The Arnold Group Reinforces a Strong Culture with PerformYard

Company Overview: 

The Arnold Group is a recruiting company that annually manages thousands of external job seekers. Despite the typically high turnover in the staffing industry, The Arnold Group has maintained remarkably high employee retention with internal staff, with most of their workforce having tenure exceeding five years.

Katie Gibson, the Director of Operations, manages the day-to-day workflows and processes critical to the company’s success. With a broad scope of responsibilities—from ensuring that teams are efficient to handling administrative challenges—Katie's role requires her to juggle multiple priorities simultaneously. Her focus is on maintaining the company's smooth operation while enabling the staff to meet their objectives effectively.

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The Challenge

The Arnold Group has always had a strong employee culture despite working in a high-turnover industry. Katie wanted to maintain and enhance this culture while gaining better insight into employee engagement. 

Although formal performance and engagement feedback processes were already in place, Katie wanted a more structured approach to capture employee sentiment and identify areas for improvement. 

She turned to PerformYard’s Employee Engagement platform for a more comprehensive engagement solution.

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Challenges Katie Faced:

Fragmented Processes: Katie struggled with scattered workflows and disjointed performance and engagement systems that slowed down communication between departments.

Manual, Time-Consuming Tasks: Basic administrative functions related to performance and engagement were often manual, making it difficult for her to keep processes efficient without being bogged down by unnecessary administrative burdens.

Limited Visibility into Operations: Managing the full scope of performance and engagement operations without an integrated solution meant that Katie spent significant time tracking down information and ensuring accuracy across multiple platforms.

Scaling Operations: As The Arnold Group grew, Katie needed a system that could scale with an increasing number of employment candidates and staff, without losing efficiency.

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Katie’s Goals

Katie needed a performance review and engagement platform that would:

• Streamline Day-to-Day Workflows: She needed to centralize performance and engagement information, ensuring smooth collaboration between departments and easy access to essential data.
• Automate Routine Tasks: Reducing the manual load of administrative tasks would allow Katie and her operations team to focus on more strategic priorities.
• Provide a Holistic View of Operations: Katie needed a platform that would give her clear visibility over employee engagement, allowing her to quickly make informed decisions.
• Support Growth: As The Arnold Group expanded, Katie sought a system that could grow with them, maintaining efficiency and scalability.

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The Solution: 

PerformYard provided The Arnold Group with an all-encompassing engagement platform that allowed them to gather feedback through regular engagement surveys. 

The company had previously used some form of feedback gathering but lacked a formal engagement platform. 

After moving performance reviews to PerformYard, they embraced PerformYard's employee engagement solution when it became available, implementing the platform for quarterly surveys and incorporating engagement-related questions into their performance reviews.

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“What I like about the PerformYard surveys is you can pick up on trends because questions are grouped into the different factors. It’s easy to see a trend, and that's helpful if you want to be intentional with change. PerformYard makes this easy. For example, if you're noticing that your leadership scores are lower, then maybe for the next six months that needs to be a focus point for you.”

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Results and Insights:

Improved Engagement Tracking:

The Arnold Group initially rolled out surveys every four weeks to gauge employee sentiment. They found that frequent check-ins allowed them to identify trends and address areas of concern before they became problematic.

Survey results confirmed their belief in a strong internal culture. However, the data also highlighted specific areas for improvement, such as communication, which led Katie to implement new structures like the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to enhance internal communication and accountability.

The Arnold Group has strong participation, with survey response rates reaching as high as 70% during certain periods. Regular insights into employee sentiment helped leadership make informed decisions.

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“I like the employee cohorts in PerformYard because you have to look at every group differently. For our business, we have a group for new hires. They're on a different type of journey than the people who've been here awhile. Their feedback, and how they feel, is very important to me. So I like that we can segment out the survey responses by cohorts.”

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Adaptability and Customization:

PerformYard’s engagement platform allowed for easy customization. Although the company started with the platform’s built-in questions, they soon added an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) to track employee satisfaction more closely.

The Arnold Group set up distinct cohorts within PerformYard based on tenure (e.g., employees with less than two years of experience, managers, administrative staff, etc.). This allowed leadership to focus on the unique needs of different employee groups and tailor support accordingly.

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Synergy Between Engagement and Performance:

PerformYard’s engagement data influenced how The Arnold Group conducted performance reviews. In addition to formal, metrics-driven reviews, they implemented more frequent quarterly check-ins to discuss softer aspects like communication, team dynamics, and support.

The combination of performance reviews and engagement surveys provided a comprehensive view of both employee performance and well-being. This approach helped them make small but meaningful tweaks, such as improving leadership communication during busy times.

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Positive Feedback and Culture Reinforcement:

Employees responded positively to PerformYard, appreciating its ease of use and flexibility. With engagement surveys open for 30 days, employees had ample time to provide feedback, contributing to a high response rate and meaningful insights.

Even though the company had always fostered an open-door culture, PerformYard helped reinforce this by systematically gathering feedback. Management found that the platform validated areas of strength while identifying areas where additional focus was needed.

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So, How Has Katie’s Life Gotten Easier?

Reduced Administrative Burden: With routine tasks automated, Katie is now able to focus on strategic initiatives and improving operations, rather than being bogged down by daily administrative issues.

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Greater Control and Visibility: Having real-time data and comprehensive insights at her fingertips has allowed Katie to proactively manage The Arnold Group’s company culture and operations, improving overall performance and reducing downtime.

Scalability for Future Growth: Katie can confidently support the firm's expansion, knowing that the system will seamlessly scale alongside them, ensuring efficiency even as workloads change and increase.

Improved Collaboration Across Teams: The streamlined processes have made it easier for her to foster collaboration between different departments, enhancing both productivity and job satisfaction company-wide.

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Key Takeaways:

Cohort-Based Insights: By grouping employees into specific cohorts (new hires, managers, administrative staff, etc.), The Arnold Group was able to cater to the specific needs of each group, improving engagement and satisfaction.

Flexibility in Feedback: Regular, flexible surveys allowed for timely feedback and reflection, providing the leadership team with actionable data to continuously enhance employee engagement.

Strategic Focus on Leadership and Communication: With engagement surveys highlighting leadership as a potential area for growth, The Arnold Group took intentional steps to improve management practices and communication strategies, directly aligning with employee needs.

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Conclusion: 

The Arnold Group’s use of PerformYard has strengthened a strong culture by providing actionable insights that foster continuous improvement. The platform’s flexibility, ease of use, and in-depth cohort analysis have enabled the company to maintain high employee retention in a high-pressure industry while equipping them to handle challenges as they arise. PerformYard has proven valuable for companies like The Arnold Group looking to address existing engagement issues and those seeking to fine-tune and enhance an already positive workplace culture.