What Is Lean HR? Examples, Benefits, and How To Start
The more efficient and streamlined your HR function is, the smoother the business will run. ‘Going lean’ can take the efficiency of HR processes and service delivery to the next level and beyond the competition’s.
Lean HR is similar to tuning a high-performance engine—it involves removing unnecessary friction, improving efficiency, and ensuring everything runs smoothly. It can help organizations streamline various HR processes, leading to increased productivity and effectiveness.
What is lean HR, what are its benefits, and how can you implement it in your organization? Let’s take a look.
Contents
What is lean methodology?
What is lean HR?
Lean HR practices in action
What are the benefits of lean HR?
Implementing lean HR at your organization
Lean HR tools
What is lean methodology?
Lean methodology is an agile management approach that aims to create more valuable outcomes by refining workflows. It eliminates wasteful or redundant actions by gauging quality at each step so that every function of the organization operates as efficiently as possible.
In organizations that use the lean methodology to manage their operations, stakeholders are well-connected in the decision-making process, creating a culture of continuous improvement that streamlines processes and leverages talent.
Using lean principles to manage the business enables companies to make modifications quickly and smoothly. Minor adjustments are more feasible to achieve and more tolerable for employees than implementing sweeping changes. Organizations that operate in a lean fashion can hence foster significant improvements, making them more innovative and effective.
The lean theory started with “lean production.” Japanese car manufacturer Toyota developed this to innovate its auto manufacturing process. The objective is to keep inventory levels at only what is needed for a short time and then reorder as necessary. Lean production also values employees as the central resource for improving workflows. Management openly communicates business information with workers and encourages them to voice suggestions for enhancing effectiveness.
Elements of the lean methodology
The lean philosophy has three core pillars and five key principles. Its pillars are continuous improvement, eliminating waste, and respect for people. The premise of the lean methodology is to target unprofitable activities (waste) for elimination. Waste is any procedure that doesn’t contribute to the value of the end product or service.
Lean management requires viewing each stage of a business process to distinguish between value and waste by applying the five lean principles:
- Define value: Determining what is valuable from the customer’s perspective to focus efforts where they matter most.
- Map value stream: Identifying all activities contributing to customer value and eliminating those that don’t add to it.
- Create flow: Ensuring workflows remain smooth by removing inefficiencies and preventing delays.
- Establish pull: Maintaining just enough resources to keep processes efficient without unnecessary excess.
- Pursuit perfection: Embedding continuous improvement into the organization’s culture, making it a fundamental mindset.
Undoubtedly, removing any steps that offer no value is the simplest way to redesign processes and improve the workflow and outcome.
What is lean HR?
Lean HR applies lean principles—a methodology focused on efficiency and continuous improvement—to Human Resources. It’s about streamlining HR processes, reducing waste, and ensuring that HR services add real value to employees and the organization.
The ultimate goal of lean HR is to continuously eliminate redundancy and waste in HR processes and improve service delivery. To achieve this, HR departments need to partner with leadership to promote a lean mindset for the entire organization. At the same time, they must operate their own services as efficiently as possible, striving for continuous process improvement.
Even though HR doesn’t produce a physical product, its services—like hiring, onboarding, payroll, and employee support—can be optimized to better serve employees and the business. So the question is, how can we apply the lean methodology in HR to ensure long-term success?
Lean HR management assesses the value of its service environment by asking questions, such as:
- Is there a process in place for the tasks of each service?
- Is the process being followed?
- Are there ways to alter it or steps that could be eliminated to make it more efficient?
For example, lean concepts can be applied to the following HR functions:
- Recruitment and hiring: Are we currently following the most direct route to source candidates and secure new employees?
- Onboarding: Can we streamline paperwork and orientation activities to get new hires operational and ready for action sooner?
- Compensation and benefits: Are employees well-informed and aware of their benefits and how to qualify for pay raises and bonuses? Could more effective communication help in clarifying the topic of rewards?
- Performance management: Are managers and employees currently spending excessive time setting goals, measuring progress, and assessing performance? Can we condense this process?
Lean HR practices in action
Suppose you’re applying the principles of lean in HR. What do so-called non-value-adding elements look like then?
Here are eight examples of waste that HR professionals can identify and remove following the lean methodology:
Inventory
In an HR context, inventory can mean storing redundant or obsolete data. Consider, for instance, candidate and former employee (payroll) data. Look for ways to effectively purge expired information and reduce the need to keep hard copies of employee/candidate files, etc. Also, find a way to automatically purge terminated employee files once the legally required period for keeping those records has passed.
Waiting
Where do people still have to wait for specific information or actions from others in the organization to complete their part of the process, leading to stalled work?
Review required signatures and approvals to standardize only those necessary. Also, consider cross-training employees so they can cover for each other and maintain workflows.
Another remedy is to increase the level of autonomy in the workplace. At Ritz-Carlton, for example, employees can spend up to $2,000 per guest to resolve client issues autonomously without involving (and waiting for) a manager.
Recruitment is another area where delays often occur, and it takes time to move applicants from one stage of the selection process to the next. For example, instead of trying to manually coordinate availability for interviews, companies can use automated scheduling tools, allowing candidates to self-book interviews in available time slots. This reduces unnecessary back-and-forth communication and helps move candidates through the hiring process more efficiently.
Excess processing
As an HR department, are there still tasks or data that you are handling that don’t add value for the organization or its employees? Examples include redundant (employee) data or unnecessary waiting for others, which we have mentioned above. If so, identify them and then look for ways to avoid needless approval layers, reports, and data re-entry.
Motion
Physical movement is another element to optimize in a lean HR approach. It refers to the needless moving of people, goods, or objects. Placing ergonomic equipment, an easily referenced file and supply system, and keeping team members in close (virtual) proximity can go a long way in saving people time between tasks.
Transportation
What HR processes involve traveling through too many connections? Where are you, for example, still providing hard copies or attaching many documents to your emails?
As an HR team and as an organization, you can avoid this type of waste by streamlining report routing, omitting or reducing the distribution of hard copies, or reducing email attachments.
Talent
In this context, talent refers to the underuse of employees’ abilities. It’s hard to say something useful about identifying and optimizing this in just one short example, so we’ll stick to the absolute basics.
Provide people with the tools, training, and resources they need to do their jobs well. Give them the autonomy they need to implement process improvements within the scope of their responsibilities, and ensure they know you’re always open to their input and feedback about improving things further.
Defects
What errors do you encounter in your various HR processes? Are there any structurally negative outcomes that need revamping? Consider, for example, a lack of standardized work procedures that leads to data entry errors or a substandard hiring method that results in unnecessary high turnover and needs reworking.
Overproduction
Are there HR workflows that generate information that is unnecessary or never used? Are there processes that provide more of something than needed or before it’s required? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, you’re dealing with overproduction.
To pinpoint (and eliminate) this type of waste, you can:
- Assess the use and value of all the information and reports the HR department produces and distributes
- Establish standard operating procedures for each process.
Empower your HR team to optimize processes
Efficient HR processes drive business success. Is your HR team maximizing efficiency and boosting HR effectiveness?
With AIHR for Teams, your team will gain the skills to create streamlined workflows, work smarter, and implement HR solutions that drive real business impact.
What are the benefits of lean HR?
Applying the lean methodology to create lean HR processes creates significant advantages for organizations. It enables HR teams to identify bottlenecks and then find ways to remove or reduce them. Other benefits include:
- A better employee experience: When processes are continuously refined and optimized, work should become easier and more enjoyable for employees. In an organizational culture that fosters continuous improvement (one of the pillars of lean), leadership encourages open dialogue. It allows employees to suggest changes, turning the frustration of a problem into an opportunity to craft a solution.
- More efficient processes: True to the philosophy it is built upon, lean HR seeks to constantly eliminate waste, improve practices, and respect the organization’s people in the process. As a result, processes should become more efficient. For example, based on not-so-great feedback from recent onboardees, a thorough analysis of your current onboarding process finds that new hires must perform 54 tasks during their onboarding. After you apply the five lean principles mentioned above, your onboarding process now counts no more than 32 tasks, making it significantly more efficient and appealing to new hires.
- Cost reduction: Cutting waste inherently saves money. Think of the earlier example about people having to wait for their colleagues to move forward. Time quite literally is money in a business environment, so cutting out this ‘waiting time’ as much as possible will save the organization a considerable amount of money.
- Fostering a learning culture: The most famous (or most-used) example of a company ‘going lean’ and what that can look like comes from the already mentioned Toyota. At Toyota, employees can literally stop the production line if they notice a defect. This creates:
- An environment where people focus their thinking on seeking change for the better
- An environment where people aren’t afraid to speak up, share their views, and give feedback, and;
- An environment of being open to progress and taking pride in adding value with one’s work.
- Increased agility: Efficient, streamlined HR processes create a more responsive HR function that can better adapt to changing business needs.
- Quality enhancement: A mindset of ‘where do we still see room for improvement’ helps optimize workflows and reduce errors. This creates an enhanced employee experience, which, in turn, will lead to better-quality products or services for the organization’s customers.
Implementing lean HR at your organization
We’ve gone through the theory and philosophy of lean methodology, but what does it take to implement lean HR in your organization? Consider the following steps to get started:
1. Identify key HR processes
Start by targeting the HR processes where applying lean is quantifiable and makes the most sense. Typically, these include the recruitment and selection process, learning and development, onboarding, and performance management. 
2. Build knowledge of lean principles within your HR team
Before you can start to apply lean principles in your HR function, the HR team needs to understand what they are and have a basic understanding of how to use them in practice.
There are various ways to go about this, depending, among other things, on your available budget. Options include:
- Inviting a peer from a company that already uses lean HR to give your HR team a session about what it is and how they are using it
- Taking a course, for example, Lean Management within AIHR’s HR Manager Certificate Program
- Hiring a lean HR consultant for a session (or perhaps several sessions) about lean HR, how it works, and how to get started.
3. Apply a problem-solving model
Follow a structured plan to execute the lean principles we mentioned earlier. The following two are commonly used:
The Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycle
This method examines the current process, reflects on it further, makes revisions, and repeats the cycle.
Follow a structured plan to execute lean principles. Here are two that are commonly used:
Plan
- Detect the problem and evaluate what needs to change
- Outline goals, objectives, and strategies for making change happen
- Define which results will mean success
- Assemble a team of key players
- Formulate an action plan.
New hire feedback reveals that onboarding feels overwhelming due to too many tasks. To improve satisfaction from 30% to at least 50% next quarter, you set a goal to reduce onboarding tasks by 20% by introducing a preboarding phase. Success will be measured through a short survey. You bring in hiring managers, recruiters, and recent hires to identify key issues and develop a plan that shifts some tasks to preboarding, making onboarding smoother and more manageable.
Do
- Start the action plan and collect data
- Document observations and problems
- Devise resources and the right tools needed for changes.
As soon as the preboarding program and the improved, trimmed-down version of the onboarding program are ready, new hires go through this new experience.
Early data from your new hire satisfaction survey show that onboarding satisfaction is up, confirming that reducing the number of tasks was a step in the right direction.
Study
- Reflect on the data collected, looking for trends
- Evaluate whether the plan is working
- Recognize any unintended side effects
- Identify bottlenecks and find ways to remove them.
At the end of the following quarter, onboarding satisfaction increased from 30% to 40%. New hires are happy with their preboarding, too; 87% say it prepares them better for their first day and makes the transition less abrupt.
Act
- Conclude whether the plan worked
- If the plan is successful, standardize the new process and consider expanding it to other capacities
- If the plan needs altering, return to the first stage and make adjustments or reformulate
- Revisit the process at a later time to make further improvements.
After two full quarters of data about your new preboarding and onboarding program, onboarding satisfaction is at 46%. Things seem to go according to plan. To keep a finger on the pulse, you continue to ask new hires about their experience and suggestions for improvements.
Another strategy often used is the Define Measure Analyze Improve Control (DMAIC) model. Officially, it is part of the Six Sigma initiative, but it is also often used in the lean approach.
Here, the process is as follows:
Define
- Define the problem that needs to be solved, the customers, and their expectations
- Define the stop, start, and scope of the process
- Create a map of the process flow with all inputs and outputs.
Measure
- Seek the metrics for measuring progress
- Collect relevant data to show how the process is working and reveal defects.
Analyze
- Detect disparities between current performance and the goal
- Identify possible problems and opportunities for improvement
- Look for root causes of problems.
Improve
- Explore ways to reconfigure the process to solve the problem and find prevention models
- Test and implement a plan for the solution.
Control
- Document the solution
- Establish a system to monitor the updated process and keep it on course.
4. Measure the success of lean HR
As we’ve seen in both problem-solving models discussed above, applying lean principles involves determining the metrics for measuring progress and tracking this data.
After all, how else are you going to assess whether your efforts are successful and whether you have actually eliminated waste and optimized HR processes?
5. Consider hiring a lean HR consultant
Implementing lean initiatives within your HR department can be complicated, especially if this is completely new in your organization. This is why you may benefit from hiring a consultant who can oversee the effort or help you formulate the plan, at least the first time.
A consultant can help guide the lean transformation within your organization’s HR function and aid your HR team in developing the behaviors and competencies necessary to navigate the lean environment.
Lean HR tools
Lean methodology uses certain tools to facilitate the process on a daily basis. Examples include:
- Kanban boards: A Kanban board is a tool that enables teams to visualize and manage the various tasks related to a project. Tasks are represented by cards (or post-its) placed in columns, and as the project evolves, they move through different stages: To Do, In Progress, and Done.
- Daily standups: A daily standup is a short meeting, ideally no more than fifteen minutes. The idea is that team members exchange relevant information and updates on the projects they’re working on. If any issues prevent them from moving forward, the standup is the time to share this and ask for support. Quick team check-ins help HR stay aligned on priorities, resolve roadblocks, and improve responsiveness.
- Value Stream Mapping (VSM): This process is about the structured identification of inefficiencies in processes like recruitment, payroll, and performance management to eliminate wasted time and effort. In lean HR, employees are considered the “customers” of HR services. By mapping out each step of a process from their perspective, HR teams can identify which activities add real value—such as clear communication and timely responses—and which create unnecessary delays or redundancies. Steps that don’t contribute to a smoother, more effective experience (like excessive approvals or manual data entry) can then be streamlined or removed to improve efficiency.
- Standard work documentation. Streamlining HR processes requires standardizing work documentation using templates, checklists, and HR SOPs. An HR Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), for example, provides the HR team with clear, step-by-step instructions regarding the processes they need to follow. This ensures the entire team performs HR tasks consistently, legally compliantly, and in line with the company’s goals.
- 5S Methodology: The 5S methodology is known for its ability to create a more productive and organized workspace. Originally developed by Toyota in the 1950s to improve agility in manufacturing, 5S principles apply just as effectively to HR, helping streamline processes, reduce clutter, and improve overall productivity. The five S’s stand for and what they can translate to in HR:
- Sort: Eliminate outdated paperwork, redundant policies, and unnecessary HR tasks to focus only on what adds value.
- Straighten: Organize employee records, digital files, and workflows to ensure easy access and smooth operations.
- Shine: Maintain a clean and structured digital and physical workspace, improving efficiency and clarity.
- Standardize: Create clear SOPs for processes like hiring, payroll, and onboarding to ensure consistency and reduce errors.
- Sustain: Regularly review and update HR systems, policies, and work habits to maintain long-term efficiency and improvement.
The impact of a lean HR approach
Given the impact of your organization’s HR processes on the functioning of the rest of the company, simplifying and making them more effective should be your top priority. Adopting a lean HR approach can be an excellent step in the right direction.
Even if senior management has not yet embraced lean principles, HR can lead the way as an example for the entire organization.
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