Identifying Waste in the People Development System

Some types of waste are easier to spot than others. In many industries, lean concepts aim to identify, from the customer’s point of view, what adds value and what does not. Whether in a product or service, those non-value-adding wastes are to be ruthlessly hunted down and banished. The wastes in an organization’s internal workforce development processes can be tangible and intangible.

Tangible Losses

Most organizations invest money, time, and effort in their people development system. Naturally, waste can cause losses to all three resources. The negative costs of a poorly managed PDS can occur at multiple levels over both the short term and the long term.

Within the PDS examples of tangible wastes can include:

• Paying people to attend ineffective training; this wastes the wages, time, and effort of participants and trainers. 
• Wasted personnel hours in unproductive recruiting.
• Onboarding that does not effectively engage new hires, resulting in their premature departure.  
• If the new hire leaves before an ROI can be realized, other cost of a hire factors (pre-employment testing, advertising, placement agencies, etc.) are wasted. 
• Mismatching people and jobs. Instead of optimizing the talent, all the effort to train them, manage their performance, and retain them in jobs that are below their potential results in a lower ROI than might have been realized if they were properly matched and thriving.
• And, of course, there are the quality issues caused by poor training.

Some of these costs are often captured in a cost-of-hire calculation. It is surprising though, how many organizations do not fully understand all of the costs that go into developing people.

To prevent the PDS wasting time, money, and effort requires stakeholders to look more deeply at the system. Is data being collected that can help evaluate the effectiveness of training and recruiting? Are development pathways in place that guide the growth of each team member? Are they actively involved in constructing and managing these development plans?

Intangible Losses 

Then there are the wastes that are more difficult to see. These include lost opportunities, lost potential, and missed relationships. These might look like:

• Missed business opportunities (increased productivity, launching new products, continuous improvement efforts).
• Opportunity for teams to get a well-trained member when they need them.
• The potential to put the right person in the right position.  
• For recruiters to be connecting to better sources.
• Employees are not allowed to pursue a personalized development pathway.
• The opportunity to gather more and better data that could help improve the PDS.
• Not using tools that connect people (development pathways, coaching, etc.)
• Leaders not fully utilizing coaching and training techniques.

Understanding the intangible losses that can occur in the PDS requires some reflection by all stakeholders. Does the system reliably identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for each position? Do we really understand the strengths and weaknesses of our team members, and have we properly aligned their development plans for their success? Does the PDS promote and help sustain meaningful relationships for mentoring and coaching? What opportunities are being missed, and what potential is being overlooked?

Lean thinking, rooted in manufacturing, has enshrined eight types of waste to be eliminated. Some of these traditional wastes, but not all, can be identified in the systems used to develop people. However, recognizing that waste is present in the PDS, though it might be hidden or difficult to quantify, can help leaders to focus continuous improvement efforts on this very important system.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay