitoring the recruitment process and where these biases typically arise can be a step in the right direction of avoiding this in the future and landing the right candidates.

Waiting For The “Perfect Match” That Doesn’t Always Exist  

We all want the perfect match, so as organizations we tend to try to narrow our searches when recruiting. This can actually have an adverse effect as there is no “perfect candidate”. Hiring and recruiting focus should be placed on the amount of value an employee can bring to the role and to the organization, and not if the candidate checks every single box on the job description and in the interview. The most successful organizations are the organizations that focus on hiring talent that can grow into the role and deliver a major impact. Recruit candidates that meet the key requirements for the role and are trainable to learn. This, in turn, creates loyalty and the desire to contribute to your organization’s mission.

Hiring Based On The Interview

A great interview can be enough for an employer to decide to hire a candidate. However, studies have shown that hiring candidates simply because of how well they did in the interview should not overshadow everything else in the hiring and recruiting process.

According to a study from the Chally Group, interviews only help increase an organization’s chance of hiring the best candidate for the role by 2%, which is not significant enough to be deemed the deciding factor of whether a candidate gets hired or not. Ensuring that you check all areas and make your hiring decision based on more than one factor will help you land that best-qualified candidate.

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Top Talent Trends for 2019

As societal changes are made to today’s workforce with the help of technological advances, it’s no surprise that employer and employee relationships have shifted as well. In a recent study conducted by LinkedIn, the company used a database of over 5,000 talent professionals over the span of 35 countries to understand the top talent trends developing for the year.

Today’s workforce requires more than hard skills to determine a candidate’s ability to succeed in a new position. Soft skills, work flexibility, anti-harassment, and pay transparency will now play a large part in the new year for candidates. As a recruiter, it is crucial to implement these new trends into daily practices to enforce quality candidates with high retention rates for 2019.

Soft Skills

To create clarity, hard skills will continue to be the major deciding factor when faced with the decision of finding the appropriate candidate for the position. Realizing that hard skills is the determining factor if the candidate can “do” the job, soft skills often determine the ability to complete the job “well”. As the demand for candidates with appropriate soft skills continues to grow, recruiters must prioritize both hard and soft skills during the hiring process.

Among the top 4 trends, soft skills are deemed as one of the most rapidly growing influences for a successful corporation. An important identifier for the quality of future candidates, recruiters are required to conduct proper assessments to determine each candidate’s soft skills before they are passed along.

Currently, creativity is considered one of the most “in-demand” qualities closely followed by the ability to persuade, collaborate, adapt, and properly manage time. These soft skills can be determined through assessments such as problem-solving questions. When initially screening your candidate, ask them to solve an impending issue that could characterize their hard skills and supplement these questions with an introduction of duress that would represent their ability to demonstrate their soft skills.

Work Flexibility

Since the transition to a technology leading era, it comes as no surprise that multiple corporations are moving away from a corporate office structures and adapting a policy for employees to work from remote locations. In attempt to retain top quality candidates, allow their employees to work from a location of their choice, within reason. 

For candidates considering potential candidates for open positions, flexibility brings both advantages and disadvantages in the position. Though the position can improve productivity and retention, the lack of immediacy can present challenges in collaboration and bonding with other employees on the team. To combat this, companies are quickly adapting by implementing the use of messaging platforms and video conferencing to recreate the sensation of “being in the same room”.

With the improved stability for work life balance, lesser cost for companies needing to accommodate space for employees, and improved retention and loyalty to current positions, work flexibility is becoming a rapidly rising trend. Major companies such as Dell, implemented their strategy with 60% of their employees working remotely in 2014 and now allows the corporation to save $12 million dollars annually while sourcing candidates from beyond their local offices.

Anti-harassment

With the budding attention towards social movements such as #MeToo, today’s candidates are demanding corporate cultures that expands further than just anti-harassment policies. In most previous cases, hostile work environments commonly have had high turnover rates and productivity issues but since exploitation of high-profile harassment cases, companies are now pressured by employees to develop a culture that circulates around safety and respect.

Companies are now encouraged to understand where their companies stand before implementing changes. Fully comprehending how employees experience policies and practices is the beginning of making proper changes leading to training, communication, reporting, and responding tactics. At times, bringing on third parties to assess company needs could prevent the pressure of acknowledgement when restructuring current harassment policies.

With the empowerment of social media however, employees now are more open and vocal about their tolerance towards bad behavior. Along the new implementation of a “safer” workforce environment, companies have additionally cultivated new policies and strengthened communication to fulfill needs towards a more respectful atmosphere.

Pay Transparency

Speaking about salaries has always been considered a taboo topic and has been kept in confidence between employer and employee. Employers have felt that by disclosing information could cause a variety of issues when instead, by disclosing salary information could prevent disputes from arising.

For those companies that have implemented change, found that the practice has built trust towards the company. Companies such as Starbucks, who have reached pay equality for all genders since 2018, believes that by doing so has allowed them to attract top talent. Though the current business model is torn on this practice, potential candidates still have the option to see and view salaries on mediums such as Glassdoor and LinkedIn.

By openly discussing benefits, misinformation that directly correlates with morale and retention is greatly diminished. Allowing all employees to quickly rest assured that there is fair pay across all gender, race, and other demographics to create a balanced and fair environment for employees.

Effective Mid-Management Job Search Techniques for 2018

With the current U.S. unemployment rate sitting effectively at just under 4%, job openings throughout the country – spanning the entirety of organizational charts – are abundant.

Whether you are a mid-management professional looking to take the next step on the career ladder, or a junior professional looking to step into mid-management functionality, understanding the best practices around the modern job search in 2018 is a great way to maximize your chance of landing your desired next position.

Optimize Your Resume and Supporting Documents

While it isn’t always easy to know where to start when building out a top-quality resume, you will want to make sure that your resume and supporting documents – cover letter, thank you letter, LinkedIn profile – are consistent and tailored for the position you are going for.

If you’re looking for a mid-management position, showcase the accomplishments and skills that highlight your ability to lead teams and coordinate target achievement.

Work on Your Professional Brand

It’s 2018, and in this age of digital media – where most people have access to publishing tools and social media platforms – it is becoming increasingly important to be seen as a thought-leader in your industry.

Start publishing thoughtful, informative articles on social media designed to provide value to fellow industry professionals. This will raise your public profile, and enhance your standing in your field. If you are able to have your thoughts and writing circulated within industry circles, the name recognition will become very helpful when pursuing mid-management positions.

Leverage Your Network

In addition to enhancing your public profile through professional branding efforts, another great way to establish yourself as a leader in your organization or industry who is ready for mid-management responsibilities is to leverage your network – both professionally and personally.

Utilize tools such as LinkedIn to connect with fellow industry professionals and expand your networking base. Connect with individuals you would like to start conversations with, and even send out connection requests to high visibility individuals to try to strike up conversation. You never know what opportunities in mid-management are out there!