Case Study

Company: “Company B”, a large retailer based in the United States. Company B has an accounting center serving its entire organization. 

Challenge Faced: The accounting center faced a broad challenge in cutting costs and improving the service delivered to internal customers. Turnover was much higher than the local average. Management had a collective sense that “employee issues” were negatively impacting performance, but was unsure what the issues were or what to do about them.

Their Approach: Company B measured employee commitment by surveying all accounting center employees. The surveys revealed that most employees were aware of and agreed with the organization’s values. However, employees did not comply with (“live by”) all the values equally. Company B conducted follow-up interviews to determine why some values weren’t acted on by employees, even though employees understood and agreed with them.

The Outcome: The follow-up interviews indicated that barriers centered around communications issues between employees and managers and on policies applied inconsistently across workgroups. Teams of employees were formed to address these center-wide issues. The primary outcomes were specified preferred communications vehicles, with guidance as to what should be communicated, to whom, via each channel. First-line supervisors were charged with identifying and addressing problems local to their work groups. The employee-led improvement efforts resulted in new levels of buy-in, and contributed to reducing the previously excessive turnover rate.

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