Managing Lean Capabilities through Flexible Workforce Development: A Process and Framework

Many firms today are employing temporary contractual workers in order to help them to stay lean and flexible. The benefit of this approach is that the process of layoff is much easier. Thus, an emerging issue arises here, on how can firms manage and train temporary workers effectively? The core of lean adoption is through people, to have workers buy into the ideas and be part of the overall initiative. There is very little guidance available on how to deal with contractual workers who have less motivation and commitment to the firm given that they are only employed on a temporary basis. This article proposes a framework and process to assist firms in managing and training temporary workers to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the implementation of lean improvement initiatives.