Case Study 1.

The Company: A FTSE 100 manufacturing and distribution company. The work involved their most efficient manufacturing plant in the world, based in the UK.

The Issue: Unusually this company was coming from a position of strength in that they were already amazingly successful and had pretty good recruitment and HR policies in place. However, they believed that they could do better in terms of initial recruitment and wanted to save money on the training that they gave new recruits only to find out that about 35% of them did not make the grade. After initial discussions it was also decided that they should seek to position themselves as the “Employer of Choice” within their geographical catchment area.

The Solution: Using the WSA to examine the motivations, competencies and behaviours which typified their current high performers, a blue-print was drawn up which defined the type of individuals who were successful in their particular work environment.  Effective and efficient means of measuring these desirable characteristics were then devised with about 80% of them being covered by the WSA itself. After the streamlined recruitment process was agreed, it was then critically appraised from the prospective employees’ point of view and changes were instigated to ensure that every step in the process was a positive one – even to the extent of dealing positively with individuals who were not successful through insightful and honest WSA feedback.

The Outcome: The new process, with the WSA as a central and integral part, was found to be exceptionally effective and reduced ‘wrong’ selection decisions to 16%.  Importantly, those who went through the process, both successful and unsuccessful, reported that it had been an enlightening and positive experience for them.  Indeed, the HR Manager reported that quite a few unsuccessful candidates stated a desire to re-apply once they had dealt with the issues identified and could demonstrate this.  The entire process was deemed by the client to be a major success and was incorporated into the information given to internal people from other manufacturing plants throughout the world during frequent fact-finding visits.