The Boys and Girls Clubs of Marin and Southern Sonoma Counties in California recently hired The Pendolino Group to help out with their Strategic Visioning.

The visioning methodology we used helped them to understand their current issues and create tangible deliverables for their future strategy.

“Some people may argue that outside facilitators are unnecessary, but The Pendolino Group is living proof that’s not the case,” said Victor A. Deksnys Gallagher, EVP and BGCMSS Executive Board Member.

“Bringing in The Pendolino Group was a critical part of the process for us. As an external facilitator they had a much more objective viewpoint and helped us to see our strategic vision so much more clearly.”

BC Clinical and Support Services (BCCSS) is a not-for-profit organization in British Columbia that provides various support services to the British Columbia (Canada) health care system. BCCSS maintains a high-volume employee service center that supports more than 90,000 employees representing three client companies, each of which is governed by four different collective agreements.

The challenge for BCCSS was that their employee service centers were losing business process efficiency due to the policy variations that exist across the three companies along with the requirements of the four different collective agreements. In addition, the volume of transactions was growing rapidly, reaching nearly 30,000 transactions per month. And, they needed to increase the level of accuracy in every transaction. Lastly, they were experiencing a high staff turnover in the service center due to on the job stress and challenges with onboarding new employees.

BCCSS made a decision to implement the cloud-based Promapp process mapping system to visualize and simplify their business processes and to centralize access to all standard operating procedures, tools, and templates used by the team. The Pendolino Group was brought in to assist in process improvements and system implementation, and to coach the team on best practices to remove major inefficiencies.

As we implemented Promapp across the organization, we delivered training in the use of Lean Service Methodologies to streamline and simplify newly designed processes. We helped the team begin to centralize all materials into Promapp, establish a sustainable culture of continuous improvement, and quickly put the tools in place to support their vision of client-centric self-service and first-time call resolution.

BCCSS is now well on their way to meet their goals of:

• Improved quality the employee service experience
• True client self-service and employee engagement with a simple to access tool (Promapp)
• Ability to absorb increases in transaction volume with no reduction in quality
• Increased first-time call resolution, and overall reduced errors and rework
• Faster (and stress free) onboarding of new hires to the team, and anticipation of a reduction in early stage turnover

At the conclusion of their initial configuration and lean process design workshop (two days), they had completed documentation of three out of their five highest volume transactions within the Promapp tool. They had also begun applying process improvements resulting in higher team engagement and enthusiasm, which is now further reflected in positive employee experience and service level feedback — ultimately contributing to an improved company culture and employee engagement levels.

“I have heard nothing but positive feedback from the team as the training session was managed in an effective and informative manner. We all appreciated your knowledge, professionalism and willingness to jump in, answer questions, leveraging different learning techniques and set us up for success.” – Shiva Badiee, BCCSS

Zazzle’s manufacturing division hired The Pendolino Group to take all of its leaders through an extensive Frontline Leadership program that reinforced the company’s unique leadership culture and instilled a common leadership methodology.

All Zazzle personnel, from department leads to the vice president, participated in an eight-module, five-week training program.

“The training The Pendolino Group delivered was targeted, fun and actionable! You can’t get better than that when asking a leadership team to set aside their time ‘off the floor’ to learn skills and develop a common language around leadership. Our employees thought this was the most valuable time they had ever spent in learning the art and science behind leadership. Bravo!” — Julie Pestka-Schardt, Human Resources Director, Zazzle

Eleven Inc., a leading advertising agency based in San Francisco, initially hired The Pendolino Group to provide training in Performance Management.

After the successful roll-out of this training, Eleven decided to engage The Pendolino Group to provide a comprehensive five-month Leadership Development Program — not only to provide leadership training, but to develop a lexicon of performance management concepts with which to readily identify how to optimize their unique performance-management culture.

“I will be a reference for you anytime. You are amazing. THANK YOU.” — Heidi Taglio, Human Resources, Eleven Inc.

GetInsured, an online insurance aggregator and software company, hired The Pendolino Group to provide integrated compensation market analysis and career path structures to support their fast-growing organization.

As a software and content company with 250+ employees, slated to double in size within 18 months, GetInsured required an equally sharp and fast moving consulting team.

They wanted to quickly assess the current Total Rewards landscape and implement an integrated compensation structure that included:

• Job descriptions
• Leveling criteria
• An engaging performance management system
• Salary, incentive, and equity ranges

All elements needed to be equally creative and compelling to match their highly engaging culture.

We had an immediate impact by partnering with managers throughout the organization to design and implement an innovative Compensation Strategy and the accompanying set of programs needed to support a dynamic short-term and sustainable long-term growth trajectory.

Within a few short weeks, a vigorous framework for all aspects of the total rewards program was established and introduced across the company. The framework included instructor-led manager training sessions designed to transform the leadership to leverage all aspects of the employee experience at GetInsured.

Throughout the project, we provided the tactical resources to ensure that the Compensation and Career Path related programs were brought into alignment with the business strategy. This was accomplished within an 8-week window, matching the speed and commitment of GetInsured to its clients and allowing the company to successfully continue its rapid growth path.

GetInsured has retained The Pendolino Group in an ongoing capacity to undertake continuing market research and ad-hoc assessments.