Most experienced with culture change, Andrea has transformed organizations by using Values Based Leadership as the premise. Throughout her career, Andrea has saved organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs by developing management capabilities to make the right decisions at all stages of employee relations opportunities. In fact, in over 25 years, Andrea has never lost a Human Rights Claim, Employment Standards Challenge, or Wrongful Dismissal case.
Having the right values, clearly articulated, defined, communicated and practiced each and every day is the cornerstone to a successful and positive culture. If you already have values, we will work with you to ensure all your programs and management practices are shaped around these values. If you don’t have values, we will help you define what is important to your business, develop a successful communication strategy to ensure everyone is aware of and understand the values, and then most importantly, ensure your programs and practices live the values every day. It takes courage to practice values based leadership – we will work with your team to ensure they have what it takes to make those tough decision and walk the talk. Think of it this way – what if, you first define your values, and then you write your handbook, create your recognition program, design your compensation strategy, develop your talent management program, etc.. all around these values? That’s how you define and determine the course of your culture, not the other way around.
Transforming, or just even modifying your workplace culture sounds like a daunting task. Understanding employee engagement is essential to determining where you are and more importantly where you want to be. Evolving a culture does not happen on its own – you need a deliberate and intentional plan to measure success. We will help develop a strategy specific to your needs that ensure employees live the vision and values every day. Whether we implement a full-blown employee engagements survey or we conduct round table sessions with your employees, we will tailor the approach most suited to your needs.
One of the scariest parts of change is change itself. Breaking Glass was created to help organizations navigate through change and ensure buy-in from all stakeholders. We will assist you in defining the change required, build a plan of execution, communication and sustainability. If your organization needs to go through a restructuring to either reduce cost or gain better efficiency, we can help develop the strategy and implement the changes with your team. Sometimes, you may need to break some glass in order to affect the desired change. We will help you break the glass and clean it up.
Invariably you are faced with tough employee relations issues on a regular basis that require progressive discipline, investigations, mediation and may result in termination, or better yet, a highly motivated and successful employee. These are not only time consuming but can be difficult and upsetting for your managers and employees. Our expertise in employee relations will help you understand the issues, navigate through the process and reach an appropriate resolution quickly and without legal risk. Getting these wrong can have significant cost and morale implications. We will support your managers through the entire process, giving them the courage, tools and skills to manage the most difficult situations in the future. We can also assist in developing termination/severance packages.
The only way to achieve your objectives is to ensure you have the right people on your bus, each and every day. We will work with you to assess your recruitment strategy, identify opportunities to enhance the quality of candidates sourced, assist in the full recruitment cycle in partnership with your existing team, and provide guidance on strategies to retain your key players. Finding the right “fit” is one of the hardest things to do as a manager – let us help determine not only who is a great fit but more important what is the best fit for your teams.
By understanding the current level of capability and needs in your organization, we can develop a training and development strategy to help you better achieve your objectives. Andrea has developed an HR101 program that managers love attending as it grounds them in the necessary skills to be effective, doing so with real life case scenarios, hands on learning, and lots of fun! We will also help create development plans for key players in the organization so they can be ready for their next role when the time comes. We can also provide a strategy to ensure a strong pipeline of talent is identified, through succession planning and talent management programs. Andrea works personally with executives to ensure they are the best version of themselves each day for their teams. She will help leaders identify and strengthen their core leadership capabilities through feedback, guidance and concrete action plans to help them and their organization achieve their goals.
If you find yourself without an HR leader for a period of time, or need help assessing what type of leader or structure you need in HR, we can provide interim support at the leadership level to ensure nothing falls through the cracks in the meantime.
Whether you have newly hired/promoted HR practitioners, or you want to ramp up the capabilities on your HR team, we can provide regular coaching and development to them to strengthen their HR knowledge and skills. Andrea has herself developed and seen promoted numerous HR professionals in her 25 year career, and loves to share her learnings of what works and what doesn’t work with them in a motivating, fun and non-threatening manner. We can create a plan best suited to your needs, whether it’s on-site, on-call, or ad-hoc coaching.
Whether you’ve not had an HR department in the past and recognized the need for one now, or you need to reassess the design and efficiency of your current HR department, we help you create the right structure for your organization. Your HR department should be designed to best motivate, engage and develop all employees. After all, they are the conscience of your organization. We will define the optimal solution, train and coach members of the team, even help source new members if needed.
Whether you’re facing an issue with possible theft, fraud, workplace or sexual harassment, we will conduct a thorough and objective investigation to resolve the issue swiftly, so as to restore your workplace to continue to be effective. We have experience in all facets of investigations, ensuring you a thorough and lawful approach to find an appropriate resolution quickly and fairly for all parties involved.
Many organizations equate performance management with annual performance reviews. However, performance management is a continuous cycle of goal setting, measuring performance against the goals, communicating and setting expectations, and often culminating in a regular review process (quarterly, semi annual or annual). By having a clear program in place you are far more likely to achieve your overall company objectives. We can help tweak your existing program or design a program to maximize communication, feedback and results.
Instead of having lawyers prepare your policies and handbook that could put anyone to sleep while they read the reams of pages, we can create a handbook that is aligned with your company values and culture. A great handbook sets the tone for all new and existing employees around what it “feels” like to work in your organization. We can help communicate the expectations and boundaries for employees in a fun and positive way, while still ensuring legal compliance and protection in the event you are challenged by an employee in the future.
If you’re not sure if you have the right organizational structure, we can review your current org design and provide guidance on the most effective approach to meeting your objectives. We will look at spans and controls, job descriptions and functions, management accountability, etc. We will help optimize the structure to give authority and decision making to those deserving of it.
While we are not experts on compensation forensics, we have designed many compensation programs to achieve peak performance. We strongly believe in a pay for performance culture and therefore can help you design or modify a compensation program with the right mix of base and variable for sales and non sales employees. We can assist in evaluating your market positioning and determining where you may have some gaps.