Six Sigma in Staffing and Employee Relations

02/08/2008:

I've always heard about Six Sigma and how important it is for a large business. As a Human Resources Manager, what benefits can I expect in learning the Greenbelt Certification? I deal with Staffing and Employee Relations and I guess I cannot see the "bigger picture" from this vantage point in pursuing this. I would appreciate your embellishing some on this philosophy.
Renee A.

The Six Sigma methodology seeks to improve the costs, scheduling and quality of processes that impact any of the three major stakeholder groups for an organization: customers, employees and shareholders. Green Belts typically retain their operational role in an organization, and lend their process expertise to Six Sigma project teams.
As such, there is unfortunately only minimal contribution you could make as a Green Belt unless there are others in the organization pursuing Six Sigma projects for the benefit of the organization. Six Sigma projects (by definition) are championed by senior management to achieve specific objectives in alignment with organizational business strategy. In that regard, Six Sigma training is most useful when an organization is pursuing a proper Six Sigma Deployment under the authority of senior management. When that is the case, any process critical to the bottom line, including employee retention, hiring and training, could benefit from the process improvement methods of a Six Sigma project.
I often find that middle managers are the most critical to the successful deployment of a Six Sigma program, given their local authority over budgets and personnel. Managers trained as Green Belts are keenly aware of the benefits to their part of the organization, and will enthusiastically support projects in their functional areas for the benefits of each of the major stakeholder groups.

Learn more about the Lean Six Sigma principles and tools for process excellence in Six Sigma Demystified (2011, McGraw-Hill) by Paul Keller, in his online Lean Six Sigma DMAIC short course ($249), or his online Green Belt certification course ($499).