On Your Mark: Shining Examples

Shining Examples

Employee Loyalty: Where the Magic Is
Pacific Bell/SBC Success

On Your Mark recently provided consulting and executive coaching to a division of a large financial services company.

This division's problem was that it had the highest employee turnover in the company, a 120% turnover every 10 months.

The division's business objectives were clear. It needed to transform the way it managed its people, and to transform their working environment from one that was driving people away, to one that brought out their best.

The head of the division says that, in the past, he hadn't been fond of consulting firms and what they offer. But On Your Mark provided pragmatic leadership coaching that had management look at the fundamental structure of the business, and how people were behaving as a result of that structure.

Previously, 75% of new hires would leave in any given 90-day period. As part of On Your Mark's coaching, the division head gave his managers a clear objective. At the end of 90 days he wanted all 140 of the division's new hires to still be with the company, working well with colleagues, customers, and managers.

The solution was a 3-phase coaching and training process that addressed several crucial issues including how people were treated and how they were measured. An important part of the process was simply paying attention to people, having managers become people's coaches, trainers, leaders, and enablers. Managers made a commitment to be accountable TO their people, rather than FOR their people.

The results: in the first 90-days, the division only lost 2 of its 140 new hires. In a 10-month period, the division's attrition dropped by 46%.

Before, the division head says, the company had a work environment that trained the humanity out of people. Today they have an environment where people want to come to work and produce results.

The division head has seen that, if he serves his employee constituents first, they will take care of the customer. And that will make the shareholders happy.

"I have learned," he says, "that if you build loyalty, that's where the magic is."

To find out more about how On Your Mark's programs bring positive results, check out our Client Testimonials.

Next Step: Navigational Tools for Professional Success and Personal Fulfillment

From 1996-2000 Pacific Bell/SBC has sponsored On Your Mark's Next Step: Navigational Tools for Career Success.In this now streamlined 2-day career reinvention program. Employees learned how to:

operate as leaders who take a broader perspective in their jobs
think more like an entrepreneur rather than "a person with a job"
identify and communicate their personal value in the workplace
identify their self-fulfilling contribution beyond their job titles
operate from a position of generating action, rather than reacting to events

All of these new skills helped Pacific Bell people market themselves to others in their company, a crucial but often forgotten element of career self-reliance.

A year after people had taken Next Step, On Your Mark surveyed the program's participants, and here is how they responded:

56% of the people who had had plans to leave Pacific Bell said Next Step helped them see opportunities inside the organization.

When asked to rank their job satisfaction before Next Step, 50% said they were very satisfied. When asked to rank their job satisfaction after Next Step, 86% said they were very satisfied.

75% of the people said that Next Step is helpful in retaining talent.

Next Step is just one On Your Mark program that addresses one of the most critical business issues today, employee retention.