Company Z:

Industry: Real estate/Construction

Employees: 14,000

Situation: A CFO of a large real /estate/ construction company contacted WorkRelationships' after her company was hit with two negligent retention lawsuits in six months; this was on top of several violence in the workplace incidents that resulted in a significant increase in their worker's comp claims. In particular, the corporate counsel was interested in getting a handle on the employee turmoil which had escalated as part of a failed merger. She was also looking to evaluate the effectiveness and the efficiency of their existing employment policies and procedures as well as the consistency of their application across business units.

The Interpersonal Risk Profile: The CFO requested that each business unit manager go through the Interpersonal Risk Audit and submit each of their reports for their corporate counsel to review. The results of the Interpersonal Risk Audits varied dramatically from business unit to business unit, indicating a need for an overall centralized location of human resource oversight.

There were, though, some similarities across units; workplace violence prevention and substance abuse awareness, for example, were consistently neglected in spite of the fact that construction is a high risk industry for employee conduct problems.

Click to see sample results:

Click to see sample workplace violence recommendations

Consultation: A follow-up consultation with the CFO and corporate counsel revealed a strong need to integrate the disperate cultures of their real estate and construction division that were coexisting uneasily and often conflictually. WorkRelationships' agreed to work with their corporate human resource office to review existing employment policies and procedures and establish a uniform set of guidelines and procedures. As part of the conflict management process, the CFO also said he needed a way to individually address the different liability risks in each division. WorkRelationships helped the human resource department prioritize the immediate employment risks and develop a training strategy for the various division audiences. For instance, the construction division immediately received supervisory training on the various legal responsibilities of managers, including how to defuse threatening situations, how to respond to offensive behavior complaints, and how to identify and refer substance abuse problems. The real estate division focused on developing an ethics compliance program that addressed similar issues as well as more general ethical issues pertinent to the real estate industry.

Results: Due to the prehire drug screening and management identification-and-referral training, substance abuse in this construction company was reduced by 20 percent in six months. Workplace violence assaults were also reduced by 40 percent due to the implementation of the construction division training program and background and reference checking system. In the real estate division, management turnover, the primary concern, was reduced by 10 percent after the company implemented a management development and retention program.

ROI: Company Z was experiencing increasing violence in the workplace. Over 200 employee assault complaints a year thoughout its 14,000 employees. Entering this figure plus anticipated assaults over the next year the cost to this company was calcultated to be $63,000,000. By implementing WorkRelationships recommendations Company Z could save themselves $22,507,380.