Is HR Too ‘Soft’ for Six Sigma? It Works for Hiring, Experts Say

Just My E-pinion

By BLR Editor Susan E. Prince, J.D. and Shane D. Gerson, Six Sigma Master Blackbelt

Turnover can cost an employer time, resources, and money. HR managers know the list only too well: severance payments, unemployment insurance premiums, exit interviews, administrative functions, temps, hiring again, training, and an adverse impact on productivity.

If you’ve got too many new hires are leaving within the first year, you need to take a hard look at your hiring, onboarding, and training processes to see where improvements can be made. And that sounds like a job for Six Sigma.

What Is Six Sigma?

It’s a way to improve quality by systematically evaluating and improving processes. (If you must know, six sigma is a statistical term referring to six standard deviations from the mean, and often interpreted as meaning 3.4 defects per million opportunities.)

With Six Sigma, you take the defects out of your company’s processes, thereby reducing waste and rework. Here’s how it would help with the hiring process.

— Interview applicants effectively, and without any charges of discrimination. —Reduce the cycle time between offer and getting a new employee in the door.
—Ensure productivity by providing the employee with the right tools to do the job (e.g., ID number, passwords, network, email and a computer with the correct software installed).
—Improve interdepartmental communications, for example, between HR and the hiring manager, or between the different departments with which the new employee will have interaction.
— Update job descriptions to ensure that they accurately reflect job duties, so a good match is created between the individual hired and the job.
— Improve the new hire training process for efficiency and effectiveness.

How Does Six Sigma Work?

To apply the Six Sigma methodology to an existing process that you want to improve—like hiring—you define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC).

Define the issue. What is the problem here? Is your hiring process taking too long versus your expectation? Is it taking 8 weeks to get someone actually producing work, when you want it to take only 5?

Measure how big the problem is. Validate how much this is costing the company. Have you hired temps to replace the employee that just resigned? Is work going undone?

Analyze the root causes of the problem. For example, was the offer letter mailed out two weeks after HR decided on an offer, rather than the same day? Are your new employees calling the help desk an average of six times to get their computer up and running? Are new employees waiting 2 days for an employee ID?

Improve your processes. Brainstorm solutions with the owners of each part of the process—HR people, department managers, interviewers, help desk employees, MIS. Sit down and discuss how each part of this process can be improved. Come up with a plan, then implement it.

Control (monitor) the improvements you have implemented to make sure they are working and that each person in the process is sticking to the new, improved approach. Is it only taking 5 weeks to go from offer to working now, or are your employees slipping back into their old habits?

Is Six Sigma for You?

With its esoteric statistical concepts, and green belts, black belts, master black belts and champions, Six Sigma can get very complicated, but all that’s perhaps more than the average HR person would care to know. For many HR purposes, Six Sigma simply provides a basic, common sense methodology for taking a step back, examining the way we do things, looking for a better way, and improving our practices.

We all need to do this once in a while, and hiring is a great place to start. That’s our e-pinion. Use the Share your Comments button and let us hear yours.