CREATING COMPANY CULTURE CHAMPIONS

by: Remie Longbrake | published: October 9, 2022

Creating company culture is the process of ongoing development of a company’s processes, products, services, training, and leadership style and often how the workforce is treated and interact with customers and each other.

Creating champions of employees who lead and seek improvement helps promote a positive environment throughout the entire workforce, a key factor of which is improvement of each person.

Where a company’s decision-making process is top-heavy and management-led, the resulting feeling of powerlessness generally felt by the employees can result in a negative work culture that does not fulfill its productivity potential.

Seeking to improve a company through the combined effort and ideas of the entire workforce, regardless of their role or level of seniority, has come to be recognized as an effective way to create a sustainable business.

Why is improvement important?

Continuous improvement not only helps companies who adopt it into their culture but also the employees who work for them. Here are the four reasons:

1. Competitive advantage

Continuous improvement has been adopted by many successful and globally renowned organizations, such as Toyota, Nestlé and the Mayo Clinic, but there are still many companies that have not taken advantage of this approach. Companies that adopt a continuous-improvement culture are likely to have a competitive edge over others in the same and neighboring industries as their entire workforce seeks to
improve their products and services, not simply their management.

2. Empowerment to employees

The suggestion is that while employees are part of a process, they are only suitable to play that one role and they will never come into contact with the leaders at the top is not effective overall. A culture of continuous improvement promotes a different approach where contact between different areas of the business is enabled, and the knowledge and ideas of all employees are valued equally.

Employees are listened to as much as their managers and, moreover, equal value is
placed on everyone’s input.

This opportunity to contribute to the success of the company, to be heard, and ultimately, to be valued for their expertise, has a positive effect on employees and therefore reduces employee turnover.

It also helps employers to discover talented individuals within the workforce who may be suitable for promotion and leadership roles.

3. Promotes improvement of products and services

A culture of continuous improvement includes the whole workforce in the development of products and services. With eyes on the company’s services or products at all levels and an openness to receiving ideas on ways to improve them, the rate at which services or products can be developed increases.

From the work-floor operative who finds a more effective way to begin the production process by storing the base components closer together to the salesperson who points out a better way to track customer details, allowing improvement from the bottom up brings together the minds of everyone who works for the company.

4. Increases creative problem-solving

In a culture of continuous improvement, you are invited to not only make those problems evident but also to find a way to solve them. The openness to idea from the entire workforce allows a problem or an opportunity to improve to be examined from multiple viewpoints.

By speaking to the employees involved in each step, they find numerous ways to improve the process that they would never have been aware of without stepping outside their circle of knowledge.

Examples of champion improvement practices

1. Workshops

Setting up a workshop to discuss a particular area of the business or a problem, where the attendees are key personnel but of varying levels of seniority, can be an excellent way to approach the issue from all angles. Even where there is no perceived problem, addressing a specific process opens up the
floor for employees to address their concerns.

2. Polls and surveys

Sending out polls and surveys to all staff members provides another opportunity to gather
information across the whole business. It also improves employee engagement as staff
members feel their opinions are wanted and valued.

3. Gap analysis

A gap analysis asks three questions relating to either the business as a whole or one specific area:

Where are we now?
Where do we want to be?
How can we close the gap between the two?

A gap analysis is an ideal way to bring together employees from difference areas of the business at varying levels.

4. Kaizen

Kaizen is a Japanese term that, at its most basic, means continuous improvement. As a system for improvement, Kaizen is made up of four factors,

Kaizen Teian is a process of bottom-up improvement that seeks to eliminate waste
such as waiting time, excess processing or non-utilized talent
Kaizen Events focuses on specific improvements over a short time period
Kaikaku is a company-wide process of radical improvement
Kakushin involves a major move to operate in a completely new way

5. Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA)

This strategy involves the four steps in its name,

Plan – Identify a change that needs to be made and set up a plan to do so
Do – Make the change in a relatively small-scale way
Check – Analyze the results of the change and decide whether it was effective
Act – If the change was a success, apply it on a wider scale and continue to assess. If
the change did not have the desired result, go back to step one

6. Six Sigma

Created by engineer Bill Smith when he worked at Motorola in the 1980s, Six Sigma has
five stages,

Determine the problem – Create problem and goal statements, a project charter, customer requirements, and a process map.
Assess the existing process – Collect data on performance and related problems. Verify the reliability of the data. Update the project charter
Investigate the cause of any problems and continue to analyze the related data. Update the project charter.
Improve the process by implementing solutions – Continually assess for improvement and problems.
Refine the improved process – Through ongoing assessment, make further improvements to the process, and apply the findings to other areas of the business.

Tips for creating champion of improvement

1. Open Communication

In a culture of continuous improvement, everyone should be involved in making changes to the workplace, to processes, and to product or service design. The entire workforce should understand the importance of continuous improvement and the strategy, such as Kaizen or Six Sigma, that is used.

2. Bottom-up and Top-down improvement

There should be an understanding that while managers may play an active role in improvement and lead by example, valuable ideas for change will also come from the rest of the workforce. Especially those working at the forefront of a particular process; for instance, the workers who check machine-constructed items for defects.

3. Openness to employee ideas

Employee ideas, regardless of role or level, are welcomed, considered and implemented.
The benefits of this openness are,

Wider understanding of the processes and problems involved in the business by seeking the thoughts of workers at the forefront of each process
Increased employee engagement as this openness promotes motivation and trust between the workforce and the employer

4. Removal of barriers

With a bottom-up process for change, employees can play an active role in improving the business and the bottom-line. Moreover, the open communication between workers and their employer may pinpoint those who are ripe for promotion or who would be better suited to roles that match their skills sets.

5. Reward and recognition

In a culture of continuous improvement, successes are recognized and celebrated. Employees who have been involved in the process of change, including those whose ideas may have led to the start of that process, are rewarded. This may be a benefit to them in the workplace, such as a safer work environment, a reward of recognition (for example, a mention in the monthly newsletter) or a more obvious reward such as a monetary bonus.

6. Feedback

As an ongoing process, a culture of improvement relies on feedback.

This could come from regular measurement of success or a continuing openness to ideas
from employees. Involving the entire workforce in the process of change makes it possible to have a wider viewpoint from which to draw feedback.

In closing

Working in a culture of improvement may seem a daunting prospect at first, but that’s where champions are made!

Change is often seen as time-consuming, difficult to process and, on occasion, even frightening. However, when you shift the focus from ‘change’ to ‘improvement’, it becomes something altogether more positive.

The benefits of working for a business that is open to your ideas, willing to involve you in how the business develops and is continually seeking to be the best it can be, far outweigh the fear of change.

An employer who instigates continuous improvement is better equipped to build a sustainable future with their workforce in mind who strive to be champions in their own right.