Includes index.

Introduction -- 1. Wasting employee talent -- 2. Attempts to create an improvement culture often fail -- 3. Keeping HR in the background is a business problem -- 4. A new vision for HR -- 5. Providing better service for your organization by first improving HR processes -- 6. Success through powerful people strategies -- 7. Changing employee attitudes and daily behaviors -- 8. Lessons on culture implementations for Lean HR -- 9. Policies, communications, and celebrations need to reflect your organization’s values -- 10. Can attitudes be measured? -- 11. Optimize each job -- 12. Job analysis for the future -- 13. Linking the four core HR processes to the overall business strategy -- 14. A five-year plan for change -- 15. The benefits of motivating the human spirit.

This book gives managers and executives the means to maximize employee potential by first showing them how to increase the improvement power of their HR departments. Cheryl M. Jekiel, defines the people-related approaches and practices needed to alter any cultural dynamic that keeps employees from leveraging their peak abilities. She looks at why so many companies allow this sort of waste to exist, how traditional HR departments have not been especially effective in combating waste, and why today’s HR department should be seen differently, as a partner delivering exceptional customer service to employees. Ultimately, lasting change requires evolution in an organizational cultural and to achieve such change requires definitive changes in behavior. To ensure that changes are properly paced and effectively put into operation, the book puts forth a proven five-year plan that includes the building of improvement-linked competencies into each job. A final section is designed especially for CEOs who must address their own views of HR before addressing improvement. They must recognize that Lean HR strategies and methods can be used to create a highly motivating place to work, and that anything less would be a waste of talent. To begin, an organization must realize the value of its HR staff and put it to use implementing improvement that is organic, fundamental, and self perpetuating.