HR Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is the process of identifying opportunities for improvement and managing the pipeline of ideas from inception to delivery there by achieving strategic objectives of the organisation incrementally. The improvement opportunity can be around process improvements, system improvements, data improvements, service improvements or operational model changes. Continuous improvement is an on-going process where ideas are collated, prioritised based on the expected delivered value to the business in line with the strategic objectives and delivered with clear outcome and measurements. 

Continuous improvement is an incremental process that will lead to a bigger transformation over the time, so as HR operational excellence leader, your focus should be in creating a culture of data driven continuous improvement and creating a seamless flow of ideas and implementation of these ideas. Adopt PDCA (Plan - Do - Check- Act) cycle for continuous improvement approach

When defining a continuous improvement process, it is important to start from the customers. It should be the 'Voice of Customers' that should be the driving factors improvements. In this current business environment the expectation of customers keep changing, so it is important to constantly listen to the customers and gain their feedback for improvements.  Below is a simple four step process to constantly improve the process 

1. Ideate
2. Select
3. Delivery
4. Control

It is important that all ideas are given importance, there could be quick wins that just need doing and there could be complex problem requiring more business case and investigation. I would propose classifying projects into Yellow, Green , Black so that the right Continuous improvement champions can be assigned to the project based on complexity and skillset of the champions

Ideation process is about gathering information - Always ask for Problem statement first and also about which process is impacted and then ask for the idea to improve. Ideas once received should be categorised based on 'Value to the business' , 'Urgency/Criticality' and 'Efforts'. Based on this information the CI champions would be able to prioritise which one to work on and which can be parked or rejected. Once ideas are selected, then improvement should be managed as project or as enhancement based on the size of the improvement, agile project methodology will be best to use while implementing continuous improvement initiatives to ensure value is delivered fast in the form of sprints. Once the ideas are delivered , we dont stop there, it is important to measure if the success is delivered and if not what needs to be done to deliver the required KPI objective.  One recommendation would be not to spend too much time on prioritising small works ('Just Do It's') that just needs doing!

A Kanban board may be adopted to ensure that there is a seamless flow of ideas to ensure innovation pipeline is kept strong and moving!