A national multi-unit staffing company, twice listed on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, came to us to enhance their hiring and promotion processes for Account and Field Managers.

The challenge was, as an emerging company in need of new talent, had a very young group of managers. For many of them, this was their first management position. They simply had little hiring experience and no formal training on how to identify talent.

Adding to the challenge, the company had not identified the specific behaviors, competencies and experience that defined success for either role. Successful managers were having a difficult time identifying replacements or in some cases were promoting people based on personal relationships. Turnover was over 50% wasting valuable time, negatively impacting client opportunities and creating a morale problem in the work environment.

SOLUTION

We helped our client develop and identify processes and tools to reduce hiring costs, improve manager retention and increase promotion effectiveness through an innovative selection process.

By studying the top and bottom performers in each role, we were able to identify the competencies, motivators, behaviors and talent that were consistent in the top performers and absent in the low performing group. Armed with organizational and role specific data we were able to create promotion and development criteria. The attributes associated with low performance were used as knockout factors in the screening process. Metrics to evaluate and improve the process were established and refinements continue to be made as we learn more by tracking the results.

RESULTS

Client experienced decreased and reduced turnover – from 54% to 32% in the fi rst year. Since the initial processes were developed there has been an improvement in productivity that is saving them over 6,300 man-hours annually. Manager effectiveness as measured by average sales increase per manager is up for the entire company during the same period.