Case Studies

Solutions Culture have extensive experience delivering the latest technical information to automotive technicians across a range of European and American brands.

Sally Crowe – Recruitment Expert, 31 January 2017

Why did you decide to work with Employee Matters?
Employee Matters were recommended to me by several colleagues who I respect.

What was the problem that you were trying to solve?
I had very specific and unique requirements for the type of person I required to grow my business. Not getting the right person for me would likely end the business.

What was the impact or result for you from working with Employee Matters?
I got the right support and information to begin with. That set the stage for finding the right person at the right price and validating that they were, in fact, the right person for MY business. They then helped me onboard them the right way.

What has surprised you about working with Employee Matters?
Having dealt with outsourced HR teams in the past I know that working with such teams can be a mixed bag. You never know what you are going to get till you get to the critical points of the process, and then, if they are below par, it is too hard and too costly to change. I found that Employee Matters cared as much as I did about getting the right person for me, and when it came to the critical points in the process, they literally exceeded all my expectations. It was the difference between having an HR professional (because they are all “professionals” right?) and having an HR ally who treated my business as if it really mattered.

Who do you think would get value from working with either a Recruitment or Employee Expert?
Anyone who is tired of the same old ‘rinse & repeat HR Solutions’ – Employee Matters puts the ‘Human’ back in to HR.

On a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being Highly Unlikely and 5 being Highly Likely, how likely would you recommend working with Employee Matters to others?
5+++ without hesitation. The best decision I made in my recruitment process was to use Employee Matters from the beginning.

Founded in 2010 by CEO Tony Brooks, Feynbrook started life as a Google Apps partner – helping Amnesty International Australia move email and collaboration to the cloud. Feynbrook are known for bringing NetDocuments to Australia.

Helen Jesse  -Employment Expert 30 July 2018

Tony, why did you decide to work with Employee Matters?
I had just started growing a team, and I didn’t really know how to be compliant. The individuals were from a corporate background that had big, corporate HR departments, and I wanted to make sure that I was giving a consistent level of service and also managing my risks in employing people. I started off with Natasha’s book and then the Hire To Fire toolkit and then our first engagement was to hire an admin person.

The main problems you were trying to solve were compliance and recruitment. What was the impactful result for you of working with Employee Matters?

Twofold – Firstly we got good people – it took a little while to find a suitable project Manager, but we got somebody good. The second part is having Employee Matters help me build the team.

The Employee Expert sort of integrates into your business then?
Yes, and she knows our business very well – to the point where Helen and my Project Manager are friends almost. It’s very touching to see.

Great. What surprised you about working with Employee Matters? Maybe you want to talk about the story about Julia leaving.

I was told that my Project Manager – Julia – was going on maternity leave in a few weeks’ time. We met with Helen, our Employee Expert, about a week ago to go through the logistics of that and how it might play out. Our business is in a great spot and those outcomes could be favourable or not for Julia because it’s quite an uncertain time for her and for the company. Helen was really good at logistically managing that process and getting us both to a point where we know what might happen and we’ve got our framework in place to manage – that as Julia goes away on leave and hopefully comes back.

Julia caught me later in the day and said that Helen had given her a little gift for herself and the baby and had asked for photographs of the new baby. It was genuine – it wasn’t a customer thing. It was a genuine interest in Julia, so much so, that if it doesn’t work out for Julia, Helen said “Look, irrespective of whether you come back to us or not, just call me and I’ll help you”. I thought that was excellent.

So how did that make you feel?
It made me feel better because Julia felt better as it sort of took the sting out of the whole situation. It just makes both of us much more comfortable.

And who do you think would get value from working with either a Recruitment Expert or an Employee Expert from Employee Matters?
People that haven’t got the first clue of building a team is probably a good start. And those that want to do it quickly and in a compliant way.

Fantastic. Is there anything you think you would like to leave us with on what we talked about? Any other comments?
It’s just a really good model that Employee Matters has built up, and I highly recommend them and their experts. It’s hard to describe but it’s not a logistical model or a transactional relationship. They are part of our team model which is great!

So Employee Matters is a part of your business?
Part of the business but still at a distance. I know that I could phone Helen today with a crisis and she’d make time to meet in the next day or so, but she wouldn’t be trying to get more business – so there’s a really good, open and non-transactional relationship that’s valuable and hard to find.

Is a sustainable real assets investment manager offering leading-edge strategies in forestry, land management, and conservation.

Katie Lintner – Employee Expert, 31 May 2016

What was the state of the HR function when you started?
New Forests had not had a dedicated HR resource before I started, although they did have a good base understanding of HR and had a lot of the essentials in place. So it certainly wasn’t a matter of starting from scratch but there was a lot of work to do to get things like policies and processes updated to current legislation and consistent across teams and offices.

What was their biggest challenge?
Their biggest challenge is moving to a best practice model and the change management process that goes along with it. The company has grown quickly and a more sophisticated and structured HR approach is needed to support the company in its future growth.

What was the thinking behind bringing in Harrisons? How was it done?
One of my first priorities was to put together a learning and development program for New Forests. Training had been on an ad hoc basis and I wanted to find out what the key development needs were from both an individual and organisation point of view before creating a program. Harrison Assessments was recommended as a great holistic tool to determine strengths and development areas across a range of work related traits. We had an all staff retreat coming up which was a great platform for showcasing the results and discussing the HR strategy in more detail. We worked closely with Susan to get all of the debriefs completed face to face.

What was the initial reaction / result?

On the whole, the employees loved it. We had a few that were initially resistant as it can be confronting to see “development” areas that you may not be aware of but Susan did fantastic individual debriefs with each employee which gave them some context to the results and allayed a lot of those concerns. Susan also did a fantastic presentation at our company retreat on the key New Forests results which created a lot of discussion amongst the staff.

What has been the change in the longer term?
This process has given clarity to development areas, which has helped determine the key training areas going forward and build an L&D program. It has also given our employees the drive to be proactive around their development and to talk openly about their development needs and/or interests. Finally, it was a great bonding experience for our employees – they were all sharing results! It gave them an insight into the common traits in the company which means that we can move forward with more understanding of each other and how to tackle traits that may clash with ours.

What other initiatives / achievements have you made since you have been at New Forest?
I’ve updated all of the HR related policies and procedures, put in place new recruitment and induction processes to create more consistency and efficiency as well as better hiring and induction experiences. I have also arranged some critical training and wellness programs for all of our employees.
A quote from Kym: “Having Katie has allowed me to focus on formulating our longer term HR strategy whilst getting our company to a standardised set of HR policies and practices. It has taken the pressure off dealing with many of the day to day issues and brought a professional and thoughtful approach to dealing with a broad range of matters. It has allowed me to set the platform for our executive team in formulating priorities for HR in our business planning and to develop a resource that is well respected and integral to the success of our business.

Is a Rehab Provider that had grown very quickly; they invited us in because they had concerns about the culture that had developed, within the business, over the past couple of years. They also felt that they should update their employment contracts and employee policies. There were also some potential redundancies required.

They knew that they needed some HR support but could not afford – nor did they need, a full time HR Manager. They were keen to understand what their team were thinking as attrition had started to become a problem.

We worked with the business owners to identify what their current state was through an Employee Audit. This allowed us to prioritise the projects based on need and their budget constraints. We conducted one-on-one interviews with every team member and then reviewed and analysed and shared the feedback with the business owners, with some surprising revelations.

Why is the relationship a success for SIS Rehab? – This is a very cost effective way for them to tap into specialist knowledge as and when they need it. They simply purchase a chunk of hours to use over a 12 month period. They have also been able to manage some challenging redundancy conversations with employees they were very fond of. They love us as we are only ever a phone call away!

Is an American based company that provides device replacement insurance and were looking to establish their operations quickly in Australia.

quickly with a limited understanding of recruitment in this market. They were looking to increase their headcount from 5 to 180 over 12 months. The recruitment assignments involved finding everything from COOs to Contact Centre employees, so salaries from approx. $40k to $200k plus.

This is when they partnered with Employee Matters because we have a team of experienced recruiters, but more so, because we are not a recruitment agency. We acted as an internal recruitment team for them. We understood their business and their managers and we were able to match a candidate’s skills and fit appropriately.

Why was it a success for Asurion? Because it cost them about 30% of what an agency would cost them, with a saving at the senior level of $139k across three senior placements. The quality of the candidates was better and, in the long term, had lower rates of attrition. An added bonus was that one of our senior recruiters interviewed on-site with the managers, influencing and taking the Manager’s interview skills to a higher level. We set up their entire recruitment process and policy to ensure they were more self-efficient moving forward.

We thought that you might like to hear this case study in Peter’s own words about how his relationship with Employee Matters has helped him.

Before engaging Employee Matters, I had engaged other HR consultants in the past who were helpful but were not as responsive or knowledgeable as the team from Employee Matters and I struggled to find somebody who could provide timely advice from experienced HR professionals which didn’t have large upfront commitments, cost wise. I found the experience with Employee Matters to be really easy to engage as a small business and they were very upfront with what the costs would be from the start which gave me a lot of comfort in doing business with them.

After engaging Employee Matters on multiple occasions, we have always been impressed with their level of customer service responsiveness in dealing with problems, and also the knowledge of their team as well. In the past I have struggled to get information out of Govt services such as the Dept of Fair Trading, Dept of Employment, free help lines etc. I have been really pleased at the resolutions that we have been able to get from engaging Employee Matters because in the past we just weren’t able to get solutions and we had to kind of wing it!

Working with Employee Matters has cleared up a bunch of stuff and given us confidence in our employment matters with our staff and any of our HR concerns so I thoroughly recommend Employee Matters to anybody who is looking for a reliable small business HR consultant and looking for somebody as a trusted partner to work with for any of your HR compliance or employee needs.