Book: Lean Human Resources

(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Encouraging a long overdue shift in thinking, Lean Human Resources: Redesigning HR Processes for a Culture of Continuous Improvement gives managers and executives the means to maximize employee potential by first showing them how to increase the improvement power of their human resources (HR) departments. Author Cheryl M. Jekiel, who has been implementing lean initiatives in HR offices for 20 years, defines the people-related approaches and practices needed to alter any cultural dynamic that keeps employees from leveraging their peak abilities. She looks at why so many companies allow this sort of waste to exist, how traditional HR departments have not been especially effective in combating waste, and why today’s HR department should be seen differently, as a partner delivering exceptional customer service to employees.

Everyone needs to learn and improve

Everyone needs to participate and be involved. Ultimately, lasting change requires evolution in an organizational cultural, and to achieve such change requires definitive changes in behavior. To ensure that changes are properly paced and effectively put into operation, the book puts forth a proven five-year plan that includes the building of improvement-linked competencies into each job.

 

Lead with the customer in mind—and by creating more leaders

A final section is designed especially for CEOs who must address their own views of HR before addressing improvement. They must recognize that lean HR strategies and methods can be used to create a highly motivating place to work, and that anything less would be a waste of talent. To begin, an organization must realize the value of its HR staff and put it to use implementing improvement that is organic, fundamental, and self-perpetuating.

Highlights of the book include:

Companies don’t realize they waste people’s abilities • Wasting employee talent
• Attempts to create an improvement culture often fail
• Keeping HR in the background is a business problem
• A new vision for HR
• Providing better service for your organization by first improving HR processes
• Success through powerful people strategies

How HR can influence and change work cultures • Changing employee attitudes and daily behaviors
• Lessons on culture implementations for lean HR
• Policies, communications, and celebrations need to reflect your organization’s values
• Can attitudes be measured?

Redesign roles for better results  • Optimize each job
• Job analysis for the future

Strategies for aligning your HR process • Linking the four core HR processes to the overall business strategy

Especially for CEOs • The benefits of motivating the human spirit

Cheryl M. Jekiel is vice president of human resources for the Flying Food Group. Jekiel leads the company’s human resources department, including all corporate benefits, compensation, and policy issues, while providing direction and leadership to human resources function in 16 unionized and nonunionized domestic units. Jekiel has developed an expertise in lean manufacturing with a particular focus on lean cultures. Her Lean experience has been greatly enhanced by her active involvement with the Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME), which has included roles for the association's national as well as Midwest boards.

About The Author