Employee engagement and satisfaction will often make or break how long an employee stays with the same company. While there are factors outside of a company that contribute to an employee’s willingness to stay, the two key factors inside a company are job satisfaction and the company environment.

How does Lean Boost Employee Engagement?

  1. Shared Meaning

A lean journey is one with no ending. The company is always learning and working towards more streamlined / efficient processes. Pulling employees into the fold and making them a part of this process helps them better understand the value they add to both the consumer and the company itself. Having a deep understanding of their value, and knowing they can make suggestions for ways to enhance that value, is one way to keep them continuously motivated.

  1. Elimination of Wasteful Practices

Nothing is more frustrating to an employee than filling out unnecessary paperwork or making unnecessary trips to retrieve something that should have been readily available to them. Lean strategies eliminate these wasteful practices, allowing employees to fully engage in the aspects of their job that are most critical. This allows employees to identify potential issues faster and make improvement suggestions to boost organizational growth, giving the employee more of a vested interest in the success of the company.

  1. Professional Development

Lean is all about learning and the continuous improvement mindset. This is not just for systems and processes, but for employees as well. Lean strategies focus on individual growth and learning. Each employee needs to be intimately tuned into their respective role while also having a sense of how their role interacts with the roles of their colleagues. This requires extensive skill training and coaching.

Employees who are more engaged in their work are less likely to turn over and cause bottlenecks in the system. If a company is invested in bringing lean strategies to their organization, they should also be prepared to invest in the professional growth and development of each employee.

 

References

Flowers, V. & Hughes, C. “Why Employees Stay.” Harvard Business Review, July 1973, https://hbr.org/1973/07/why-employees-stay. Accessed 21 November 2019.

Tsonev, Nikolay. “How to Boost Employee Engagement with Lean.” Kanbanize, January 2019, https://kanbanize.com/blog/boost-employee-engagement/. Accessed 24 November 2019.