Tacoma Public Schools Reduce New Employee Setup Time by 80%
Washington
Education
Staffing
80%
PROJECT SUMMARY
Today’s public schools are expected to provide their students with a high-quality education, despite having fewer and fewer resources at their disposal. Successfully meeting this challenge means every school district must strive to:
- Reduce waste
- Streamline processes
- Build a culture of problem solvers
Our simplified Lean Six Sigma training helps public school systems overcome these obstacles and improve educational opportunities for all.
Lean Six Sigma training enabled Tacoma Public Schools to achieve efficiencies in several key areas, including an 80% reduction in new employee security set-up time.
Located in Washington State, Tacoma Public Schools is committed to making a difference in the lives of families fortunate enough to live in the district. But like many public education systems in the United States, Tacoma’s strong ambition was being tempered by limited funds and resources.
“Our burning platform is to be as efficient as possible so Tacoma Public Schools can maximize our resources to support student learning,” said Assistant Superintendent of Student Support Service Jennifer Traufler.
To target more time and resources towards programs that add value for students and their parents, Tacoma Public Schools would first need to streamline its processes and reduce redundancies. The district’s hiring timeline and the new employee security set-up process were among the areas ripe for improvement.
Before partnering with us, Tacoma Public Schools spent just under ten days completing the security set-up process for every new hire. The timeline for bringing on new employees spanned 34 days from application to final hire eligibility.
“One project had the hypothesis that there wasn’t enough staff in place to address the need. They were gearing up to request more staffing,” Traufler remembered. “In the end, the team learned that there was enough staff but our processes just needed to be streamlined to meet the desired outcomes. This was a win for the district!”
To help keep her team on track, Traufler created a schedule for Lean Six Sigma training, the pre-work, and the project work. Regularly scheduled virtual sessions allowed our Master Black Belt to guide the team in applying their newly-learned training concepts and offer support with project challenges and progress. The group facilitation was tailored to the team, using their project work for discussion and team learning.
The Master Black Belt “talked us through content, answered questions, posed project questions, and truly helped us to apply tools to our process improvement projects,” Traufler said. “This made the learning applicable immediately and we all got to experience process improvement in our daily work.”
After completing their training, each of the team’s five projects successfully decreased steps in a process, improved quality to customer satisfaction, and saved resources. These achievements included an 80% reduction in new employee security set-up time and an 18% reduction in the district’s overall hiring timeline!
We’re extremely proud of the team at Tacoma Public Schools, but we’re not surprised by their accomplishments.
From our fun, practical, and accessible courses to our friendly, experienced lineup of Master Black Belts and extensive library of learning resources, it’s no wonder that over 80% of our learners produce measurable improvements that transform their organizations.
