HR Case Studies
We've helped many organisations in the public and private sector with a wide range of support services. Here are a few HR case studies to illustrate our work...
Property Maintenance Company
The challenge
High wages and low productivity
A property maintenance client was struggling with a big wage bill and low productivity. To make matters worse, two managers were holding back the business. The owner didn’t know where to start and was concerned about triggering an employment tribunal. It felt like an impossible situation. With the right kind of knowledge and support, there is always a way to resolve such situations. We worked closely with the team and provided options to remodel the workforce and remove these two management posts safely, enabling the company to recruit a graduate and two additional operatives.
The result
Increased productivity and profits
Within just nine months, the business had doubled productivity and increased profits. The new team members brought a fresh new outlook, communications were improved and customer satisfaction rocketed.
NHS Trust
The challenge
Ensuring additional resources are value for money
An NHS client wanted Centric to review the hourly rates of the nursing bank staff. Analysis showed that local market rates for bank staff were way above that of other local trusts and was driving locally employed nurses to act in such a way that was detrimental to the core workforce; hence Trust nursing costs were spiralling out of control.
The result
Monthly recurrent savings of £50k
New rates were benchmarked and reset to ensure that the Trust would still attract bank workers and be competitive with other local trusts, but would not affect the core workforce and would encourage local staff to work additional hours as opposed to bank work. This assisted with local loyalty and commitment and saved the Trust £50k per month.
Security Company
The challenge
Overpaying on overtime
A client in the security sector was paying its peripatetic tradespeople overtime, travel time and additional holiday pay. What started as generosity was fast becoming unaffordable. Centric HR worked with the company’s in-house HR team to design a change management process that would secure the support of staff. Travel time payments were bought out with a higher basic salary. Employees were happy and no longer needed to travel huge distances to claim overtime.
The result
Reduced wage costs and improved work-life balance for staff
Wage costs for the business have been cut by 6%. Meanwhile, staff feel valued and genuine overtime hours are easily managed.
NHS Trust
The challenge
Error in rota cost a fortune!
Our NHS client had set up their long shifts rota for nurses incorrectly and had not realised. They were paying for a break that should have been unpaid and not providing adequate rest times for staff who worked 12 hour shifts. This was both unsafe for patients and exhausting for staff, and resulted in staff resources not being utilised efficiently.
The result
Safe practice and a recurrent saving!
Centric HR found this error within 2 weeks of analysing workforce information. We were able to articulate to the Board the potential dangers of working in this way and illustrate potential savings of £600k recurrently per year. Centric HR then wrote and implemented the change programme and realised even more recurrently savings of £720k per annum. The Trust saved on bank and agency usage and effectively gained back 100s of shifts per year.
Private Sector Company
The challenge
Ongoing support
Medium sized firm commissioned Centric HR in 2019, initally to support with TUPE in of 50+ employees, in 2020 they needed to shed 20 posts due to the pandemic and poor economic recovery and asked us manage the entire process including outplacement support for those affected.
The result
Avoiding redundancies and helping people to move on.
During the TUPE, albeit last minute, we built a great working relationship with the Company and gained their trust to manage the change work and continued to support on daily HR matters, whilst they rebuilt their business.
On taking on this assignment we found that employees were anxious, resentful towards the employer and generally worried about the future. Through our outplacement programme we were able to help people come to terms with what was happening to them, help them refocus on their careers and provide them with training for CV writing through to job interviews. We managed to assist many employees into new roles or completely new career pathways. In one situation – on hearing about the role and activity – we went back to the organisation and convinced them to reconsider the redundancy as we felt they may still need the role having spoken to the employee – so we saved their role at the company.
NHS Trust
The challenge
Shortage of staff
The NHS Trust were suffering with a national shortage of staff which meant there was a huge reliance on bank and agency staff at a huge cost. There were also a number of skills gaps identified, other members of staff were under utilised and there remained a poor career pathway for staff therefore it was difficult to attract and retain staff.
We were set a task of completing a workforce transformation strategy to resolve the issue whilst:
- Offering no compromise on quality or safety.
- To enhance cover, skill-mix enrichments to improve the patient experience/care.
- Optimise resources and work towards greater efficiencies.
- Engage nursing staff and managers throughout the process.
- Ensure clinical effectiveness and ensure working to top of licence.
- Build robust workforce plans for the future.
- Understand risk and ensure mitigated wherever possible.
The result
Workforce efficiencies
We delivered a successful workforce efficiencies plan that incorporated:
- Optimised Resources that did not compromise on quality or safety
- Moved to 2-shift system contributing significantly to CPIP
- Explored and planned for skill short-falls within certain areas
- Mitigated risk within retirement demographic over next 5 years
- Ensured clinical workforce work to top of licence or band
- Introduced support roles to assist high demand areas/improve patient experience
- Proactively developed a 5-year plan for new roles such as TNAs and ACP roles.
- Provided a true flexible working model that met the needs of the organisation
Our plan addressed all of the issues and provided the trust with some significant cost savings of £1.7million in the first year, whilst the potential savings over 5 years is on track to deliver savings of £8.3 million.
