Challenge

A theme park had been open for less than three years and was dealing with perceptions of it not being a fun place to go – despite great awareness of its existence. Customers who visited the theme park were lackluster in their satisfaction and perception of a positive value for price paid. As a result, this theme park wasn’t meeting its financial goals.

Solution

In partnership with marketing experts, we executed the following:

• Conducted a series of interviews/focus groups with external guests and internal employees to clarify and pinpoint key market issues and challenges of delivering a positive guest experience
• Facilitated a series of work sessions with top executive leadership who: 1) reestablished the strategy in an enhanced brand that better aligned with the strengths of the theme park and guest desires; and 2) set long-term strategic goals to reinforce the brand

Result

Within a year, the theme park was in the black. Key measures such as attendance, guest spending, guest satisfaction and perceived value dramatically improved. A by-product of our work was the increase in employee engagement, satisfaction and retention. This theme park became the benchmark for the parent company.

Result Spotlight – Organization (Re)Design (with structural change)

Challenge

A large Fortune 100 company with multiple divisions and lines of businesses was concerned about the exorbitant spending on training. Labor costs and costs associated with the immediate lost productivity costs of leaders and employees attending training prevented the company from experiencing a strong return on investment. Their goal was to decrease costs to conduct training while increasing the relevance and effectiveness of training initiatives.

Solution

To address the situation, we did the following:

• Conducted a series of interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders, clients and training employees to identify gaps, local requirements and global opportunities
• Facilitated a group discussion with identified “change champions” to develop a new training structure
• Established and worked with an internal project team who piloted and implemented the new structure
• Provided leadership and organizational coaching to the new leader of this organization to ensure sustainability

Result

Immediately, labor costs associated with training were dramatically reduced from both a training headcount perspective and significantly decreased number of hours that leaders and employees spent in training. Over time, the centralized structure resulted in training quality improvements because best practices from different areas were shared and incorporated, resulting in improved employee/leader performance and decreased costs associated with retraining.

Result Spotlight – Organization (Re)Design (without changing structure)

Challenge

A zoological institution that had three distinct departments that were not aligned or cooperating with each other. While all shared a passion for the mission of the zoo and for conservation, there was an inordinate amount of time spent on employees in conflict. This affected internal efficiency, employee satisfaction and, ultimately, the quality of the customer experience.

Solution

To address the situation, we did the following:

• Conducted an assessment which revealed that while the organization’s mission was shared, the three departments had very distinct goals and professional standards.
• Determined that given those constraints, the essential structure really couldn’t be changed.
• Initiated a strategic partnering project for teams to identify the key cross-functional processes and develop synergies for partnering at essential decision points.
• Conducted work sessions among the departments for teams to develop solutions for improved cooperation and decide on standards to guide their interactions with one another.

Result

Employees responded quickly to the leaders decision to initiate dialogue and engage them in the resolution process. Conflicts between departments dramatically decreased, which had the positive effect of increasing efficiency. As conflicts diminished, employees discovered new ways to cooperate and, together, they developed new programs to greatly enhance the customer experience. Beyond the scope of the original goals, this initiative dramatically improved overall customer satisfaction and increased the customers’ intention to return to the zoo.

Result Spotlight – Change Initiative Planning

Challenge

A large global organization was integrating a new enterprise software system to change the way human resources, finance and information services captured and utilized data. Goals for this initiative included: increase efficiency and consistency across the company, decrease bureaucracy, and improve the employee experience. Accelera was contracted to help ensure that this change was executed effectively and efficiently.

Solution 

We consulted with our corporate contact to identify and empower the project team to do the following:

• Articulate project goals
• Define the ways the new system was different from the other one
• Determine the impacts to workflow and other downstream impacts of the change
• Decide what new training employees would need
• Create a detailed and meaningful project plan
• Develop measures to track progress and ensure sustainability
• Create hyper-care plans for post-implementation
• Define roles and responsibilities of project team members

Result

The client considered it a huge success. Change was implemented efficiently, with minimal work disruption and a higher than expected degree of employee support and buy-in.

Result Spotlight – Agricultural Sector

Challenge

North America’s leading and most respected fresh produce distributor had decided upon a growth strategy dependent upon new business acquisitions. Senior Management realized that they did not have the infrastructure of key homegrown talent needed to fill senior roles and ensure a successful roll-out of this strategy.

Solution

We designed and implemented a custom executive development program to increase the pool size of qualified candidates for future executive positions.

Our custom program included:

• Creating a customized framework that identified and clarified the attributes and behaviors of the most effective executives at this company
• Targeting the high- potential candidates that would be a part of this program
• Creating a customized 360 degree assessment and individual report to help high-potential candidates identify areas of strength and opportunity
• Delivering personalized coaching sessions for each participant to: review their report, develop clear and measureable developmental goals and identify actions for consistently improving their effectiveness
• Identifying common areas of opportunity that the group collectively needed to improve upon and delivering team training that increased the ROE (return on effort) of participants
• Establishing mentor relationships between program participants and internal senior leaders
• Creating and facilitating a virtual university that included tele-seminars and online discussions to provide real-time application and deeper integration of content
• Providing a year end “commencement” experience to reinforce the concepts and development that had taken place over the year and creating ongoing momentum by challenging the leaders to integrate this leadership improvement process into corporate culture by developing leaders within their subordinate teams

Result

This program surpassed company expectations – dramatically increasing the pool of qualified key role candidates enabling the company to be more than adequately prepared to acquire additional business units. Additionally, employees are reporting a significant improvement in the quality of their leadership experience.

In addition to meeting and exceeding the initial project objectives, Top Talent Edge was able to go beyond the development of future executive talent pools of individuals to actually develop future executive teams. This was accomplished through the facilitation of relationships both vertically and horizontally – increasing the natural mentoring and education that participants gained from direct access to senior leadership. Additionally, communication channels were established to foster the sharing of best practices with their peers to develop solutions to improve the business on the whole…not just their own individual areas.

Result Spotlight – Hospitality Sector

Challenge

A large hotel company sought help in improving the number of booked room nights originating in its reservation center.

Solution

We designed a custom program to equip and empower reservation agents to become more proactive in selling.

Our custom solution included the following:

• Helping the executive team define what the ideal interaction between the customers and the reservation agent would include – in terms of both the focus of the communication and the outcomes to be delivered
• Assisting the team in developing a specific profile that defined the attributes and competencies a Reservation Sales Agent would need to successfully deliver upon the executive team’s expectations
• Partnering with internal Human Resources leaders to reframe the “talent team” strategies such as modifying the compensation structure to incentive-based pay to properly support the desired outcome
• Working with the team to develop an implementation roadmap that included detailed change management and training to move them from their current status to the achievement of their new performance goals

Result

Sales for booked room nights dramatically improved while also improving the guest satisfaction quotient. Additional benefits included creating a culture of high performance and motivation for those working in the reservations unit. The improved culture and results-based compensation made this unit one of the highest rated in the organization for employee satisfaction and engagement.