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That’s where process improvements come in, and more specifically, the idea of continuous improvement.
Think of your business as a garden. If things are left untended for too long, small issues take root and grow into big problems. But with regular pruning and care, the whole project thrives.
That’s the idea behind continuous improvement, in empowering your teams to make small, meaningful changes as they spot opportunities to keep things growing in the right direction.
In this guide, we’ll explore what continuous improvement looks like in practice, its connection to effective change management and how you can build a culture where improvements happen from the ground up.
One of the greatest strengths of the continuous improvement model is its ability to be adapted to suit the needs of different types of business operations. However, whether applied to lean manufacturing or software development, you'll find that most businesses using this approach share a few common traits.
Employee ideas are the most important component of an effective continuous improvement program. The people who perform tasks daily are best-positioned to spot inefficiencies and identify improvement opportunities, so it's crucial to build from their ideas when streamlining processes and eliminating waste.
By empowering employees to share ideas through a platform like Sideways 6, organisations can foster a continuous improvement mindset across the workforce. The more comfortable and confident people are discussing better ways to perform tasks, the more natural the idea of continuous improvement becomes.
Big problems usually start small. Continuous improvement initiatives teach the value in addressing small inefficiencies as and when they're noticed, making adopting changes far less distracting and disruptive.
In a culture of continuous improvement, employees are encouraged to share time and cost saving ideas whenever they cross their minds, providing leaders a great pool of impactful ideas to build from. When problem solving is baked into day-to-day operations, issues can be fixed before they become concerns.
When you encourage a culture of continuous improvement, it becomes much easier to spot seemingly small inefficiencies that actually contribute to sizable, often avoidable costs.
Whether it’s reducing rework, shortening process times or identifying recurring bottlenecks, continuous improvement addresses hidden costs that can be otherwise easy-to-miss. Small changes add up fast; when they’re controlled by those closest to the work, they tend to stick.
The continuous improvement process is mostly dependent on clear communication at all times. From the collection of ideas to the implementation of improvement efforts, people across all aspects of the business must be encouraged to share, discuss and analyse new ideas continuously.
Through idea management integrated into enterprise social networks, employees, leaders and decision-makers can propose changes, build on ideas and continuously improve workflows. The easier it is for people to collaborate, the more engaged they'll be in planning and performing transformations.
Employees are often resistant to change, especially when it affects their work. A 2022 study found only 38% of employees support organisational changes, with 71% feeling overwhelmed by change initiatives.
Combatting resistance to change can be complicated, so much so that entire principles like the ADKAR model have been created just to tackle it, but it often comes down to one thing; if employees don't feel involved in and a sense of ownership over initiatives, it can be difficult to find the motivation to change.
The continuous improvement cycle is as much about making changes as it is investigating whether they work. Companies that excel at continuous improvement collect employee feedback and ask people how changes are being received to ensure plans are actually enhancing efficiency and improving workflows.
When leaders don't track progress, they struggle to build further improvements and production process upgrades, making it hard to build a culture of continuous improvement and achieve sustainable success.
Continuous improvement can be so effective because, as the name suggests, it's a continuous strategy.
Instead of surprising employees with big changes to workflows out of the blue, businesses that adopt a continuous improvement mindset turn efforts to optimise tasks into shared goals with mutual benefits.
Continuous improvement efforts help businesses identify bottlenecks, redundancies and inefficiencies that make completing tasks more difficult. By giving employees the power to suggest improvements and engage in problem solving initiatives, finding and addressing the root cause of issues becomes natural.
Making smaller changes more often keeps process efficiency on everyone's minds, helping teams use fewer resources in less time to identify improvement opportunities and streamline essential processes.
Continuous improvement and lean principles naturally lead to cost reductions. When employees identify an area of waste or inefficiency, continuous improvement processes give them actionable ways to report issues and suggest fixes, helping to reduce waste and improve quality across all aspects of work.
Every continuous improvement strategy is built around employee ideas, meaning success is dependent on employee involvement. For leaders to enjoy benefits like cost savings and increased efficiency, they need to build continuous improvement efforts around employee needs, helping to improve engagement.
This can form a positive and productive environment for everyone involved; employees feel heard and in control of their own workflows, while leaders and customers enjoy product and service improvements.
Rolling out a continuous improvement programme without any employee input is a fast track to disengagement. If from your employees’ perspective, you’re constantly chasing changes without ever listening to the people closest to the work, their motivation to view and engage in continuous improvements will, understandably, quickly fall.
The ultimate result of improving efficiency is the ability to exceed customer expectations. Organisations that adopt a continuous approach to process improvement can enhance everything from supply chain management to quality control, making for more cost-effective, higher-quality products and services.
Continuous improvement also means continuous learning, giving employees the support they need to think up and propose innovative ideas. The more empowered and encouraged employees are to think outside the box, the greater the chance they'll find unique ways to outperform others in their industry.
For this aspect of continuous improvement to take hold, businesses need to make it easy for employees to share ideas from anywhere. Sideways 6 sits inside the enterprise social network and messaging tools employees already use daily, providing them a simple and accessible way to share ideas as they happen.
Everyone's continuous improvement journey looks a little different, with businesses able to adopt and adapt various strategies and change management models to suit their own unique needs.
That said, most continuous improvement programs are built around a few key principles, perhaps best-illustrated by the common continuous improvement framework - the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle.
The planning phase is all about identifying areas for improvement and preparing for change.
Leaders will collect insights from multiple sources, including employee ideas, production data, downtime records and client feedback, searching for any processes that repeatedly introduce inefficiencies.
The planning phase also involves goal-setting. For a continuous improvement process, goals will usually be results-oriented and focused on measurable factors like time, cost and waste reduction.
During this phase, plans are put into action.
When tackling a specific process optimisation, it's best to start with a small-scale test in a controlled environment. This could involve asking one employee to test a new process while their colleagues continue as normal, comparing results afterwards to measure any impacts on operational efficiency.
For larger-scale continuous improvement programs, the Do phase might focus more on how ideas and suggestions are collected.
Using idea management solutions, meetings and data analysis, leaders will explore ways to identify improvement opportunities, then prioritise those that prove most effective.
The check phase is where actions are tested to see if they've worked as intended.
Here, all efforts to streamline processes will be analysed and measured against the goals set in the planning phase.
Leaders will consider hard data like production records, expenses, resource use and fulfilment times, as well as nuanced feedback from employees and other stakeholders involved in delivering new processes.
If desired results have been achieved, the change can be expanded, if not, the continuous improvement process cycles back to the planning phase.
In this final stage of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, successful changes are rolled out on a larger scale.
New processes will be standardised and documented to help teach employees across all departments how they work, with benefits like time and cost savings outlined to highlight the reasons for the change.
As continuous improvement initiatives are cyclical, the end of the Act stage marks the beginning of a new Plan stage, but for larger teams multiple continuous improvement initiatives may run simultaneously.
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While Plan-Do-Check-Act provides a great framework to build continuous improvement initiatives from, the cycle can be a little bare-bones for businesses with limited experience managing change.
With this in mind, below are some practical tips to help refine continuous improvement programs and boost employee engagement in change initiatives.
Plan-Do-Check-Act isn't the only framework that can help guide continuous improvement initiatives, in fact, there are many tools and techniques that can be used alongside PDCA to enhance change projects.
Root cause analysis can be performed during the Plan stage of PDCA. Teams most-experienced in a certain task or process can perform systematic tests to find the most-likely cause of inefficiencies, with results helping to inform changed processes by focusing on the root cause of identified problems.
Process mapping is an analytical technique that can be helpful during the Do and Act stages of PDCA. Change leaders can visually illustrate workflows and changed processes using diagrams and charts to best-communicate to the rest of the team how the change will be carried out, and why it's beneficial.
Value stream mapping is another continuous improvement tool teams can use to aid the Do and Act stages of PDCA. Like process mapping, changes are represented visually, but here the focus is broader and intended to cover relationships between the changed process and all related business operations.
SPC helps teams to monitor process improvements during the Check stage of PDCA. Under the SPC methodology, new processes are monitored, measured and displayed as graphs and charts, helping leaders gauge the success of changed processes in real terms like improved quality or cost reduction.
The Kanban method helps teams to visualise how they should move through continuous improvements during the Act stage of PDCA. Kanban boards are useful when managing multiple changes at the same time, representing tasks and projects as cards and columns that can be adjusted to visualise priorities.
Successful continuous improvement initiatives rely on clear communication between all team members. The people performing tasks everyday often have the best ideas to improve them, but may not always have the tools they need to refine great suggestions and bring plans to the attention of decision-makers.
Sideways 6 empowers employees to share impactful ideas as and when they happen, directly inside the enterprise social networks they already use daily. Build custom idea management solutions for popular platforms like Teams, Interact and Viva Engage and help your employees engage with change initiatives.
Drive successful and engaging continuous improvement programs powered by Sideways 6. Try our product with a free demo today.
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