Businesses are always looking for ways to improve and become more efficient. One way to do this is by teaching your team problem solving.
Discover why this is advised.
In the current climate, you may be of the view that putting your employees or teams through any type of training is not worth the money. But when times are difficult, looking at existing processes may enable you to find better ways to do things and help get your business ready for when the trading environment improves. Plus, giving employees opportunities to progress can help lift morale.
There are a lot of continuous improvement tools in the Lean and Six Sigma tool kits. These are methods that relies on a collaborative effort from your team to reduce unnecessary variation, remove waste, and enhance performance. Teaching staff to understand problem solving and which tools can aid with this will really put things into perspective
Why should you teach your team problem solving tools and techniques?
Providing your team with new skills helps make individuals feel worthwhile, increases engagement with the business and helps them to see the difference they are making to the company they are working for.
Problem-solving tools also help teams communicate with each other effectively, reducing the temptation to engage in a blame culture, which really doesn’t help anyone.
Once teams understand why departments do things the way they do them, it ultimately creates synergy and helps everyone to work together more effectively.
Now is the time to teach people the value of Lean and Six Sigma tools.
Teaching people the value of Lean and Six Sigma tools, which can help prevent business bottlenecks and increase revenue, is what companies should be looking for at this moment in time.
Lean process improvement in regards to problem solving involves a DMAIC approach (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, and Control). Through brainstorming and process mapping, you can change the culture and mindset within your workforce to harvest positive results.
Lean and Six Sigma has been around for many years. The manufacturing industry developed and first used these tools, and now the same tools can be used across multiple industries and company sizes.
Whether it is on the shop floor or in an office call centre, using these tools is helpful to initialise positive change and can minimise wasteful processes.
This is not about making people redundant but about freeing up time, so people can do the job they were paid to do rather than running around on tasks unrelated to the core purpose of your business. It also means you can avoid paying out overtime!
