Case Study In the dynamic energy industry, Mansfield Oil one of Forbes 50 Largest Private Companies fuels its employee engagement and retention with a new talent management strategy powered by Saba Software. To stay ahead of its fast-changing market, Mansfield Oil has re-engineered its performance management process, providing individualized development plans and a dynamic recognition program for the 600 employees behind its $8 billion business. We are growing quickly, and Saba is key to that successful growth. VP of Human Resources Mansfield Oil Industry: Energy Employees: 600 Saba Solutions: Saba Cloud Mansfield provides fuel and energy to 27,000 locations for over 3700 commercial customers, 440 school districts, 770 counties, and 590 cities across the United States and Canada. Mansfield streamlines energy supply chain for clients, supporting every level of the energy supply and management process from purchasing and operations, to finance and equipment maintenance. Mansfield s culture and people are its most important asset enabling it to creatively shape its future while delivering continued business growth and great service. People are at the core of what we do. Talent is very important to us, said, Mansfield Oil s VP of Human Resources. The Challenge Exponential growth put a strain on internal resources and infrastructure to attract, develop and retain talent. Faced with these challenges and a distributed workforce across the U.S. and Canada, Mansfield s human resources team realized that they needed a unified talent management strategy to help fulfill the growing company s changing HR needs. In 2014, Mansfield s employee engagement survey found that while 80% of its staff felt their jobs were meaningful, they also pointed out areas for improvement, like: 25% of employees said they would leave for more growth opportunity 50% said they would leave for better compensation 50% said they felt like they did not receive recognition 28% cited workload as an issue 26% cited compensation as a challenge 23% said their managers could use some coaching and development 23% said they would like to see better training opportunities
With this context, Mansfield s HR team set out to create a talent management strategy to better power individual development opportunities, reinforce engagement and improve retention. The Solution The leadership team at Mansfield prioritized learning and development in its talent strategy to recognize and engage its staff and fuel succession and leadership development. From a systems perspective, the HR team started looking for a modern learning management solution, then quickly realized the opportunity to leverage a unified talent management system that could address all of the company s top priority needs. Mansfield selected Saba Cloud as the best-in-class unified solution. In fact, even though the HR team initially planned to use a system for learning support, with a full suite behind them, and annual performance reviews ahead of them after their purchase, Mansfield decided to implement Saba s Performance@Work module first. Implement a recognition program using Saba Impressions that crowdsourced great contributions from across the business Our employees, including company President, Doug Haugh, loved Saba Cloud from the day we went live, said, Vice President of Human Resources. Saba is now at the core of our talent management strategy reinforcing Mansfield s core values. Personalizing the Performance Management Process Saba Cloud s intuitive user interface and easy configurability gave Mansfield HR, managers and employees for the first time a centralized system to connect company culture and values with individual career aspirations, and continually collaborate on progress around goals and momentum. Mansfield s performance management cycle is built around goals, discussions, reviews and ratings that originate with the employee. Goals are set and aligned with organizational business objectives, and employees create their own success plans. Employees are responsible for creating an individual development plan that consists of their career paths set in Saba, their completed profiles with external work history and education, at least three professional development goals, and relocation preferences. This enabled Mansfield to: Create core competencies and evaluate/assess against those competencies Transform performance management, creating consistency across the business and connecting reviews to individual development plans Saba enabled us to transform our approach to performance management looking more at evaluating people against goals and competencies, instead of traditional job duties, said Mahone. Mansfield s Saba Cloud homepage 2
Employee s plan in the Saba Cloud unified talent dashboard Performance is also tied to how individuals deliver on their job competencies the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for every role in the organization to meet goals and do their work the Mansfield way, aligning to business values. All of this is captured and managed within Saba Cloud. Mansfield employees also use Saba to explore different career paths within the company. They can look at the additional skills and the suggested courses, context and connections within the Saba system to advance in line with their current jobs and departments, and they can also investigate what might be entailed to try different roles available in the company, too. I like how Saba fits it all together. We use our goals, competencies and reviews to check our progress and improve, and then translate them into career paths. It s all familiar to the employee, nothing is a surprise, said Nichole Zimmerman, Mansfield Oil s Employee Development Specialist. Building the Next Generation of Mansfield Leaders Mansfield builds on its performance process to identify potential leaders for development in its mentorship program. The mentorship program is open to anyone who has been at Mansfield for more than one year and has good standing on their performance review. Often, the company s highpotential employees, those with a blend of demonstrated aspiration, ability and engagement, are selected for, or discovered in, this program. The mentorship program is a year-long program designed to help emerging leaders learn more about the company and the industry, and to develop their leadership skills. Mansfield s senior leadership team serves as the mentors, and the mentees attend classes led by the mentors as well as meet one-on-one with their own mentor. They also go on field trips to places like refineries, terminals, conferences, workshops and more. Mentees also get special project assignments several times a year. The mentee creates a list of knowledge/skills/abilities he or she wants to get out of the program. The mentor does a similar list based on who he or she is mentoring. They come together and make a plan on what they will accomplish in the year. It usually involves reading books, going to meet customers or vendors, discussing the mentee s individual development plan, attending executive meetings, and so on. And again, all of this development activity is tracked within the Saba system. Saba Cloud helps me gain insight into our employees their career development needs, their goals and their aspirations. VP of HR 3
Unexpected Crowdsourced Insights One of the most surprising things, with rolling out Saba, and one of the things we didn t necessarily anticipate and didn t do any formal training on, is the attraction to the social aspects of Saba. Before we even explained what Impressions were, our employees were out there giving each other Impressions and posting content in the system! said Mahone. Saba Cloud makes it Facebook easy for users to find, follow and rate the usefulness of contacts and content within the system. Further, they can easily share their own ideas in uploaded text, video files and even blogs. Mansfield employees across the company even those without company-issued computers were checking in and checking out ideas that were compelling to them. In fact, that new crowdsourced level of input and expertise is now used to power internal recognition at Mansfield. Peer level: Positive Impression award A monthly prize drawing from all employees with new online Impressions from their peers and colleagues. Manager level: On the Spot award Enables managers to give their employees an additional monetary award for great work noted in the Saba system with digital badges. 4 Personalized badges helped with branding our core values, said Zimmerman. Saba Cloud has made it a lot easier for us to deliver on talent management initiatives, because it allows us to put everything in one central place, said Mahone. We can push out content and learning, and track, measure, distribute and communicate and we can do all that in one place, whereas we couldn t do that before. For example, we quickly created a curriculum page and pushed that out to the sales academy team. Furthermore, with Saba Learning, each position has specific development plans associated with it, tied also to the competencies that have been created for the job. Saba Cloud is the technology that underpins our talent management strategy. It allows us to focus on the development of our employees at all levels of the organization, whether or not they are individual contributors or leaders. Having all of our talent modules in one system with Saba Cloud provides insight into how an individual is progressing within their career or within their development plan in the organization. Training Resources workspace Employee s Impressions and feedback received from peers and managers
What s Next? Building on the successful rollout and adoption of Saba for performance management and career development, Mansfield s HR team next will be implementing succession planning and will be using a 9-box model to create talent pools. I am super happy with Saba and see it as a great partnership to drive our business. We are growing quickly, and Saba is key to that successful growth, concluded Mahone. The Results In less than a year on Saba Cloud, Mansfield Oil has recognized tremendous results based on great user adoption. For example, the company s 2015 employee engagement survey found (compared to last year): Employee engagement up 30% Turnover decreased from 27% to 21% 54% improvement in employee satisfaction for recognition Happier employees and managers resulting from the new, easy process to give real-time feedback and recognition, which skyrocketed Better retention rates as employees have individualized development plans, available training and career paths Saba Cloud helps me gain insight into our employees their career development needs, their goals and their aspirations, said Mahone. We chose Saba because it provides a holistic approach to talent management, particularly performance management, learning and succession. VP of HR Saba delivers a cloud-based Intelligent Talent Management solution used by leading organizations worldwide to hire, develop, engage, and inspire their people. Intelligent Talent Management uses machine learning to offer proactive, personalized recommendations on candidates, connections, and content to help your employees and organization lead and succeed. 2016 Saba Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Saba, the Saba logo, and the marks relating to Saba products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Saba Software, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners Saba 2400 Bridge Parkway Redwood Shores CA 94065-1166 USA (+1) 877.SABA.101 or (+1) 650.779.2791 www.saba.com cs_02/16