HR Case Studies

THE PROBLEM

A US company recently secured a two-year contract to base an advertising blimp in Australia. Not having an Australian business entity, E.L Blue was able to employ their support crew, providing Human Resource support and taking care of payroll.

The challenge for E.L Blue was to recruit a reliable team who were prepared to travel around Australia, have the stamina and flexibility to be on the road for extended periods of time.

THE SOLUTION

Our team developed a highly structured recruitment process to ensure the people employed matched the behaviour and skill profile required by the client regulatory bodies including Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

A strong reliable team was recruited, on-boarded and trained. Medical checks were carried out and employment agreements were designed and issued. Full access security passes were issued to them for all airports across Australia.

THE PROBLEM

Our client is one of the leading Australian companies in the field of Over the Counter (OTC) pharmaceuticals in Australia. Because of their success, they were suffering from consistently high growth and had a multitude of functions and positions in the company without an appropriate salary structure or career progression structure for employees.

A major challenge was to establish a formal remuneration structure and to provide a consistent and relevant framework for remuneration and employment conditions for all of their employees.

THE SOLUTION

This significant challenge required a process that included:

• Benchmarking all positions individually against industry market data.
• Identifying the Company’s remuneration philosophy moving forward.
• Developing a Remuneration Policy and training the leadership team to execute it.
• Creating a methodology for adjusting salaries in the future as determined by individual performance, company performance and market conditions.
• Implementing a Remuneration Review process for objectively assessing whether additional or changed responsibilities of a position would be eligible for an adjustment in salary.
• Determining how to handle salaries that fall below the minimum in a salary band and salaries that were above the maximum of a salary band

THE PROBLEM

After careful analysis with our client, we identified an opportunity to improve the performance of the work teams. E.L Blue developed and delivered a program that would build the leadership and management competencies required to grow their business.

The objectives set were indeed challenging as this client wanted all their managers to complete the training with at least 70 percent of those assessed as meeting bench marked expectations in each competency.

THE SOLUTION

The team at E.L Blue developed and executed the following improvements by creating a new leadership competency framework and by delivering leadership and management development programs to address competency gaps in three key areas:

1. Maximising Performance – a program showing managers how to set smart KPIs and have constructive performance planning and review discussions.
2. Managing Unsatisfactory Performance – a program showing managers how to develop and execute a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) and how to develop and execute a legally compliant disciplinary process.
3. The Shift – training and getting employees to comply with a Code of Conduct, Business Ethics and new HR Policies and Procedures.

THE PROBLEM

A rapidly growing retail business with more than 20 outlets across metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne. 

Store managers were experienced and autonomous operators with a strong understanding of sales and customer service.   There was a strong culture and understanding within the business that good staffing was essential to maintain sales levels.   While the business was experiencing solid sales growth, it had become apparent that the strong sales were not reflected in profitability. 

Store managers had the authority to organise staffing levels and approve rostering arrangements for their outlet.  Senior management felt that staffing costs were reducing profits and that labour hours and labour hour costs were not aligned with sales levels.

THE SOLUTION

Analysis and Structure

The company was running sophisticated rostering software and very comprehensive sales recording systems.

E.L Blue’s team worked with the company’s financial management team to review historic sales and rostering data to determine sales and roster patterns for each of the outlets.  Based on the sales patterns, a suitable staffing level was determined and on that basis a rostering pattern was established for each outlet.   A number of standard roster patterns were designed and an applicable pattern applied to each outlet.

Cultural Change

Over a 6 month period the retail team was run through a number of training activities to introduce the development of labour cost budgets for their outlets, the introduction of the new rostering structures and roster approval process.

Moving store managers away from their ad-hoc approach to rosters experienced some resistance (as they believed not having staff would reduce sales levels), and it was necessary to have a consistent and disciplined approach by line management to ensuring that the requirements were followed by all outlets.