Challenge:

Update Paid-Time-Off Policy

A leading Chicago not-for-profit was concerned that its paid-time-off (PTO) policy was failing to meet employee expectations. It needed help addressing the problem in order to compete effectively for talent in a highly competitive metro market.

Solution:

Conduct Customized Survey Assessing Paid-Time-Off-Policies of Peer Organizations

To improve its paid-time-off programs, the NFP needed to know how members of its peer group were handling paid-time-off benefits. To gain this insight, The Chatfield Group conducted a tailored survey to assess the paid-time-off policies of regional cultural organizations and private industry. The engagement included survey design and administration as well as the analysis of survey findings and the reporting of survey results.

In particular, the survey looked at how organizations handle holidays, vacations, personal days and sick pay as well as short- and long-term disability, bereavement pay and leaves of absence.

Tags: Time-Off Benefits — Custom Surveys

Challenge:

Boost Marketing Impact from National Survey of Practitioners

A world leader in professional services had been taking a bare-bones approach to reporting on its annual survey of practitioners. The firm sought greater marketing visibility from the ongoing project.

Solution:

Create High-Impact Marketing Vehicle for Interpretive Insight

The Chatfield Group suggested transforming the survey report into a high-profile marketing vehicle that would integrate the firm’s insights and expertise with annual survey results. What’s more, The Chatfield Group provided the editorial resources to achieve this objective on a multi-year basis. Today, this much-anticipated annual survey report is viewed as must-reading within the profession.

Tags: Marketing — Custom Surveys — Editorial

Challenge:

Strengthen a Best Place to Work

A top-ranked employer in a major metro area wanted to know what it could do to enhance its already strong corporate culture.

Solution:

Conduct Employee Focus Group to Identify Areas for Improvement

To determine how best to fine-tune an already strong culture, The Chatfield Group conducted a series of employee focus groups to pinpoint areas of opportunity. Feedback from these focus groups suggested the need to strengthen communications. In particular, employees said organizational silos were stifling communication across business lines, hampering the ability of employees to build cross-functional product knowledge, and interfering with career advancement.

Focus group participants cited the need for a performance management process so employees could get the feedback they need to improve. And they highlighted their interest in formalized training and development opportunities, adding that managers, in particular, should improve their listening skills to do a better job eliciting ideas and feedback from employees.

Key Focus Group Recommendations

After an analysis of focus group feedback, The Chatfield Group presented specific recommendations to the company, including the following:

• Strengthen Branding & Marketing: Update marketing materials to reflect a shared vision and consistent messages … Build deeper awareness of products and services at all levels…
• Break Down Organizational Barriers: Build cross-functional alliances and teamwork to combat organizational silos that stifle communication across business lines … Expand personal relationships across functions…
• Strengthen Communications: Increase straight-talking business updates from key executives … Create opportunities for employees to connect face-to-face across departments and levels and to offer suggestions…
• Give Employees First Crack at Open Positions: Update the job-posting process to give employees first consideration for open positions … Require that jobs be posted before recruiting externally…
• Provide Focused Training and Development Opportunities: Target leadership development … Provide 360-feedback to high-potential managers … Train executives and managers on listening skills, on providing feedback to employees, and on facilitating employee suggestions … Provide work-flow training to help employees in process-oriented jobs identify process improvements…
• Require Goal-Setting and Performance Reviews Firm-Wide: Hold top executives accountable for reducing organizational silos and for improving communications … Ensure that managers take responsibility for cascading business goals across their departments and for conducting annual reviews with their direct reports…
• Communicate About Pay Practices: Provide employees with clear communications about the company’s pay policies and how pay is linked to performance…

Tags: Culture — Focus Groups — Organizational Structure — Employee Retention — Training — Career Development — Process Improvement — Performance Reviews

Challenge:

Reposition General-Interest Business Magazine

A major professional organization concluded that its flagship magazine needed to be revamped in order to be more relevant to senior management readers.

The organization, which serves an international marketplace, also sought to set the magazine apart from competitive publications.

Solution:

Create Forum for the Exchange of Strategic Insights

To differentiate the magazine and strengthen its value to readers, the Chatfield Group recommended that the organization reposition the magazine as a strategic forum posing difficult questions and addressing critical issues.

By creating a new vehicle for serious discussion, debate and analysis, we suggested, the organization would create a valued resource to help companies achieve sustainable competitive advantage and maximize shareholder value. The organization’s senior management and board of directors agreed with our thinking and adopted our recommendation.

The Chatfield Group partnered with the organization to reposition the magazine. We revised the thrust of the publication to focus on corporate and line-of-business strategies featuring insights from industry leaders and experts. And we developed a compelling new name for the magazine as well as a refreshing new format with strong visual appeal.

Tags: Editorial

Challenge:

Create State-of-the-Art Website to Attract Rental & Real Estate Prospects

A leading real estate company operating in a major metro market needed to totally revamp its website in order to compete more effectively. It also needed a new graphic identity.

Solution:

Develop Advanced, Interactive Website with Appealing Graphics

As part of a comprehensive rebranding initiative, The Chatfield Group designed a technologically advanced transactional website featuring strong graphics, fresh photography and multiple interactive functions. With its new website, the company can showcase apartments for rent, homes for sale and community information in addition to company policies and procedures.

By employing SQL, ASP.NET, CSS-P and Adobe Flash technologies in website development, The Chatfield Group created a robust technology platform that enables the company to share a wealth of information in a highly organized, easy-to-understand manner. We also added interactive functionality, including mapping and social-networking widgets, to enhance the visitor experience. And we developed a database management system as well as administrative and technical guidelines to facilitate updating by the company’s in-house staff.

In our broader branding engagement with the company, The Chatfield Group developed new visual identity guidelines for the firm and new digital artwork for implementing the new brand consistently across diverse media and consumer touchpoints.

Tags: Websites — Marketing — Branding

Challenge:

Update Compensation Program

A leading cultural institution well-known for its state-of-the-art attractions needed to bring its entire pay & total rewards infrastructure up to date.

Solution:

Compensation Overhaul

In a top-to-bottom restructuring of the organization’s compensation program, The Chatfield Group:

• Rewrote 150 job descriptions and ensured compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) using multiple valid data sources
• Matched jobs to market, including both for-profit and not-for-profit positions, and set up an easy to understand documentation system to facilitate future updates
• Clarified the organization’s pay philosophy, using input from key managers across the organization
• Reviewed its existing pay structure to identify areas for improvement
• Developed a new pay structure, a supporting cost analysis, and guidelines for implementation
• Drafted key messages and talking points for top-down rollout of the program to employees at all levels, describing the scope of the new compensation program and how it would affect individual employees

Tags: Job Descriptions — FLSA — Pay for Performance

Challenge:

Update NFP’s Compensation Structure to Address Budget Concerns

A not-for-profit (NFP) youth organization needed to realign its approach to pay and compensation in order to address significant budgeting constraints.

Solution:

Conduct Compensation Study to Facilitate Program Changes

To provide a solid foundation for change, The Chatfield Group conducted a salary market analysis for the NFP in which we analyzed all non-exempt positions and recommended changes to the organization’s job grade structure and salary ranges. We also introduced a pay-for-performance matrix to help manage salary costs.

Tags: Market Studies — FLSA — Pay for Performance

Challenge:

University Needed Help Getting the Word Out on their New Pay System

Faced with significant time constraints, a large metropolitan university needed comprehensive communications support for the rollout of its new compensation program.

Solution:

Outsource Rapid-Rollout Communications Support for New Compensation Program

Knowing that time was limited, the university retained The Chatfield Group to produce the broad range of communications materials it needed to support the imminent rollout of its new compensation program. Working in a compressed time frame, Chatfield’s compensation and communications team created a wide range of communications materials for the University’s HR staff and managers to use in discussing the new grade structures and salary ranges and in fielding questions about the new compensation structure. The university also made this information available on its intranet.

Key deliverables in this engagement included a Personalized Employee Statement as well as detailing how specific changes would affect individual employees; Talking Points for Managers – key information for managers to convey to their direct reports about the new compensation program; three different sets of scripted talking points for use by managers in one-on-one meetings with employees whose new pay is either above, below, or within the new pay range; a PowerPoint deck for the university’s compensation staff to explain the new compensation program to managers; and two sets of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and corresponding answers – one for managers and another for employees. In addition, The Chatfield Group produced a description of the university’s Job Families and a Glossary of Key Terms.

Tags: Pay for Performance — Job Descriptions

Challenge:

Restructure Compensation to Support Anticipated Growth

A fast-growing, privately held manufacturer of building materials needed to establish a formal compensation structure to better support its rapid growth and help it transition to a pay-for-performance company philosophy.

Solution:

Design of Comprehensive Compensation Structure

During this engagement, The Chatfield Group teamed with management to restructure roles and reporting relationships. We also wrote job descriptions for every position and market-priced all jobs so they would fall within the company’s new pay structure and salary ranges.

The Chatfield Group worked with management to introduce a formal, performance management program that aligns pay with performance. As part of this program, we designed performance-based incentive plans for both management and sales personnel. We also implemented a 12-month training & communications program to facilitate the company’s transition to a pay-for-performance philosophy.

Tags: Pay for Performance — Organizational Structure — Incentive Plans — Training — Job Descriptions — Market Studies — Performance Reviews

Challenge:

Realign Compensation Structure Following Major Acquisition

A Fortune 500 durable-goods manufacturer had just acquired another global company and needed to align the executive compensation structures of the two companies.

The acquiring company was centralized while the acquired company had numerous decentralized businesses across the globe.

Solution:

Conduct Global Compensation Review to Lay Groundwork for Change

Company management asked The Chatfield Group to develop a single, comprehensive approach to executive compensation that would encompass all of the executive positions at the new, expanded company.

During the engagement, we reviewed the organizational structure globally and updated all job descriptions. We market-priced executive positions on a global basis, making sure that each position accurately reflected its particular industry, business, location, and job market. We aligned grade levels for comparable positions across business units and global regions. And we reviewed every position and grade level with an appropriate HR executive to ensure that the new compensation structure addressed both internal and external job values.

Recognizing that the new, more complex corporate organization would result in more frequent expatriate assignments, The Chatfield Group also conducted a global review of the company’s expatriate compensation practices. Following this review, we created a practical expatriate compensation policy to guide management decisions.

Tags: Pay for Performance — Employee Retention — Job Descriptions — Global HR

Challenge:

Facilitate Open & Transparent Communications about Compensation

A Fortune 100 company wanted to equip its managers and HR professionals with the means to communicate more effectively about compensation. When employees have a good understanding of how they are paid, the company reasoned, they are likely to be more engaged. What’s more, employee survey data indicated that company employees were eager to gain a better understanding of compensation issues, and the company was eager to share insights about its Pay for Performance philosophy and its approach to total rewards.

Solution:

Intranet-Based Compensation Toolkit

To help determine how to strengthen its compensation communications, the company turned to The Chatfield Group, which offered in-depth expertise in compensation, communications, and website development – the three areas deemed critical by the company’s project leaders.

At the outset of the project, a task force of senior HR managers representing all of the company’s U.S. divisions developed guiding principles for their planned compensation toolkit: 1) Discuss pay & compensation in a broad, “total rewards” context; 2) Use clear, concise language to make the Toolkit easy to read and understand; 3) Use a logical and attractive format; 4) Provide fast, accurate and consistent answers to employee questions about pay and compensation; and 5) Keep the information contained in the Toolkit up-to-date.

After assessing the pros & cons of print, PDF and intranet delivery options, the project team opted for an intranet-based toolkit which could facilitate clear, fast and easy access to information presented in an attractive format that could also be easily updated. In its final form, the toolkit features drop-down interactivity and a search function providing quick access to toolkit content, answers to commonly asked employee questions, and a glossary with quick-reading definitions for technical terms.

An immediate success, the intranet-based comp toolkit received more than 1,000 “hits” during its first two days of availability.

Tags: Pay for Performance — Websites