Industry: Manufacturing / Structure: Family-Owned
Owners of a licensed consumer product goods company that is family owned are looking for an exit strategy. From a people perspective, there are a number of areas of opportunity. They’ve had a lot of employee relations issues, are having trouble attracting the fresh talent they need to modernize their Design approach, and need a professional sales organization to boost sales and make them a more attractive prospect. They say the culture feels “flat” and there’s not a lot of extra enthusiasm among employees.
So that they are well-positioned for acquisition, we want to keep our improvements headcount-neutral and avoid adding roles that are likely to be seen as redundant to a buyer.
To avoid issues in due diligence, a compliance-focused outsourced HR team will get the company ship-shape and then continue to support the company for ongoing maintenance.
We will engage a Design-specific executive recruiter to bring on a new leader who brings cache and energy to the team and is likely to have internal referrals. A sales lead will be recruited out of a major brand; that team will have a three-day sales offsite for training and onboarding the new leader.
Our organizational leadership coach will facilitate a board exercise to reach consensus on the big picture goals and timeline, identify internal candidates for succession to key roles, and create clear benchmarks to measure the success of both goals.
There are difficult decisions to be made regarding switching to a 3PL, which would mean laying off almost 50% of the employees—a high-performing, long-serving warehouse crew. A lay off would trigger the WARN Act, cost a lot of cash in the short term, and would require a time-intensive transition process. The leadership will also need to consider the culture impact of letting go a beloved group; all of the momentum brought new additions and positive changes could easily deflate in the face of a 50% layoff.
The HR collaboration to get the company from goof to great will be:
The proposed HR organization to carry the company to acquisition is the following. All resources in blue would be external members of the team.
