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K-State Today

January 13, 2015

K-State Kaizen event: 'A change for the better' in university hiring processes

Submitted by K-State Human Capital Services

Efficient and effective recruitment and hiring processes are critical to the K-State 2025 plan. With more than 80 steps, the university's current hiring process is lengthy and confusing. This often results in frustrated departments and lost candidates.

To make a positive change, K-State's Division of Human Capital Services has teamed up with 31 university faculty and staff members by coordinating a Kaizen event to examine and rebuild the hiring process. The Kaizen kickoff event is today and the five-day Kaizen event is scheduled to take place Feb. 9-13. Participants have agreed to dedicate 40 hours to serve on this team to create a collective and sustainable change at K-State. 

The term "Kaizen" is Japanese and means change for the better. Miami University and companies such as Toyota have used this process to improve effectiveness. K-State is excited to bring this same transformation concept to the current hiring process. These changes will enable university staff to recruit and retain highly qualified, diverse and talented people to the K-State family.

The K-State Kaizen team will analyze every part of the hiring process including faculty, unclassified and university support staff. The team will identify wastes, brainstorm and redesign the process to have fewer steps, less paperwork and no redundancies.

The end result of the K-State Kaizen event will be a new streamlined hiring process ready to present to groups across the campuses and to be piloted in selected departments.

During the event, follow the @KStateVPHC Twitter account and the hashtag #KStateKaizen to get a behind-the-scenes look of the process. Stay tuned for more updates closer to the date of the event.