Human Resources

A CASE STUDY.

The Problem.
Our client, a UK based avionics company manufacturing flight deck avionics, data acquisition systems and life support equipment, at the time of the project, they were employing over 280 employees but experiencing a high level of staff turnover, adding significantly to the overall employment costs. The company had carried out an informal investigation on the matter through surveying managers on their gut feel of what the problems were. The result of this survey seemed to suggest that the root problem was lack of career development opportunity, characterised by a lack of job progression; with a couple of high profile cases being cited.

JARAs Analysis.
We helped the HR department test the theory that lack of career development was the cause of employees leaving within three years, by systematically looking at the employment life cycle of all employees over a five year period. This analysis allowed the improvement team to compare two groups of employees: those who had been in the same job for more than three years (deemed to be not progressing in their careers), and those who had been in the same role for less than three years. The results were the opposite of what had been expected; people who had progressed in their careers were just as likely to leave as those who had become stuck in their job role - thus disproving the original theory. The team then began to look all employees, evaluating their current recruitment process as the primary reason for leaving prematurely. It was soon discovered that there was a distinct lack of values testing in the interview process, meaning that people were not fully informed of the hard work and high standards that would be required of them once they joined the company. This allowed people to be recruited whose value systems did not match those of the business. Through more detailed analysis it also became clear that managers who had followed an in-depth recruitment and induction process had a significantly lower staff turnover level than those who had not. Managers interviewed said that the reason for not following this more rigorous procedure was that they found the lengthy process of form filling to be tedious and time consuming and therefore steps were sometimes omitted. The team also found that managers had been reluctant to really get stuck in to performance management, due to a lack of measurement systems, and so had not attempted to correct misaligned behaviour early enough, or at all. The bottom line - the problem was a direct result of hiring people not aligned with the values of the organisation, compounded by the fact that managers were not measuring performance consistently.

The Results.
The project has so far identified savings of over 200k in avoidable recruitment Staff turnover has been reduced from 12% to 5%

The Solution.
Once the problem had been proven to lie within the recruitment process JARA and the team set about clarifying the recruitment strategy and its process, along with developing measures around this. The reasons for managers failing to follow the previous disciplined processes were analysed and addressed to ensure the process was now acceptable and to all. Values Testing was also introduced into the recruitment system, which communicated clearly the demands of the job and the level of commitment the organization expected. Candidates were checked and tested more thoroughly to ensure that their values matched those of the company. Finally, the team also felt it necessary to begin measuring how well managers delivered against the existing personal development review process, thus ensuring wider compliance and the ability to identify blockers to the process.
t) + 44 (0)20 8261 4591 f) + 44 (0)20 8261 4445 e) info@jara-management.com www.jara-management.com

The Feedback.
HR Manager

What we learned from this process was that we werent measuring routinely the key behaviour that we needed to see from our employees.We had lots of data on things like absenteeism but not on what we really needed to know, and it was costing us money. Were now linking behaviours directly to our top level balanced scorecard, and this is crucial in helping managers to appraise against the vision of the business and measure their effectiveness in doing so, and the savings have been fantastic.

Discipline. Structure. Involvement.