This guide is part of a progression set comprised of Core, Advanced, and Emerging Lean HR practices.

What it is

Emerging Lean HR practices help position the function as a system designer that shapes workflows and tools capable of quickly adapting to changing business needs. The focus transitions from reacting to current process problems to intentionally planning and building future capabilities. At this level, Lean HR takes on a proactive role, directly influencing the systems, tools, and experiences that will support how work is done in the future. With it, HR can extend its reach beyond internal process improvements and deliberately build organization-wide capacity for flexibility, innovation, and human-centered design. Lean HR practices address current work conditions, including hybrid work models, technology-enabled systems, continuous feedback mechanisms, and a workforce that places high value on meaning, flexibility, and growth.

Lean thinking becomes ingrained not only in HR operations but also in how work is designed, delivered, and experienced across the organization. Building on advanced practices that enhance internal value flow, these emerging approaches enable HR to design digital and flexible systems that shape the organization’s work environment. These also expand HR’s focus beyond internal operations by leveraging partnerships, platforms, and benchmarking to support internal improvement and help the organization remain adaptable.

Lean practices bring a unique set of capabilities and actions to HR, including the design of employee experiences that are personalized, empowering, and guided by real-time feedback. They introduce planned partnering with external vendors and thought leaders, as well as benchmarking opportunities, to bring in the best of Lean innovation. They involve the use of advanced analytics and automation to shift HR’s capacity toward high-value, human-centered work and to create a focus on embedding flexibility, adaptability, and continuous learning into everyday HR practices and decision-making.

Why use it

Organizations face rapid changes in technology, workforce expectations, market conditions, and social priorities. Lean HR helps the organization respond to these changes in a disciplined way and, over time, lead selected changes at the enterprise level rather than only reacting to them locally. It empowers teams to design systems that adapt to emerging work and technology patterns.

Automation, AI, and analytics are used to manage routine activities and high-volume processing and provide better insights, enabling the organization to change how it works without adding overhead. As more of this work is supported by technology, HR can focus more time and attention on culture, strategy, leadership development, and the design of practices that support people in their roles. Additionally, by incorporating employee needs and well-being into personalized experiences, the function ensures that internal systems are more likely to support high-impact work. Ongoing use of market benchmarks and selected external partnerships helps keep HR practices current and competitive as conditions change.

Outcomes

When emerging Lean HR practices are fully adopted, the organization moves closer to a state of “systemic flow”, where work progresses with fewer delays and handoffs. In this state, cost-effectiveness improves, operational and process efficiency increase, and workforce performance strengthens in a visible, measurable way. At this level of maturity, Lean HR practices generate more engaging, personalized employee experiences at key touchpoints (“moments that matter”) that directly drive measurable gains in employee engagement, retention, performance, productivity, and trust.

These outcomes rely on increased deployment of digitally enabled HR systems that provide process efficiencies and speed without sacrificing service delivery quality, including more robust HR technologies with fewer silos and greater integration. Higher levels of personalization and adaptability within these systems deliver better user interfaces and greater responsiveness to meet employees’ expectations, preferences, and requirements. This combination of practices and technologies enhances the employee experience and helps attract strong job applicants by signaling that the company is a well-managed, supportive place to work.

These emerging Lean HR practices and supporting technologies create a continuous, reliable flow of leading external thinking and proven practices that can accelerate HR and organizational innovation. Insights from this flow also inform the design of work models that adapt to changing business and workforce demands and enable the organization to reach a broader pool of potential workers in tight labor markets.

Practice guides at this level

Adopting Lean thinking as the standard for employee experience design to increase worker productivity, empowerment, and engagement.

Centering HR strategy on employee experience to design systems that empower, engage, and enable employees to perform meaningful work while aligning individual fulfillment with organizational success.

Collaborating with the external ecosystem to integrate and optimize Lean HR practices.

Expanding HR’s reach through strategic collaboration with external partners to accelerate learning, foster innovation, and continuously refine Lean practices that strengthen organizational agility and performance.

Embracing technology to accelerate Lean, cost-effective HR operations.

Leveraging automation and AI to simplify HR workflows, eliminate inefficiencies, and enhance insight-driven decision-making that amplifies human capability and accelerates organizational impact.

Evolving the HR organization to adapt to a dynamic workforce landscape while remaining Lean.

Designing a resilient and adaptive HR infrastructure that leads the Future of Work through flexible models, agile systems, and a culture that balances innovation, well-being, and organizational alignment.