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Human Resources as a Strategic

Partner: Sitting at the Table with
Six Sigma

Alan J. Fazzari, Kenneth Levitt

For nearly three decades, the quality management philosophy known as Six
Sigma has brought competitive advantage to organizations implementing it.
The typical approach, however, has been to have leaders from operations,
engineering, quality, and marketing manage this strategic initiative. Human
resource’s role has been to default to the administrative tasks of organizing
the required training, keeping records, and assisting in the selection of
candidates for the program. Yet for the past two decades human resources has
also been struggling to gain a seat at the executive table. This paper gives an
overview of Six Sigma and shares insights on how human resources is a
natural fit to lead a breakthrough change initiative as strategically focused as
Six Sigma in small and midsize organizations. By so doing, HR can be
assured value-added status.

Customers continuously raise the bar for quality; timeliness of delivery; and
knowledgeable, courteous customer service. To accommodate, organizations
invest resources to improve work processes and customer satisfaction. A quality
management system (QMS) is one approach to eliminating defects, increasing
productivity, reducing nonvalue-added activities, and responding to the voices
of customers (Pyzdek, 2001). The goal is to do the right things faster, better,
leaner, and more efficiently than others do. Achieving this goal positively
affects the bottom line.
Under the umbrella of QMS is the management philosophy known as Six
Sigma. Pande and Holpp (2002) report that Six Sigma offers organizations a
statistical toolkit that, when applied, results in a more successful and profitable
organization. Reduced cycle time, superior customer delight, decreased

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172 Fazzari, Levitt

errors, elimination of wasted effort, improved transactions, and continuous

improvement are a few deliverables achieved from implementing Six Sigma
(Breyfogle, 1999).
Engineering, quality, manufacturing, and operations typically lead either
their own or organizationwide Six Sigma initiatives. The powerful diagnostic
tools and metrics are a natural fit. They manage essential quantitative drivers
that affect the bottom line. They do not ask to be seated at the table; they are
welcomed cordially.
In direct contrast is a perceived “soft” thinking or administrative aura that
commonly emanates from human resources. However, progressive HR teams
can lead strategic initiatives such as Six Sigma. Maintaining a high-performance
work environment, connecting customers to employees, aligning overall busi-
ness strategy to work processes, forming linkages among departments, seek-
ing customer’s needs, and creating the drivers and metrics required to reinforce
a Six Sigma work system is a natural fit for HR. The end result is a change in
the traditional role of HR and also a means of reaching the partnership status
we want and deserve.

Agents of Change
As mentioned above, “line of sight” departments typically implement break-
through strategies with direct financial impact. They determine what
processes add value or not, or if a work flow can become leaner to reduce
costs and create an environment conducive to greater customer delight and
repeat business.
Although those functions take an aggressive front seat in leading change,
the HR department of most small and midsize companies defaults to staffing,
coordinating training, communications, and assuring team effectiveness
(Federico & Thomson, 2007). The belief is HR does not have a complete
appreciation of the business strategy. Establishing the HR function as a strate-
gic business partner is a frequently raised issue that requires HR to under-
stand business strategy and also speak the language of the business itself
(Kleasen, 2007). Without this understanding, HR will continue to wait to be
seated. As Hammonds (2005) notes, “HR people are not the sharpest tacks
in the box.”
However, experience shows that if employee values and beliefs are not
positively aligned with business strategy a formidable change such as Six Sigma
will not survive. It is at this intersection that human resources is critical to
organizational success. Premier HR departments correlate highly with suc-
cessful organizations with elite “employer of choice” status. They often use
proactive HR tactics (Ahlrichs, 2000). Six Sigma thus presents a perfect oppor-
tunity for HR to break free from the traditional boundaries of administrative
minutiae and use their natural capabilities as change agents.

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Human Resources as a Strategic Partner 173

Six Sigma
Six Sigma, formalized in the mid-1980s at Motorola (Gygi, DeCarlo, &
Williams, 2005), brought forth success stories from corporate leaders such as
General Electric, Sony, and Allied Signal. They captured the attention of Wall
Street as they propagated its use (Breyfogle, 1999). Six Sigma offers an orga-
nizational structure and a culture that stimulate an investigative and experi-
mental attitude at all levels (De Mast, 2006).
Six Sigma is a target to produce no more than 3.4 defects per million
opportunities or chances available. A defect is something that does not meet a
customer’s specification. Leading organizations take the time to see everything
through their customer’s eyes. They deliver what the customer wants (George,
Rowlands, & Kastle, 2004) when she or he wants it. Defects or variations from
the original expectation are cause for dissatisfaction. Reaching Six Sigma means
what you deliver is what the customer wants.
Most organizations produce at a level of two to three sigma, meaning
that between 66,807 and 308,538 errors occur with every one million
attempts; this means between 6.7% and 31% of everything produced con-
tains a defect. Here is an illustration of the impact of working at 3.8 sigma
(99% accurate):

• About 200,000 wrong prescriptions given each year

• More than 40,500 newborn babies dropped by doctors and nurses
each year
• Unsafe drinking water for about 15 minutes per day
• No telephone or television for about 27 minutes each week
• Two short or long landings at airports each day
• About 5,000 incorrect surgeries per week
• Some 20,000 lost articles of mail per hour

At a level of Six Sigma, 99.999% accurate, look at the improvement:

• Just 68 wrong drug prescriptions in 25 years

• Three newborn babies dropped in 100 years
• Unsafe drinking water one minute every seven months
• No telephone or television for as much as six seconds in 100 years
• One short or long landing in five years at all airports
• Only 1.7 incorrect surgeries every week
• Seven lost articles of mail per hour

Customers demand perfection. They trust our ability to deliver on time a qual-
ity product or service. Without it, they will go elsewhere.

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174 Fazzari, Levitt

To Begin
The quality of management also should not be overlooked in driving perfor-
mance (Godfrey, 2007). Not everything can be only about Six Sigma. We must
be cognizant that implementing Six Sigma requires a companywide transfor-
mation. Human Resources must create an environment where employees want
to be a part while also believing that it is beneficial and not just another
flavor of the month. “What’s in it for me?” is a common response from
employees. Snee (2007) notes that all improvement methodologies necessitate
change. Thus they require change management techniques for successful
implementation.
For HR to be recognized as a strategic leader, the myth that it is not mea-
surable must be broken (Mathis & Jackson, 2006). Human resources should
be evaluated by considering its results and the value it adds. HR must prove
itself quantitatively and directly. One manner is the HR Scorecard (Walker &
MacDonald, 2001; Becker, Huselid & Ulrich, 2001). The HR scorecard uses
leading and lagging indicators connected to the overall business strategy (oper-
ations, financial, customer and strategic, learning and growth). Through these
indicators, metrics are created to monitor performance, analyze data, calculate
financial impact, track continuous improvement strategies and trends, and
recommend positive and financially sound solutions. This measurement sys-
tem is effective because it links employees with business strategy and overall
performance.
Even with the HR Scorecard, human resources continues to come
under fire to demonstrate additional value. Leading a human resource
architecture that aligns itself with measurable high-performance work
systems where results drop to the bottom line is an example of Strategic
HR (Becker et al., 2001). They note that creation of HR’s value comes
through measuring efficiency, deliverables, system alignment, and the high-
performance work system. CEOs have seen human resources demonstrate
the results of lifelong learning, self-directed work teams, performance and
competency systems, lifestyle benefits, knowledge management, mentor-
ing, health wellness programs, and community partnerships. What has not
happened yet on a large scale is for HR to broaden its area of operational
expertise and prove it is more than a myopic function of employee rela-
tions’ activities and lagging indicators. Kleasen (2007) reported on a rare
HR leader who was able to show how human resources added value to a
business unit of a major pharmaceutical company through Six Sigma. Con-
necting the market to employees, listening to the voice of the customer,
wiping out nonvalue-added processes, and decreasing variation can come
naturally if human resources finally sheds the administrative role by trans-
forming years of evolutionary misalignment into focused strategic man-
agement. The following is a starting point for HR leaders of small and
midsize organizations.

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Human Resources as a Strategic Partner 175

Prescription for Change: The Initial Phases

First, develop a strategic corporate learning curriculum. Ensure through a train-
ing needs analysis that what you will teach is aligned with the strategic business
plan. Through formal coursework, prepare employees for the changes that will
unfold.
Allocate resources for the training of employees. Budget a yearly training goal
of 40 hours for each employee. This is only one week of work per year reded-
icated to employees learning value-added skill sets and listening to the voice
of the customer.
Create a Human Resource Balanced Scorecard. Develop a “value chain”
through which top management can quantitatively understand a cause-
and-effect relationship. Examples: “productivity will increase by 10%”;
“turnover will fall below 5%”; “customer relationship competencies will
increase by 15%.” Move into other departments and help set goals for their HR
connection. Set a path of measurable, bottom-line results.
Learn the whole business. Attend meetings with sales, marketing, opera-
tions, and finance. Develop a strategic understanding of the whole company
and how it interconnects. If you are not invited, show up anyway. Align your-
self with functions that directly deal with the external customer.
Create a team-based, collaborative culture. Long before the initiative begins,
move toward self-directed empowered work teams where their responsibilities
and accountabilities progressively increase along with the knowledge base.
Gain the trust of every employee. Be fair, firm, and consistent in your
approach. After teaching thousands of graduate school professionals (supervi-
sors, managers, executives), we are still shocked as to how they feel about HR.
Some label it “a necessary evil”; others purport it serves no real bottom-line
purpose. Perception is 99% reality.
Teach employees who the customers really are: Internally and Externally. In strat-
egy meetings, external customer satisfaction emerges as a top priority of survival.
Also, if internally co-workers keep coming back to have something reworked,
valuable time is lost. New products and services are one way to set an organiza-
tion apart from the competition. Doing things correctly the first time is another.
Develop a road map (your macro flow chart) to becoming a customer-driven
organization. Eliminate nonvalue-added processes. Decrease variation through-
out your department first. Set the model for excellence. Create the means to
continuously improve and develop metrics to measure progress or regression.

The Next Level

As was noted, human resources is rarely strategic or leading Six Sigma initia-
tives. It administers training, assists in choosing employees for the various
roles, creates job descriptions and reward and recognition programs, and helps
project teams work together better (Federico & Thomson, 2007).

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176 Fazzari, Levitt

Today’s global economy forces organizations to engage in a process of

strategic planning and action if they are to survive. The Greek word strategos
refers to a general’s grand design behind a war or a battle (Noe, Hollenbeck,
Gerhart, & Wright, 1996). Webster’s New American Dictionary defines strategy
as “skillful employment and coordination of tactics” and as “artful planning
and management.”
Strategic human resource management, then, is a process that addresses
the competitive challenges organizations face as a whole. Organizational
leadership must manage the pattern or plan that connects customers to the
business and employees along with integrating all the organization’s goals,
policies, processes, and actions into a cohesive whole forming an identity.
Employees as stakeholders are constantly faced with a reality: “Is it worth-
while to remain a part of this organization, and will I see a return on my
investment?” If customers return and new customers are added to the mix,
then strategically the organization has employed competitive measures to
enhance effectiveness. Six Sigma focuses on relentless attention to internal
and external customer satisfaction through a variety of quantitative tools and
metrics. What follows represents a successful application of human resources
leading a Six Sigma initiative in a midsize manufacturing company. As a vice
president of People Services, quality and Six Sigma, one author was responsible
for Six Sigma for more than six years. During this time the HR department of
this organization mentored or completed more than 75 projects, resulting in
bottom-line savings in excess of $3 million. They also facilitated the certifica-
tion of 15 black belts and 45 green belts during his tenure.

Human Resources Leading the Charge

The initial task is to organize an action plan for the first wave of employees to
attend the training that is part of implementing Six Sigma. The implementa-
tion given here identifies key roles for a successful rollout. Some of these
defined roles are derived from the martial arts.

• Executive leadership. The CEO and executive team set the direction. HR
becomes the project leader and facilitates development of a plan that
includes linkages among departments, employees, and customers. Execu-
tive support is critical for total commitment at all levels.
• Champions. Champions are top or middle management. They identify pro-
jects, allocate resources, and review progress. With HR, they ensure recog-
nition is given to those who excel. Champions eliminate barriers that
impede success.
• Master black belt. Intensive, long-term ongoing training and practical pro-
ject and teaching experience are required in order to achieve a master black
belt status. They are in-house experts in Six Sigma.

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• Black belts. Black belts operate as project leaders and change agents. Their
focus is project execution. Depending on the size of the organization, they
may devote 50–100% of their time to Six Sigma.
• Green belts. Green belts implement Six Sigma projects or assist black belts
in their projects. They help collect and analyze data, and they devote
25–50% of their time to Six Sigma.
• Yellow belts. Remaining employees should be asked to attend introductory
training to orient themselves to the new way of doing business. Through
their awareness of Six Sigma, they are now able to assist green and black
belts with data collection.

Waves of Training
The next step is to choose a small group of managers, including human resource
leadership, to attend the first required four-week Six Sigma black belt training
program if they are to be certified. On completion of each weekly training ses-
sion, the attendees should present their material to fellow employees and exec-
utives to ensure they remain aware of progress being made. If possible, others
in HR should make impromptu visits or phone calls to the training site to show
support.
After the initial wave of black belt trainings, the program will quickly
unfold. A second wave of trainees should attend the same training no more
than two months after the first team completes its coursework. Continuous
improvement projects for black belts must be chosen as requirements for their
education. HR should facilitate the effort, create guidelines learned from class,
gain agreement on projects, and make certain that metrics are in order for
trainees. Attendees will soon show excitement about the opportunity to make
things happen; they now have a chance to positively affect the bottom line.
The richness of the Six Sigma toolkit and its resulting process improve-
ments will help human resources create a master blueprint for a multiyear roll-
out. As projects demand resources, other employees may at first wonder where
will they find the time to assist. Again HR’s innate ability can shine through.
They must organize, analyze, and define what resources are needed. As pro-
jects are completed and savings are accrued, you will witness a new energy
from workers. These resulting savings can be used as leverage in asking for
additional resources. HR should continue to develop cost-benefit analysis of
recommended projects and report the same to top management.

The Rollout
Programs that create cultural change need time to reach their full potential. It
should be noted that there might be significant resistance to the initiative within
certain areas of the organization. Once again given the nature of its knowledge,
skills, and abilities, human resources can work with the resistance. These steps
create a foundation for human resources to lead the strategic initiative:

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178 Fazzari, Levitt

1. Recommend reorganization. Have the quality department report to HR.

Also then, HR employees must now increase and enhance their skills in
quality assurance methods and procedures.
2. Train top management to become champions. They will identify direction,
determine key focus areas, ensure support, and approve resources.
3. Collectively develop a Six Sigma vision and share it with employees regu-
larly. Make it visible throughout the organization.
4. Form a quality council. Give it a defined mission and enlist a stakeholder
from each discipline throughout the organization. The council recom-
mends new projects on a consistent basis. Black belts facilitate meetings
with project updates, at a minimum every two weeks.
5. Initially choose projects that are low-hanging fruit. These secure immediate
savings with a low investment of resources. A home run is needed early
on in the program.
6. Use the Six Sigma model of define, measure, analyze, improve, and control
(DMAIC) for projects. Until each objective is met, validation of savings
from the finance people cannot occur. The model can be located in any
Six Sigma text.
7. Create a Customer Delight Council. It should produce and analyze customer
surveys, develop focus groups, visit customer locations, and work closely
with sales and other customer support functions to increase the exactness
of customer expectations and satisfaction.
8. Create a monthly Six Sigma newsletter. Articles can be about achievements
and events taking place in the organization.
9. Research your state department of labor for available training grants. Six
Sigma is a well-recognized quality program. Cost savings can be
tremendous.
10. Have a continuous stream of training for employees to be certified as black
belts or green belts. Attempt to bring green belt certification in-house.
The more employees who become certified, the more easily the culture
will shift.
11. Follow a strict model of team charter development and project justifi-
cation. Teams manage projects, and subject matter experts from various
departments are called on to assist when needed.
12. Develop “what is now” process maps. They show the transactions and
workflows that are presently taking place in all departments. After
reviewing value-added and nonvalue-added activities, “should be” maps
follow. The goal is to decrease unnecessary steps that cost money and
slow response time.
13. Create connection(s) to employee performance. Attach Six Sigma strategy and
results to your performance appraisals and subsequent strategic metrics.
14. Set goals. All managers and supervisors must become a green belt or
black belt within a specific time period. This shows that the organization

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Human Resources as a Strategic Partner 179

is serious about the initiative, a culture shift and ongoing employee

development.
15. Begin a mentoring training program. This will help black and green belts
coach employees who are having difficulty grasping the tools of Six
Sigma.
16. Add Six Sigma classes. As progress unfolds, consider some of the other Six
Sigma training classes as a total approach to continuous improvement:
Voice of the Customer, Teambuilding, Design of Experiments, Design for
Six Sigma, and so on.
17. Develop an organizational Balanced Scorecard. Monthly updates are
integrated by HR, given the key metrics already agreed on. Together
with completed project results, rich and productive discussion will take
place at the top.
18. Hold regular presentations for management. Employees who are going to
classes for their certification should present updates of their projects
to top and middle management monthly. This will provide an opportunity
for all stakeholders to see the big picture and adjust accordingly.

The project and change management skills of human resources makes HR

more than capable of leading Six Sigma initiatives in a small or midsize orga-
nization. HR staff are able to direct the profit and loss of a bottom-line strat-
egy and increase the value and output of human capital investments. Today’s
global marketplace has created the need for an environment of savvy, engaged,
knowledgeable, customer-centered employees who are result-driven and key
sources of competitive advantage. Recognizing that organizations must also lis-
ten more closely to the voice of the employee-consumer and not only to the
employer’s customer (Daniels, 2007) is additional rationale for HR strategic
leadership.
Six Sigma is not a process whereby employees ultimately lose their jobs.
Through implementing the toolkit, the goal is to decrease variation and main-
tain only value-added processes and transactions throughout the organization.
If an employee has skills in areas that can enhance this goal, it is unlikely the
person will fall victim to a reduction in workforce.
This can be the beginning of a new era for HR teams, one that has far-
reaching implications. It is time to stop talking about wishing to be seated at
a table with top management. It is up to all human resource professionals to
take more of a leadership role and harness the power of Six Sigma and their
change management expertise. By so doing, HR can also become strategically
critical to business success.
Six Sigma may not be the gold ring that results in the thorough culture
change that ambitious organizations seek (Snee, 2007). In the absence of the
good, solid change management that only human resources can supply, orga-
nizations will attain temporary success, not lasting culture change.

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180 Fazzari, Levitt

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Alan J. Fazzari has served in progressively more responsible human resource positions
for over 26 years including Vice President of People Services for a major electronics
manufacturing company. He has also worked for the past 12 years as a part-time
professor at several Colleges and Universities including Monmouth University, The
College of Saint Elizabeth and Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey.

Kenneth Levitt has worked as a management consultant since 1999 for The Gallup
Organization, The Renoir Corporation, and The WorkPlace Group. He has been
teaching since 1989 and is currently an associate professor at The College of
Saint Elizabeth.

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