Workforce Transformation

Workforce Transformation Success: How Waystar, Q4, and RTI International Made it Happen

Transforming an organization — and a workforce — isn’t easy.

Identifying that a workforce transformation is needed is just the first step. The plan for just HOW to make it all happen comes next, followed by getting employees and managers to embrace the change.

At the FuelX Talent Mobility Conference, three companies — Waystar, Q4, Inc., and RTI International — shared how they managed a workforce transformation in their organization. All three explained what they were trying to transform, the challenges they faced in their journey, and finally, how successful they were when all was said and done.

These three workforce transformation stories are great for ANY organization looking to make similar changes or thinking about doing something transformative to improve their bottom-line business metrics overall.

How Waystar got their employees to embrace a workforce transformation

In many cases, workforce transformation comes by doing something very simple — asking employees what they think and then listening and acting on what they are telling you. As basic as that sounds, it is not always the approach that many organizations take. But Waystar found it was the right way for them.

Healthcare organization Waystar is named after a guiding star and says it is about helping “healthcare organizations see their revenue cycle with greater clarity, illuminating their path to better financials.” They also work to “We help patients understand what they’re paying and why… and we have 1200 employees are on that journey with us…”

As Waystar’s Chief People Officer Kimberly Sisnett described the company’s employee-centric approach:

“I heard someone say to give them what they’re asking for, and it is so important when you ask team members for their opinion, and they give it to you, to act on that. We had employee survey data, we had exit data, we had all sorts of real time data. And they were telling us that they wanted mobility options, and they said, ‘We want career pathing.’ And they wanted meaningful conversations, not just sort of check the box conversations, but meaningful conversations around career pathing around where they would go, but also where they would grow, which is really important.”

It was listening to their employees — and other stakeholders — that made Waystar leadership decide to bring in Fuel50 to help with internal talent mobility and career pathing, among other things.

How did that work out for Waystar? Kimberly Sisnett explains:

Our team members leverage technology to do their everyday jobs, but also to connect with customers and with each other, so we leverage technology to discuss insights both at the individual and at the team level. […] and we found ourselves leveraging technology even more and just going back to the value of curiosity. Sometimes, a career path is not obvious, and sometimes, the obvious is not always right.

But through conversations, curiosity, and leveraging technology to capture those insights we find more connection, and the (Fuel50) tool really does have a neat way to capture that connection […] we appreciate the importance of technology, but we needed a tool that was intuitive and didn’t require a lot of training to use — and Fuel50 fit that bill.”

Workforce Transformations Quote from Waystar's Kimberly Sisnett

Q4’s workforce transformation to improve their employee experience

Many organizations spend time thinking and talking about improving their employee experience, but when it comes to actually doing something about it, well, thinking and talking is about as far as it goes.

That’s why Toronto-based Q4 Inc., a leading capital markets communications platform, decided to jump in, take a proactive approach to workforce transformation, and really do something to address the challenge they were facing.

Dorothy Arturi, Q4’s Chief People Officer, described it like this:

“In our focus on the employee experience, we dug into not only why people join us but also why people leave. What came to light was that people are leaving because they don’t have the transparency around their future potential in the company. We needed to solve that problem to improve retention […] we knew we had to solve that problem for our people in order to really win the war for talent. […]

So, I went to work, dug around on the almighty Internet, and really stumbled on Fuel50 as one of the prospects for us. And the more I dug into the platform, the more inspired I became because Fuel50 is not just the solution for career pathing. It actually inspired me to really rethink the entire employee experience at Q4. “

Of course, this leads to another question — how did Q4’s leadership team know if they were actually addressing the concern and improving the company’s employee experience?

What the workforce had to say was a big revelation. As CPO Arturi says,

“I was inspired by Fuel50’s platform. It’s not just career pathing, but the link between performance and progression is so strong. If you’re able to turn the conversation in the business and talk to your people about how their goals ultimately support their growth and progression in the business, it’s a powerful story. […] the benefit of the Fuel50 platform is that it’s just not a one-stop solution; it really provides an opportunity to transform the conversation with people inside the business. […]

We are seeing an 80% stickiness factor in the platform. People are curious. They really, really want to know what’s in store for them, and especially in a company that’s scaling so quickly […] we’ve almost quadrupled in size since I joined, with 50% growth in the last two years alone. […] people are able to understand what is in it for them, what’s the next step.”

And one more insight from Dorothy Arturi about how the technology is growing the culture of Q4, improving the employee experience, and impacting the larger mission of the company:

“The beauty of a Fuel50 solution […] is that it opens up the entire business to the employee. It’s like a sandbox. It’s a playground for employees to really test it. They’re not married to anything; employees can go in and change to their heart’s content. And the journeys will be remapped. It’s a very agile platform but think about giving your people that sandbox and the power that it creates in their minds around commitment, the business of commitment to their growth and progression. So, we have seen a ton of positive feedback and engagement. Absolutely.”

Workforce Transformation Quote Imagery from Q4

Building a better culture through collaboration at RTI International

RTI International is an independent, non-profit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition.

As Laura Peterson, the VP Global Talent & Organizational Development at RTI explains, her organization has very different challenges from many others because it has a long history — 60 years’ worth — and a 6000-strong workforce scattered across the globe.

The challenge for RTI, as Peterson describes it, is that RTI has employees that have been there “for 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years. And what we notice is with that much experience … there was a desire, based on our employee survey data, that showed that our folks wanted to connect with one another. They wanted the development space to learn from one another and with one another, and that celebrated one of our core culture spaces around connection, collaboration, and innovation. […] and there was this quiet desire for us to reimagine our talent management platforms with great technology.”

What RTI International was really trying to do was transform their workforce. As Laura Peterson noted, “We’re getting early (indications) […] that show what are the skills, talents, abilities, that are in high demand? Where are people focusing their development? […] what should we be focusing on as a learning organization to support our staff? What goals are we starting to see?”

It’s that kind of focus that enables leaders to step back and take a deeper look at just what needs to be done to deliver workforce transformation and take the organization to the next level.

And it’s also where Fuel50 came in to help RTI International develop their people and ultimately meet the organization’s larger goals and needs.

As Laura Peterson says,

“Fuel50 helps us find what are the skills in high demand, and what should we be focused on as a learning organization? We also ask – How are we using that to support our business leaders?  (Fuel50) has also lowered the bias […] and opened up the space for people to give more feedback and talk about talent […] we found a huge uptick in utilization (of Fuel50) in the early days […] when we turned on the entire portal, we found people pushing hard on ‘where am I going to take my career?’ As they have done that, they have gone out to their networks in a bigger way and looked to programs that supports them as they move ahead […] “

Performance management is a huge topic for lots of organizations, and that’s because so many have had challenges in giving employees clear, consistent, and most importantly, regular feedback on their performance. RTI looked to Fuel50 to help them greatly improve what they were already doing in-house. As Laura Peterson describes it,

“When we rolled out the Fuel50 marketplace, we called it ‘My Dev’ — like “My Development.” It was also attached to our performance management program that is called “Dynamic Development.” So, we intentionally linked all these things together.

But we started with our employees and a mentoring conversation, and then the career aspiration conversation, and we didn’t engage our managers straightaway. We really wanted there to be a groundswell […] so that they would feel like ‘Oh, what is this? What’s going on here?’ […] What we’ve noticed is, in some ways, the tool became a way to drive human connections while also deepening the individual insight for the employee. And it deepened the insight for the manager to understand what’s motivating and driving their employees as well.”

Workforce Transformation Quote from RTI

Final thoughts on workforce transformation

Workforce transformation, when done right, makes for a more productive and agile workforce. As Waystar, Q4, and RTI International all found, Fuel50 can help with that and we can help you improve your workforce mobility, employee engagement, and talent retention metrics, too.

Q4’s Dorothy Arturi may have described this best when she said:

“Fuel50 inspired us to take a larger look at the entire engagement process and the employee experience from onboarding to offboarding […] we wanted to empower our employees to be able to talk about their career progression. Those were difficult conversations before Fuel50, but now we have more powerful and professional conversations […] “

We hope you enjoy watching the episodes and look forward to sharing more learning with you!

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