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