Case Studies

Organizational Effectiveness for an industrial retail company

Benefits Strategy for a
services business

Employee Retention Strategy for an American retailer

Change Planning to Support a New Technology Rollout

HR support and build-out after
a merger

Organizational Effectiveness for an industrial retail company

Benefits Strategy for a services business

Employee Retention Strategy for an American retailer

Change Planning to Support a New Technology Rollout

HR support and build-out after a merger

Organizational Effectiveness for an Industrial Retail Company

Situation

A privately owned "industrial retail" company needed to significantly improve earnings as part of their strategy to reinvest and drive growth. They believed that there was efficiency to be gained in their front-of-shop operations by using technology, shared services and improved processes and roles. A lack of discipline and corporate control also contributed to the challenge.

Approach

The team diagnosed the current situation through shop visits and data analyses, identifying slack capacity, roles that didn't allow employees to capitalize on their strengths, frequent interruptions, and other sources of inefficiency.
Working with a group of operators, the team built more effective processes, added centralized functions, eliminated roles that were no longer necessary, and capitalized on the technology that had recently been implemented. The team piloted and refined the changes over a two-month period.
An extensive change plan was executed that provided for a clean communications cascade, colleagues treated with respect as new job assignments were made and some were eliminated, and sufficient training to enable the new approach.

Results

95% of all operational leaders indicated that they felt confident in their ability to lead the change.
The plan exceeded targets by improving EBITDA by 45% and allowed management freedom to reinvest where needed.

Benefits Strategy for a Services Business

Situation

A private equity-owned company that owns and operates a services business with 250 locations was seeking to drive efficiencies in their benefits spend.
Part of the challenge was the complexity of the large variety of worker types, from high-paid corporate executives to trade professionals, specialists, and hourly workers.
A new CHRO had been brought into the company, recognized the benefits' strategy opportunity, and wanted to move quickly in advance of open enrollment in October.

Approach

The work began with an assessment of the spend, an understanding of their placement in the marketplace for their benefit offerings, and an assessment of the broker team, benefits communications team and supporting platforms.
The YoY increase proposed by the broker was 11% over projections and 21% over prior year actuals.
We made a series of benefit design changes to drive savings and drive behavior, including co-pays, co-insurance, spousal surcharge, tobacco surcharge, etc.
In addition, the team completed a dependent audit and removed those that were not actually dependents
Further savings were realized when we changed the call center and advocacy center supplier
As the client was under-resourced, our team managed the open enrollment process to drive communication and ensure employee understanding. This included live benefits presentations and contracting with a benefits communications firm that managed a web platform and call center.
The following year, we conducted a total rewards conjoint analysis that enabled management to understand employee preferences and trade-offs at a detailed and quantitative level. This enabled further refinement that increased the impact that employees saw for the investment made.

Results

We recommended changes that brought the costs down to a 2.1% increase, as opposed to their 11% projection. This saved $3.3 million annually, of which the company decided to reinvest some into lacking benefits such as short-term disability and maternity leave.
We recommended a change to their broker team following open enrollment, given the service levels and lack of focus on benefit impact.
The benefits investment was better targeted to what employees valued and improved communications ensured they understood. As a result of this work, employees were happier, and savings were realized.

Employee Retention Strategy for an American retailer

Situation

The supply chain operation of a privately owned American retailer was facing employee turnover of 130% in their distribution centers. In addition, employee productivity had dropped significantly.
The labor market had become tight, and this retailer found that they were vulnerable to competitors hiring their talent.
They asked for help in understanding the key issues and putting a plan in place to reduce attrition and improve employee productivity.

Approach

The team assessed the current attrition data to understand turnover by tenure, distribution center, shift, responsibilities, and a broad set of other metrics. This was complemented by an assessment of exit interview data.
Context and conclusions from the data analyses were built in collaboration with site leaders and HR directors.
The team brought an outside perspective including deep competitive assessments. The team provided understanding of how working for this company compared to the alternatives potential employees had.
The team did three multi-day site visits during which the team conducted interviews, focus groups, and full site surveys.
The assessment yielded many opportunities to improve attrition, such as better clarity during the recruitment process, increased emphasis on onboarding, reducing forced overtime, supervisor training, and the addition of weekend shifts.
The team built out a playbook of twelve significant initiatives that would be implemented over time to significantly change the employee value proposition for these employees.

Results

The client implemented the recommendations, and one year later attrition had dropped from 130% to roughly 65%, forced overtime had been eliminated, and labor productivity was increased by 45%.

Change Planning to Support a New Technology Rollout

Situation

A $2 billion private equity-owned manufacturing organization was planning to leverage their new manufacturing technology across the remaining half of the business.
They recognized that this would be a significant change and asked for help in building a Change Plan that would assure success.

Approach

The team reviewed the technology implementation plans, assessed the resource requirements, and compared them to plan for resources to deploy.
Capability requirements for supporting the new technology platform were clarified and compared to the capability development plans and budget.
Existing Change roadmaps were reviewed and compared to standard practice.
A broad set of interviews were conducted to assess the organization's readiness for the implementation and identify potential barriers to the success of the planned implementation.

Results

The team identified significant business risks that the executive team had not previously understood.
Implementation resources were insufficient, leading to implementation timing risk. Timing was critical given the amount of revenue driven during their busy season.
The gap between current state capabilities and needed capabilities was far larger than previously understood, and the development plans were insufficient.
The business team became concerned that the current plans for the shift would cause risks to their business.
Mitigation plans were developed that required significant shifts in resources and focus to enable the program to move forward on the existing timeframe.
A potential catastrophe was avoided as executive leadership chose to delay implementation in order to more adequately prepare.

HR Support and Build-Out After a Merger

Situation

A small business services company had just merged with another company in their space.
The two companies had similar services but had many differences such as different titles, roles, career models, compensation philosophy and rewards. This put significant pressure on the human resources executives.
The approach to HR and people in the newly combined company needed to be rationalized quickly so that they didn't lose valuable talent.
Populus Advisors was asked to support a series of engagements to address these challenges and rebuild the HR organization and its processes for the newly combined company.

Approach

The team worked closely with the client across a series of initiatives to systematically address the challenges and build a unified approach for the new Human Resources organization. This included building a new career model that incorporated the best from the legacy companies. In addition, compensation philosophy, incentives and rewards were redesigned to be consistent and effective in the new setting.
The team provided peaking support of key initiatives such as helping with an implementation of Workday to ensure that communications and change were effective.
We stepped into key positions such as the interim Head of Total Rewards while this position was open and the interim CHRO while that executive was on leave.

Results

Populus Advisors enabled the newly merged company to successfully navigate employee change, worked collaboratively to quickly build new HR systems and approaches, and seamlessly filled key executive gaps to prevent problems while players were out.
The client moved through this period of significant change with far less business risk and was able to shorten the time when HR systems and processes were inadequate.