Among this rethinking process is the effort to satisfy employees.  Naturally, employee satisfaction cannot be ensured unless it is first measured and understood.  By understanding employee satisfaction, your business has a much better chance for delivering positive customer experiences, developing and producing innovative products and services, and, of course, achieving a better bottom line.

As many businesses are currently using Six Sigma strategies to measure and function at higher productivity and quality levels, they have discovered that the Six Sigma way of thinking can also be applied to measuring the employee satisfaction within their own walls. It only falls in line with the Six Sigma strategy that satisfied employees will lead to a process of better productivity and quality throughout the organization.

Six Sigma is unique in its ability affect employee satisfaction because of its elements of understanding and measurement of different levels of any given factor in a company.  To improve the employee satisfaction level in a company, it can be used to provide detailed analysis of strengths and weaknesses.

With these areas identified, improvement initiatives can then be put into place.  Within the Six Sigma mindset, they are typically wide ranging and cross-functional restructuring, counseling, and even the initiation of self-development and learning programs.  These aren’t just limited to job-specific functions, but extend to cultural initiatives, and work-private life balance management efforts. 

For each effort, structured feedback and review programs are applied, to monitor and measure the success of every employee satisfaction effort.

Companies that have used Six Sigma strategies to increase their employee mindset have almost universally seen increases in the productive interaction among team members.  Furthermore, employees felt more welcome to provide day-to-day problem solving ideas.  Employees were also better utilized within the workplace, by allowing them to apply their expertise to different projects, and being included in other projects where new levels of expertise and capability enhancements may be achieved.

Six Sigma allows for a full work-culture improvement when applied to employee satisfaction instead of the standard product quality function.  Plans are already in the works to create training programs that allow black belts and other “belts” to extend their Six Sigma expertise to the task of employee satisfaction, and thus better overall quality that will impact the organization’s other Six Sigma strategies…and, of course, the bottom line.