Open to Change

For some people, change is difficult. For Mike Eke, it is all part of the job.

Eke is Tarrant County College’s executive director of Process Improvement and Projects. His team is tasked with identifying and implementing changes that will reduce waste as well as save the College time and money.

Even though TCC is marking 50 years of serving Tarrant County, Eke’s department is relatively new. Chancellor Erma Johnson Hadley created it three years ago to help faculty and staff work more effectively and efficiently.

“At TCC, we are always looking for opportunities to improve what we do and how we do it on behalf of our students. And we can’t talk about continuous improvement without talking about how to become more efficient and cost effective,” said Hadley.

To help long-tenured employees more readily accept new methods, Eke is all about the evidence.

“The best approach is to demonstrate the benefits of change by using data and visuals—like a process map that outlines the many steps over several months it may take to do something,” explained Eke. “Then we show how that job could be completed much more quickly.”

Case in point: TCC’s hiring process, which guides the employment of 1,200 full-time and part-time workers each year across the District.

“Engaging in Process Improvement gave us an opportunity to not only listen to feedback from our departments and applicants, but to do something about it,” said Ebony Alexander, director of Employee Recruitment. “We identified redundancies and other unnecessary elements of hiring approvals and review – then we removed them.”

Process Improvement eliminated eight approval steps in the hiring process. That reduced the time it takes to hire new employees by 52 percent and reduced the variation in the time to hire by 73 percent. That means the College can fill positions more quickly and provide a more standardized hiring experience.

In addition to hiring improvements, Eke’s team has made changes such as eliminating administrative approval for routine transactions, reducing the number of necessary reports and cutting the time it takes for the TCC Graphics Department to fulfill an order.

There are three main ways these kinds of projects are instigated: ideas from the Process Improvement and Projects staff, administrative requests and employee suggestions.

“Many of the TCC employees who recommend an area for improvement have taken our ‘Lean Fundamentals’ class that teaches the basics of what we do,” said Eke. “They recognize something in their area that could be streamlined, reorganized or eliminated. We can help them make changes on their own, or, if it’s a big enough project, our team takes it on.”

More than 2,100 people have taken the four-hour Lean Fundamentals training since the College introduced it in fall 2013.

“Because we have committed to process improvement in everything we do, we have made it a priority to get all of our folks trained in the fundamentals of Lean. In the two years since we began offering this training, approximately 95 percent of TCC's full-time employees have completed the training. I’m very pleased to say that those who have worked with our Process Improvement team and used the Lean methodology have achieved wonderful results,” said Hadley.

“The class helps people realize that just because a process has existed for a long time, it’s not necessarily the best approach,” Eke remarked. “We are creating a more aware, more engaged workforce.”

That ultimately benefits those TCC serves.

“Our goal is to do away with work that doesn’t bring value so our employees can spend more time on what makes a difference,” said Eke. “We end up giving people more time in their day to positively impact students and the community.”