In today’s ever-growing technology world, it seems that customers and employees want simple interactions such as emoticons, GIF’s, simple videos.  I think engaging employees in process improvement such as Change Management, Lean Six Sigma, and Agile is evolving into something we have never seen before as well.  In the past years, I have seen workforce collaboration evolving and the use of different technological tools and methods to do their jobs change as well.

For example, in the past, we always conducted process improvement events (Kaizen’s/Blitzes) to improve the process in person.  A methodology created by Toyota Production Systems now has to adapt to modern technologies versus the traditional in the room sessions.  For example, in the last Kaizen event I facilitated, I posted communications on an intranet site for my client, used instant messaging to coordinate and plan for the session, and used video conferencing for stakeholders who were not able to attend in person.  In addition, we used mobile applications to do time studies to capture baselines for  a given transaction.  A key component to the next generation of employee engagement in process improvement is being flexible and forward thinking to the different collaboration methods and tools.  In the past, mapping sessions were done either with sticky notes or on a board where now tools allow us to simulate current state process through modeling software with real-time data flushing out bottlenecks immediately. 

Understanding an organizations culture and employee preferences to these modern tools is important in the engagement needed for improvement projects to succeed.  The future will bring more tools to make collaboration and engagement easier and increase employee productivity.  Our job as consultants is to be flexible and to learn these tools so that we can provide a more employee focused engagement package that includes mobile apps, file shares, instant messaging, cloud storage, and social media.  Constantly obtaining feedback from employees will assist us in understanding the preferences of the next generation.  Taking this feedback and adjusting these legacy methodologies that have been proven to work will drive the next generation of employee engagement.