Six Sigma to Human Sigma

Six Sigma to Human Sigma

Six Sigma the most frequently used business management strategy practiced by most of the leading manufacturing companies which has transformed their operations and strives for near perfection.  The importance of Six Sigma is crucial for manufacturing sector so is the Human Sigma for the service economy.

In the service sector the greatest challenge every company face is managing people. Managing people not only mean managing employees, it deals with managing customers, vendors, investors, stockholders and so on.  Human Sigma mainly deals with the relationship between employees and customers. According to Gallup organization, Human Sigma is a holistic approach to measure and manage the quality of relationship between the employee and customer.

Six Sigma was developed in a manufacturing context where the role of the people is relatively small but Human Sigma is developed where the role of people is large.  It aims to increase the productivity through people and reduce the lack of effectiveness. Six Sigma is mostly data driven, rational and analytical process but Human Sigma is based on neuroscience and behavioral economics.

Why companies need Human Sigma?

Companies that follow the principle of Human Sigma has surpassed the competitors by 26 % in gross margin and experienced a substantial growth of 85 % in sales.  Measuring or dealing with people is a difficult task because when you buy a machine you roughly know the price of the machine, how much it produces, required maintenance cost, cost of depreciation per year and the output produced today would be same as the output produced next day. But this is not the same with people. People are unpredictable, you do not know their value would appreciate or depreciate after each year; their output level can fluctuate each day depending upon various reasons that are beyond our control. Human Sigma has become a proven method for evaluating the health of the employee customer encounter with a disciplined process to improve it. 

Human Sigma applies even to employees who do not face customer directly. In sales and service organization where employee-customer is more, it should be managed with great care because it is the best opportunity for financial improvement. Every interaction between the employee and customer either increases or decreases the emotional connection.  Emotional satisfaction of the employee and customer matters the most and they are directly linked to the bottom line. So, companies should use the right metrics to build an emotional bonding with employees, who will wish to build a good relationship with customers with leads to higher revenues.

Author   :  Subburam N.N

College  :  Amrita School of Business, Bangalore
Email id : subburamnn@gmail.com