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Manager, Continuous Improvement

Western Governors University
life insurance, flexible benefit account, parental leave, paid time off, paid holidays, sick time
United States, Utah, Salt Lake City
3949 South 700 East (Show on map)
Mar 20, 2025

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Pay Range: $65,400.00 - $107,900.00

Job Description

Job Profile Summary:

The Manager of Continuous Improvement (CI) is responsible for evaluating, measuring, designing, and enhancing business processes and driving continuous improvement. The CI Manager collaborates with key stakeholders to provide strategies for understanding, measuring, and improving current business processes. Through collaboration, this role leads continuous improvement projects that enhance business processes.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

  • Analyzes college business processes and objectives. Investigates shortfalls and issues in current business processes. Develop business process enhancement strategies.
  • Implements continuous improvement projects based on evaluating strategic and operational data.
  • Leads strategic and continuous improvement projects, including coordinating necessary human and operational resources and setting and implementing budgetary and timing controls to achieve chartered goals.
  • Prioritizes initiatives across the colleges while ensuring the design, testing, training, documentation, and prioritization objectives are met.
  • Works closely with CI teams, students, end users, and multiple stakeholders during the design and implementation of improvement projects.
  • Promotes consistent, efficient, and effective operational evaluation and improvement practices by creating standards of work, defining and sharing best practices, and collaborating with team members, cross-functional groups, and leadership to measure and monitor operational performance, identify opportunities to maximize technology and/or automate business processes and use Lean Six Sigma methodologies.
  • Prepares and delivers process improvement recommendations and delivers presentations to varying audiences.
  • Serves as a change leader by demonstrating positive change management methods that align with WGU core values, embrace process improvement and automation, and target enhanced productivity, quality, and delivery of our products and programs.
  • Serves as a Lean Six Sigma process improvement expert, defines key performance indicators (KPI) and/or metrics, and monitors successful implementation of process-based projects.
  • Prioritize enhancing software systems and refining processes to drive continuous improvement.
  • Generates and maintains process flow charts, standard operating procedures (SOP), and other documents to support current state, cross-functional, and end-to-end process understanding.
  • Collaborates with other stakeholders to enhance productivity and student satisfaction.
  • Develops policies and procedures for business process improvements and ensures students, WGU leadership, and CI team stay current.
  • Trains team members and system users on CI tools and techniques and on new processes.
  • Stays up to date with developments in management and process optimization.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

  • Knowledge of Lean & Six Sigma tools and concepts
  • Quality Improvement methodologies
  • Project Management Processes & Principles
  • Fundamental understanding of strategic, budgeting, and operational planning, including goal/KPI target setting.

Competencies:

Problem Solving and Decision Making:

  • Responsible for improving processes or systems to enhance the performance of the job area.
  • Assignments received and problems faced are broad and undefined and require the use of analytical concepts, investigation, and knowledge from prior experience.

Communication and Influence:

  • Communicates within the job area and occasionally with external groups. External-facing professionals (i.e., Admissions) communicate more regularly with external groups on routine matters.
  • Ensures compliance with University policies and procedures within the job area and may influence others outside of the job area to justify and gain cooperation for policies, practices, and procedures.

Leadership and Talent Management:

  • Manages/Supervises a team of professionals. Manages the work of assigned employees and/or supervisors who generally exercise some latitude and independence in their assignments. Ensures proper training of team members and participates in hiring, firing, and promotion decisions. Conducts performance reviews and may recommend salary reviews.
  • Complete assignments in addition to supervising others.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

  • A Bachelor's degree in Business, Industrial Engineering, Program Management, Process Control, or a related field.
  • Three (3) years of experience in continuous improvement, including at least two (2) years of leadership experience in process improvement and expertise in Lean and Six Sigma methodologies.
  • Experience in automating Business Processes
  • Six Sigma Black Belt certification
  • Travel between different hub locations around 20-25% of the time.

#LI-VB

#D&I

Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It's not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.

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