Employee Selection Kaizen

When I ran a Human Resources department I was alarmed by the high turnover rate of new employees during the first year of employment. This was not only costly but caused more work in the department. We decided to from a team to look at the current process of employee selection. We had good data on longevity and first year turnover but limited data via exit interviews and other sources. The positions were primarily factory production positions.

The first thing that the Kaizen team did was do an As Is mapping of the current employee selection process. I also decided to extend the ending fence post of the Kaizen and include the first six months of training that the new employees received.  We had very good data on the selection process and we actually went to a team conference room and placed the process on a white board to include all the forms use. The delays in the process were actually minimal. We had scarce data on the voice of the customer so we also spent time asking employees and supervisors what they wanted in a new employee. We also looked at best practices and where we could improve.

When we did the To Be state we made sure that we included turnover as a metric. The Kaizen team came up with a new expanded application, behavior based interviews, testing and reference checking.  The team also instituted some predictability of success testing along with drug testing.  The first time we used the new selection process we had some issues but soon improved upon them.

The results were more than we expected. We reduced turnover by 80% and included current employees in the selection process. We found that they were great sources of feedback on the potential new employees and conducted themselves very professionally.