Question
Ceridian was created in 1932 as an early component arm of IBM. Over time the company grew, become highly diversified and profitable, but lost its
Ceridian was created in 1932 as an early component arm of IBM. Over time the company
grew, become highly diversified and profitable, but lost its focus. Barriers halted
communication and promoted a more rigid method of management, planning and decision
making - all without employee feedback. The structures of the company prevented change
instead of driving it.
When sales and profits start to fall, a CEO's knee-jerk reaction may be to push their people
harder to achieve results. While this tactic may work in the short term, it is detrimental to the
long-term success of an organization. It breeds low engagement, high turnover and a lack of
trust in the future sustainability of a company. Instead, skilled CEOs should diagnose the
foundational problems in their business and treat the cause instead of the symptom.
One CEO whose change leadership has transformed a company's employee metrics and
future trajectory is David Ossip. When he took over as CEO of the global human capital
management technology company Ceridian in 2013, he inherited a highly disengaged
workforce with declining business results.
"My take home after a hard look at Ceridian was that the organisation had to reinvent its
culture in order to drive proper employee engagement, in turn improving our customer
engagement scores and market share," Ossip recalls. "If you have an organization that can't
change, you will become extinct," Ossip insists.
Ossip had a monumental task ahead of him. Unhappy employees cost organizations and
the U.S. economy over $550 billion per year. The problem impacts top and bottom line
results and every other business metric that matters. Skilled and purposeful leadership with
a deep understanding of what engages people is required to turn around this problem.
Interestingly, Ossip does not see himself as a corporate executive, but more of an
entrepreneur. He has a successful track record of building start-ups in the Human
Resources space and he quickly recognised that while Ceridian's large market presence
and great reputation in services placed it at the top of its industry, it lacked strong innovation
and technology. With no new products in its pipeline, it was rapidly losing market share. The
combination hurt both employee engagement and customer satisfaction scorestwo key
metrics that can make or break the success of an organization.
As an outsider, Ossip observed what was happening at Ceridian and managed to persuade
the organisation to partner with his own highly successful HR firm (Dayforce). He proposed
to extend Dayforce technology into Ceridian's out-dated and cumbersome payroll, benefits
and other talent management modules. It would allow the entire employee experience to be
tracked through one application. He could see that his smaller expert company could merge
with an aging (but established) conglomerate - and ultimately that both partners could win.
Initial investigations.
A market survey determined the industry pain points of Ceridian, highlighting that HR
professionals were frustrated by the lack of integration and communication across all
applications. None of the systems spoke to each other - severely impacting business
outcomes.
Ossip's first executive meeting yielded one key consensus: Without high employee
engagement, Ceridian could not drive the other changes it wanted and required. Employee
engagement had to become the organisation's core focus. People had great ideas, but no
way to communicate to the leaders. Ossip, his team and Ceridian embarked on a disciplined
approach to turn the company around.
A Need For Change
The barriers to communication were not only cultural, but physical, too. Traditional physical
structures had leaders sequestered in their offices and administration staff positioned
between them and all other employees, to become "us-and-them" mindset.
As the new CEO of the partneship, Ossip began to work to alter the culture of the company.
A programme called "Top Talent" was introduced to improve employee/leadership
interaction.
Existing leaders were encouraged to undergo coaching for effective communication and
new leaders were interviewed on their ability to effectively communicate and manage
change. The organisation opened up to the processes of evolution; rigid office structures
were dismantled, hierarchies removed and employees across the board were encouraged to
put forward their own improvement ideas.
Defined Purpose
Ossip and his team came to the conclusion that their core purpose centred around
improving work and life for peopleemployees and customers alike. "Everyone was
included - customers, employees, managers, CEOs and COOs. Work and life would be
improved by our software and our services" recalls Ossip. In addition, Ceridian sold off
businesses unrelated to their established core purpose. It focused its assets on human
capital management.
Aligned Values
An employee survey revealed people knew what company values were, but did not identify
with them, neither did they believe the organisation was living these values. Ceridian began
to work on these values - focusing more on customers, listening carefully and acting with
empathy towards them.
Transparency and open communication, integrity and accountability for behaviours were
added to the values list. The attitudes of optimism, diligence and agility were encouraged
rewarded and celebrated as the company moved forward.
Programmes were put in place to communicate the new values and ensure that people were
living and demonstrating them, ultimately allowing the company to "crete products and
services that helped people enjoy work and life more."
Clear Vision
Ossip said: "For me, the ultimate goal of Ceridian was to become the preferred HR solution
chosen by the employee" Ossip rallied the organization, focusing on the culture at Ceridian
to crate an achievable vision of what the company's future would look like if they got it
right. Ossip had learned from experience that recruiting is more than just filling seats in an
organization. It requires ensuring the right people fill the right roles and can drive your
mission and purpose forward.
"We had to be prepared to move people to new roles, and even remove people that weren't
aligned with what we needed to do. We basically had to restructure and rebuild the
organization," Ossip said. "We needed people who believed in what Ceridian was attempting
to do, who liked to have Fun, were Intelligent and able to work well with others in Teams -
FIT".
"If employee engagement and productivity improves, and attrition drops, we know we are
getting it right," Ossip added.
Measuring
Ceridian also looked for triggers of disengagement. "Often they are very small things such
as time-consuming and outdated tools or systems. Triggers can be small things you don't
hear about that upset people, cause discomfort and impact performance" said Ossip.
Ossip encourages communication by hosting team-talk meetings; walking around and
listening to people's concerns. "This is the best way to learn what is going on before it
becomes a problem. Importantly, you must act on valid issues as soon as you know in order
to avoid bad business outcomes", he said. "Negativity will quickly spread throughout an
organization and damage your business".
Taking action was the most critical part of Ossip's successful change management. Based
on employee feedback, Ceridian makes changes not only about how the company is run,
but also who runs it. Under the new approaches, employee attrition has gone down,
customer retention has gone up and the business is thriving with a 70% growth rate year
over-year with their products. The organization has became one of the fastest growing cloud
companies in the marketplace.
Ossip insists that success is based on "Employee experience - it is our number one goal.
The second is customer experience, and third is product excellence. We must also always
to remember to award and celebrate success".
Ossip's vision and direction clearly brought needed change and outcomes to Ceridian. The
company's success lies in a balance of understanding the organization's purpose and
executing on needed business deliverables to fulfill that purpose.
Question Identify the four important drivers in this case from internal and external perpective sources. Link to perspective theory to support leadership decisions
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