1
Boost Affaires
2
Groupe SKYSPA
3
Ayuda
4
Québec Performance Gymnastics Club
5
Services Progressifs, health personnel placement
6
Dialecto Web
7
Standard Life
8
Café Vittoria
1
External cold calling service
BOOST Affaires’ CEO, Isabelle Dion, has lead the business growth to a level at which managing it by herself was no longer possible. An employee who joined several years ago had taken on part of the responsibilities, but the workload was to great and it was challenging for them to find time to coordinate their efforts and maintain a steady growth.
Talent Strategie was mandated to identify solutions and see to their implementation. After analysing the situation and the existing team’s potential, a recommendation was made and implemented. The new structure that was adopted lead to the promotion of two employees to managerial roles, and they received coaching support to develop their leadership styles. A complete review of the sales commission scheme was implemented to support the new structure. Finally, a new performance management approach was implemented and tied to compensation.
The CEO was able to step back and work on strategic planning and lead ambitious but realistic expansion projects.
Overall communication, as well as employees’ stress and satisfaction levels were improved significantly.
Despite the COVID pandemic that lasted through the mandate, all objectives set for the period, including sales targets, were surpassed, and they were ambitious.
The business planned to open a 2nd office within one year after the mandate was completed.
2
Exterior Spas
Groupe SKYSPA’s management team wanted to define their Mission, Vision and values. The Vice President of human resources had a lot on her plate to support the fast growth of the team, including hiring a whole new staff for Förena spa, with a planned opening in the following year, so she called on Talent Strategie’s services to lead that exercise.
Delivering a key-in-hand Mission / Vision / Values project. In collaboration with the VP, HR, Nathalie Meunier, Talent Strategie’s founder, identified the most strategic employees to involve in this exercise. Ms Meunier then lead a brainstorming session with the team and worked with the Director of Communications to finalise Mission and Vision statements and make the final choice of values that were presented to the management team.
The management team and employees at large found the end results very relatable and decided to use points that came out during the brainstorming session as cornerstones of the entire communication platform, both internally and externally.
3
Exterior billboards operating systems
AYUDA was growing rapidly and did not have an HR function. Recruitment needs were high, and the company and human resources management needed to be better aligned with best practices. The business wanted to hire a competent human resource professional to put an HR department into place and manage it.
Training hiring managers in advanced interviewing techniques and providing hands on support to fill the most urgent roles, while looking for the right full-time HR professional who would take over ASAP.
The HR Director who was hired quickly established her credibility and rapport with the team, implemented sound HR practices, filled remaining open jobs in a timely way, and improved the corporate culture over the following year.
The business thrived and has since been acquired by its largest Canadian competitor.
4
Sports Club
Québec Performance Gymnastics was created through merging several gymnastics clubs based in the Quebec City area. The Executive Director and Board of Directors wanted to bring uniformity to the compensation of employees who initially worked in different clubs.
Perform a job evaluation for all roles in the organisation and produce a clear compensation policy and salary scales that took into consideration Quebec City’s cost of living, salaries in competing gymnastics clubs and the scarcity of talent with gymnic knowledge. Nathalie Meunier also provided guidance to write the message that was sent to explain the process to all employees and demonstrated how overall equity was achieved. The salary equity compliance obligations became due during the project. The regulatory postings were prepared and the salary scales resulting from the compensation projects are used to maintain salary equity going forward.
The new salary scales were deemed fair by all employees and the salary equity compliance exercise was completed on time.
Satisfied client testimony : "Nathalie guided us through a complete review of our organization’s compensation. Wow is the best word that comes to mind to qualify this collaboration! She has a wonderful way of explaining the technical aspects of the topic, which establishes a relationship of trust from the onset. Available and generous with a smile, our collaboration was extraordinary from beginning to end! Thanks again Nathalie for your precious advice! " Cathy Bélanger, Treasurer on the Board of Directors of Club Québec Performance
5
Placement services specialised in the health sector
The then newly appointed President had just bought the business from his father, who founded the company, and was seeking support and guidance to implement needed organisational changes. Some of the employees had worked in the business since before the President’s birth, so he wanted to establish his own brand of leadership and credibility in his new role.
After assessing the work atmosphere and existing team’s potential, recommendations were presented and implemented. Important changes were brought to the structure and to individual roles, to make better use of everyone’s strengths. A strategic planning exercise was led and tied to a new performance management approach.
The President has assumed his leadership role with confidence and surrounded himself with a strong management team that complement his own strengths.
Revenues, which were already at several million dollars when Talent Strategie first got involved, more than doubled over the next 3 years.
4 years after the start of the mandate, Services Progressifs acquired its largest Canadian competitor to become the largest provider of health personnel placement services in Canada.
6
Web content agency
Dialecto Web’s Founder and CEO had been expertly managing the business’ growth for several years. She was assigning mandates to a selection of highly capable and trustworthy external contractors. The business needed to hire full-time employees to continue its growth while maintaining the high level of quality that clients had come to expect.
The CEO called on Talent Strategie to define the best profiles to complement hers and free some of her time to pursue business development and sales, while concentrating on the most strategic mandates and business areas. The mandate started with producing job descriptions for key roles with a competency profile that would ensure success. Ads were then produced to target the right candidates and the CEO was accompanied throughout the hiring process.
Two highly performing employees were hired, allowing the CEO to continue leading the business’s growth.
7
Insurance Services
In 2013, Standard Life was owned and managed by it’s Head Office located in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company had the ambitious project of taking its 600-people technology department to a leadership position in Canada, both in terms of technological advancement and team structure. A Chief Information Officer was appointed and given the mandate. A matrix structure was defined by the internal human resources team but assigning existing and new employees to all the new roles was a gigantic task that the internal recruitment team was not equipped to handle. Standard Life’s HR management hired Talent Strategie to work hand in hand with the CIO at filling all the new roles, which included several Vice-presidents, Assistant Vice Presidents, and Manager roles.
An internal recruitment campaign was first conducted to appoint all qualified existing employees to new roles. The remaining roles were then filled by external candidates. During the 9-month mandate, 30 managerial roles were filled by the consultant assigned to the project.
When Manulife acquired Standard Life in 2014, one of Manulife’s executives told the CIO that a premium of several hundred thousand of dollars was added to the offer to recognise the outstanding quality of Standard Life’s technology operations/team.
Despite Manulife being at advantage to keep their own team members instead of Standard Life’s due to the acquisition, most of the employees who were promoted or hired externally during the project stayed on with Manulife and several have been promoted to higher level jobs since acquisition.
8
Coffee roasting company
The Sherbrooke-based business is growing rapidly. Despite a temporary slowdown due to restaurants and bars having to shut down during COVID, sales forecasts were strong. The person who was handling human resources at the beginning of the mandate was young, very dynamic and showed high potential. To brace for the planned growth, she wanted to forecast upcoming HR support needs and implement new tools to increase her department’s speed of service. However, there was no senior HR professional in the organisation to show her the way. She called on Talent Strategie to guide her through envisioning the department’s future, develop a compensation structure and take the company’s approach to HR to a more strategic level.
Guiding the HR Advisor in defining the future HR department’s and compensation structures, as well as providing ad hoc expert advice on various projects tied to human resources strategy.
The RH Advisor was promoted to a Managerial role and her proposed department’s structure was approved. She has since hired an Industrial Relations expert, got the new salary scales approved and is a key member of the management team.