Tandem is a trusted strategy, design, and technology
partner. They deliver custom software that inspires people and drives business
forward. Their unique process brings every voice to the table. Their
human-centered design process brings in customers, researchers, engineers, and
designers to approach every problem with a broad set of perspectives. And they
partner with their clients to solve their most meaningful challenges – for
their customers, employees, and the community.
As a human-centered business, employee benefits have always
been important to Tandem. The company recently partnered with Launchways to
take its already competitive benefits package to the next level. We spoke to
Tandem CEO, JC Grubbs, to learn more about his experience with Launchways.
Before working with Launchways, Tandem already offered a
robust benefits package. The talent market for tech companies like Tandem is
extremely competitive, and Tandem sees its benefits as a key part of the
strategy to win over top talent. Working with Launchways, Tandem sought to
offer a benefits package that only took care of its team, but also offered
unique, impactful benefits that would help set Tandem apart in the pursuit for
top talent to join their team.
As he looked for a new broker to help him in this effort, JC
Grubbs said he was attracted to Launchways because of our hands-on approach to
benefits and HR,
“Our previous broker was just a broker, there was very little education with our team. I liked the Launchways approach of combining team education and HR consulting to support us as managers, in addition to the brokerage aspect of the partnership.”
Another thing about the Launchways approach that stood out
to him was the fact that unlike most brokers, Launchways understood the fact
that he wanted to improve Tandem’s benefits, not just cut costs at the expense
of employee happiness,
“Benefits are a big part of how we compete in the market for talent and Launchways prioritized improving our benefits to make us even more competitive while at the same time saving us money.”
So what did this new package look like? The Launchways team
negotiated a BlueChoice PPO that cost Tandem less than their previous base-plan
while offering significantly more comprehensive coverage for employees.
Launchways also educated employees about the plan changes during open
enrollment. As a result, many employees switched from the previously offered
plan to the newly rolled out plan.
Education was key to the success of these efforts, as JC
Grubbs noted,
“Launchways has also done a great job of giving our employees access to benefits information. The Employee Navigator platform lets our team members find out what they need to know about their benefits and choose the right plans for their needs.”
Now, Tandem is spending less on its benefits, employees are
spending less, and team members have better coverage than ever. At the same
time, Launchways worked with Tandem to expand dental, vision, and ancillary
insurance while reducing the costs of these plans.
Another major win from the partnership was the successful
launch of Tandem’s HealthiestYou telemedicine implementation. As JC Grubbs
commented, the telemedicine platform has been a huge hit with his team,
“As a company that is fairly young and tech-savvy, we’ve seen a lot of engagement with telemedicine. It makes a big difference to our team members who have new families. It has been very well received and is a competitive advantage to us in the hiring process. Launchways consistently brings in new ideas around benefits, suggesting solutions like telemedicine that we would not even have known existed without such an active benefits partner.”
Launchways was just as impressed by the success of the
Tandem telemedicine implementation. Launchways benefits consultants on the
Tandem project noted Tandem has the highest telemedicine utilization rate of
any Launchways client. This success shows the potential for telemedicine to
have a significant impact for companies looking to care for and attract young,
tech-savvy talent.
We asked JC Grubbs if he had any advice for other business
owners who are considering working with Launchways. Once again, the value of
Launchways’ hands-on, personal approach shined through.
“It’s all about people, get to know as much of the Launchways team as you can. The Launchways team is super responsive, engaged, and passionate about benefits. Build some rapport and trust, which I think will come very quickly, and make your decision based on that. Because in my experience, Launchways just delivers.”
Artisan Talent is a digital, creative, and marketing staffing agency that does things a little differently. They take a unique approach to making the right connections by realizing that they are humans helping humans – companies and talent alike. From small agencies to major corporations, this boutique staffing agency is in the business of connecting people – and they never forget it. That’s what makes them Artisan.
Bejan Douraghy founded Artisan Talent in Chicago in 1988 and the business has grown rapidly ever since. It tripled in size in the first five years and has now expanded outside of Illinois with offices in eight cities including New York, Denver, and San Francisco.
But that rapid growth has come with compliance and benefits challenges, with legislative changes and differences in requirements between states. And Artisan Talent has provided a full-scope benefits package for its freelance talent since 1995, so they have to manage benefits and compliance for their freelancers as well as the employees in their multiple offices.
Bejan first approached Launchways in 2016 after it became clear that new legislation threatened to cause compliance issues. He knew that Artisan Talent would have to adapt to meet the legislation, but did not have a clear idea of what the exact compliance challenges were or how to address them. As Bejan explained,
“We went to Launchways and they came back to us with a strategic solution to help us with ACA compliance issues. It was very helpful to us because we didn’t know what exactly it all meant and going through the audit with Launchways gave us the top priorities of what we had to do to maintain compliance.”
As Artisan Talent expanded to cities outside of Illinois, they also came up against the challenge of meeting the compliance requirements set by each state. Once again, Launchways helped Bejan and his team get a clear sense of what was required and developed strategies to bring the company into compliance efficiently and effectively.
“Launchways has supported us through our growth. Compliance requirements and available benefits vary widely between states. Launchways has been invaluable in letting us know what we need to do in each state.”
The initial compliance audit also led to a conversation about how Launchways could support Artisan Talent’s broader HR and benefits functions. After the revelations from the audit, Artisan Talent decided to conduct the Launchways Human Resources Best Practices Assessment to get instant insight into how to streamline the way they managed expenses across their human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance operations. The assessment and strategies Launchways put forward allowed Artisan Talent to reduce their overall insurance costs by 15%.
One of the key parts of this initiative was streamlining Artisan Talent’s benefits enrollment process. Launchways implemented new enrollment software that simplified the process for the Artisan HR team and resulted in a better experience for their talent. Bejan had this to say about the enrollment project:
“Before Launchways, we were doing everything in-house which obviously took us a lot of time, Launchways implemented an automated system that made it much more cost-effective. Not only is it easier for us, but the platform serves as a one-stop-shop for our employees, letting them review the plan options and enroll in the plan that works best for them.”
Launchways will continue to help Artisan Talent improve its processes and benefits offerings, as well as maintain compliance as the company expands to even more cities around the country. Beyond recommending and implementing new systems and strategies, the Launchways team also serves as an on-call resource for Bejan as he navigates HR, benefits, and compliance issues. As he says,
“As a CEO I don’t have time to research all of the issues, I need to be able to go to the experts and get what I need from them. The Launchways team members are experts in the HR and benefits field, which is highly complex, and they always come back to me with a solution which is technology-driven and which I can easily understand and implement.”
One of Launchways’ core values is to be a Community-Builder.
Our team is community-minded and constantly looking for new opportunities to
foster a richer community within Launchways and in the Chicago ecosystem. This
common vision of bridge-building helps us form stronger bonds with our
coworkers and more productive partnerships with other businesses in the greater
Chicago area.
We approach our role as community-builder in two fundamental
ways:
Fostering the Launchways community
Building a community outside our office walls
Fostering Community at Launchways
Why We Believe in Building a Launchways Community
In our mission to help our clients build thriving teams of
top talent, we often address the topic of how to create a vibrant, engaging
company culture. But within our organization, we believe in taking it a step
further and creating not just a culture but a community.
Companies have a culture, whether they take steps to shape
it or not. Letting it lie fallow can cause that culture to become toxic, and
tending to it can help engage team members and make work more meaningful. A
company community cannot exist without consistent and dedicated work by company
leadership and every single team member. The risk of not putting in this work
is not a toxic community, but the lack of any sense community at all. People
will still come into the office, log their hours, and go home. But they won’t
care about their cubicle-mates or see their work as helping themselves, their
coworkers, and their company succeed. Simply put, they’re employees, not team
members.
For that to happen, companies have to foster a community in
which everyone is invested in helping everyone else grow, succeed, and pursue
what matters most to them.
How We Foster Community at Launchways
We know that as an employer, you need to create
organizational structures that will become the foundations of an organic and
employee-owned community. So, we have implemented several systems at Launchways
that help fuel our community and allow it to take on a life of its own. Each
step seems simple and inconsequential on the surface but, added together, they
completely transform how we interact with and think about each other as teammates.
Meetings are the main formalized touch-points that employees
have with each other and with the company as a whole, so we have focused our
efforts on creating community-minded meetings. We start each week with an
all-hands-on-deck meeting where each team member discusses their number-one
project for the week and any roadblocks they need help on. These meetings allow
us to see what everyone is working on, celebrate their accomplishments, and
seize opportunities to help each other whenever possible.
Another large part of a community is having a sense of
working together for a common goal that everyone shares. As we advise our
clients, we have integrated our values, mission, and vision into every policy
and process in our organization so our team members can become their stewards.
But we also hold quarterly all-company meetings to review our goals and
progress towards those goals together as a company. These meetings drive home
the reality that we are all working together to accomplish the same goals.
Beyond meetings, “shout-outs” are a core part of the
Launchways community. Front-and-center in our office is our “Shout-Out Board”
where we can recognize our coworkers on a daily basis for doing an awesome job
and representing our core values. We also share highlights from the Shout-Out
Board at our Monday all-hands-on-deck meetings so that we can celebrate each
other’s accomplishments together. You would be surprised at how much a whiteboard
builds a supportive and engaged community.
Stepping Outside Launchways: Fostering the Chicago Business Community
Launchways is constantly forming new partnerships with
businesses and organizations in the broader Chicago ecosystem so that we can
engage business leaders in a strong community. Some of our key business partners
have included Hyde Park Angels, FinTEx, and the Illinois Technology
Association.
Over the past year, we have worked with our business
partners and organizations like FinTEx and ITA to host educational events for
business and HR leaders in Chicago and the whole of Illinois. Just this
October, we brought together five business leaders and HR experts for a panel
discussion on tackling key diversity and inclusion challenges at our D&I
Summit. We welcomed over 60 HR professionals for a complimentary dinner and
open bar, which certainly got folks networking and community building. And the
panel delivered an incredibly comprehensive look at D&I strategies for
businesses going into the 2020s.
We also worked with our business partners to host a CFO
breakfast that brought growth-minded financial leaders from around Chicago
together to learn new actionable strategies to take back to their business,
especially around the increasing role that CFOs play in their company’s HR
strategy. And on the other side of the same conversation, we partnered with ITA
to host an “HR Now” summit for HR leaders to help them form stronger
collaborations with their finance counterparts.
Beyond hosting events, Launchways also partners with other
businesses and vendors to provide additional resources and value for our
clients. This isn’t just the right thing to do to help our client community and
form the best relationships we can with them, it is also a great way to create
a symbiotic community of businesses in related industries, all working together
to meet the whole range of companies’ HR and benefits needs.
Key Takeaways
Launchways takes its role as a community-builder very seriously
because we know that being part of a genuine community makes work more
meaningful and rewarding and that every company has the responsibility to help
build and uplift their local business community. This core value impacts just
about every aspect of how we work and do business at Launchways. These community-building
initiatives contribute significantly to our community-building efforts,
including:
Leveraging weekly and quarterly meetings as community-building touch-points through open communication and judgment-free discussion of projects, challenges, and successes
Publicly celebrating coworker accomplishments on a daily and weekly basis
Hosting events for business leaders in our ecosystem
Partnering with businesses and vendors to bring our clients the best range of services possible
If working in a community sounds as good to you as it does
to us, we would love to welcome you to our team. Check out current openings and
get started with your Launchways journey by heading over to our Careers Page!
Lindemann
is the nation’s largest chimney service company. It was founded in 1969 by
former Fire Captain Gary Lindemann and continues to service Chicago’s North
Shore and Northern Suburban Area. The company specializes in chimney re-lining,
repair, diagnosing, gas logs, hearth appliances, and masonry. Lindemann Chimney
applies its core values based on honesty and integrity to deliver exceptional
customer service and an empowering work environment.
Michael Boudart, President of Lindemann, shared with us the
value that Launchways has brought to his business over the eight years that we
have worked together.
From the beginning, Launchways served as much more than just
a benefits broker for Lindemann. For Michael and his team, insurance was just
the start of what Launchways does to fuel the business’s success and ease their
growing pains.
As a chimney service company with a large fleet of vehicles
and extensive field team, business insurance was a top priority for Lindemann
and was the origin of the company’s partnership with Launchways. Their employee
benefits were just as important and the Launchways team has worked with
Lindemann to add value for their team members year after year. As Michael put
it,
“Our business is founded on the ideals of empowering our employees and treating our team and customers with honesty and integrity. This means making sure that we take care of our employees and their families. Launchways has gone beyond what we expected from a benefits broker to suggest new ways of helping our employees while saving money along the way.”
One recent addition to the benefits package has been
particularly popular with Lindemann’s employees. Just this past year,
Launchways implemented a telemedicine solution for Lindemann, which allows
their employees to reach doctors online or over the phone and get the
prescriptions they need. This solution has made a big difference for the
company’s team members, especially those with families. At the same time,
Launchways rolled out new benefits administration software that streamlines
enrollment and upgraded both dental and vision insurance.
Since they started working with Launchways as their employee
benefits and business insurance broker, Lindemann has experienced rapid growth
and faced the inevitable growing pains and hard decisions that come with
scaling a business. Their growth has required new benefits, HR strategies and
policies, more intentional fleet management, and critical business strategy
choices.
Throughout this process, Michael has looked to Launchways to
provide not only solutions but advice.
“The Launchways team is super responsive. I can use them as a sounding board and get advice on the spur of the moment which has been invaluable. I see the Launchways team as business consultants in many ways and it has been very good for us. I don’t hesitate to pick up the phone if I have a question or I want their advice on a situation that I might find myself in.”
Building A Safer
Fleet and Saving Money Along the Way
As Lindemann has grown, so has their fleet which now
includes more than 50 vehicles. Managing this expanding fleet has become one of
the main challenges that Lindemann and Launchways are working together to
address.
One of the issues created by the larger fleet was the rising
cost of the company’s auto insurance. Launchways implemented a multi-prong
approach based on telematics to decrease these insurance costs while increasing
workplace safety and overall fleet expenses.
Sally Resch, Fleet Manager at Lindemann, explained more.
“Launchways has implemented a Fleet 360 vehicle monitoring system at no cost to us. We received upfront discounts from insurers for using the system and expect to qualify for more discounts. The best part is that we are keeping our team members safe when they are out in the field, but the impact on our bottom line is also significant. As the Fleet Manager, the monitoring system makes my job easier and gives me peace of mind.”
Overall, the telematics system has helped Lindemann save 20%
on their auto insurance with more potential savings as they continue to use the
system. During the same period, Lindemann has seen a 70% decrease in fleet
accidents. And the system’s dashboard lets Sally and her team review driving
incidents such as speeding and hard-braking to address poor driving habits by
employees.
Looking to the
Future
Lindemann and Launchways have been working together for
eight years. Along the way, Launchways has helped the Lindemann team grow their
company and tackle business issues by providing business insurance and employee
benefits solutions as well as hands-on consultation. Instead of growing
stagnant over the years, the relationship has only deepened and allowed
Launchways to provide even greater value for Lindemann and their team.
Having implemented telemedicine, new dental and vision
benefits, and fleet telematics, Lindemann is now partnering with Launchways to
overhaul their entire HR function. Their team has grown significantly over the
years and we look forward to working with them to expand their HR systems and
policies to better serve their employees.
Too many in management, from ground-level supervisors to
C-level leadership, have trouble answering questions regarding their team’s
performance in an honest, fact-driven way that speaks to actual performance and
not just day-to-day habits or cultural fit. This disconnect isn’t for lack of
trying– just about everybody understands that great work must be done to create
a great enterprise. It’s articulating what that performance looks like and
actually assessing it within your employees that’s so tricky.
Make no mistake: strong performance management is the
difference between a promising organization growing into a business juggernaut
or stagnating at not-quite-there. It’s what separates a solid leadership team
from an excellent one and determines who are the flashes in the pan and who are
the sustained innovators and disruptors.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
Why industry standard approaches to performance
management are often not efficient nor impactful
Why all businesses must modernize their approach
to performance management in the near future to address the needs of the modern
workforce
Specific mindsets, tools, and approaches
organizations can use to begin transforming their performance management
processes
Why Most Approaches to Performance Management are Outdated
The way we work, interact with our colleagues, and use
technology on a daily basis has outgrown the traditional strategies that drove
performance management and assessment in the 20th century. Our
approach to accountability has fallen behind the pace of work, and that creates
risk.
Perhaps the greatest example of this is the fact that most
discussions about employee feedback and performance management are still built
on qualitative feedback from direct supervisors. Managers fill out a scorecard
for each employee, provide verbal or written comments, and, when applicable,
create plans for improvement.
Here’s what’s missing from this traditional approach: in
nearly every business where this legacy assessment practice is used, there are
tech-based work management systems in place creating data that could be used to
inform a much realer, more focused ongoing discussion.
That means many in business are choosing qualitative over
quantitative and giving preference to supervisors’ thoughts and feelings over
actual measures of worker quality and productivity. That method defies
everything we know about the power of data and analytics in the modern workplace.
Furthermore, the traditional performance management model
treats each individual employee as though they were an island, emphasizing only
their direct relationship with their individual work and their direct
relationship with their supervisor/manager/assessor. That approach is out of
alignment with what we’ve collectively learned about the power and importance
of teambuilding and company culture over the last twenty years.
Why Modernize Your Approach to Performance Management?
In order to gain the best possible understanding of the
potential of your team and asses your areas of strength, weakness, and need,
it’s crucial to have a modern, data-driven performance management and
assessment framework in place. Any organization articulating a performance
management strategy for the first time, or any business with a framework more
than five years old, should prioritize this work to support short- and
long-term viability.
Talent relations is increasingly an area of federal, state,
and local regulation. Outdated performance management frameworks leave
organizations open to lawsuits, sudden terminations, and potential
non-compliance issues. An up-to-date approach to performance management sews up
those holes in policy and provides better legal protection for the organization
as a whole and each manager or assessor as an individual.
Modern, responsive performance management demystifies the
process from top to bottom, creating better support for those in charge of
assessment and greater authenticity for those being assessed. Each stakeholder
has an appropriate voice in the process, the ability to provide documentation
to back up their claims, and the goal-setting framework necessary to ensure
everybody grows professionally together.
When you bring your performance management strategy into the
era of technology, it breaks down the traditional boundaries between “boss” and
“employee” to foster a more productive overall culture and push everyone toward
excellence.
Three Things You Can Do to Modernize Your Performance Management Approach
Stop Viewing Performance Management as an Annual Appraisal
A year is an incredibly long term. If you managed a sports
team, would you give every player a year of starting time before you assessed
their performance? The answer is, probably not.
Great players get the most playing time and the most
compensation, and the worst achievers are obviously sent packing, but it’s that
80% in the middle who the true coach can influence and push toward improvement.
Good coaches make constant, ongoing assessments, make constant, ongoing
feedback, and incentive the day-to-day work on a constant, ongoing basis.
Turning your management/supervisory team into “coaches”
doesn’t happen overnight, but it does have the potential to completely
transform what work and culture feel like in your business. The first step to
unlocking that potential is eliminating your yearly (or even quarterly)
performance management model and shifting toward an ongoing assessment
structure.
As we’ve said, the increased availability of worker data
thanks to technology makes this work much easier. Managers can use ERP
interfaces, project management systems, and so on to monitor what employees are
doing, how they are working toward goals and deadlines, and so on, each day or
week. It’s easier than ever to see when someone is falling behind and make a
correction or recognize an employee who is taking things to the next level at
your organization.
While it seems like that kind of constant supervision creates new work for
managers and new stress for workers, it actually streamlines and reduces both
over time.
Adjusting to these new practices can take some time for
supervisors at first, but once they’re plugged into performance management
practices as part of their daily work, there’s no more quarterly or yearly
assessment season crunch, and what was once a major stressor is now a harmless
daily task. For workers, ongoing assessment means no more nervously waiting to find
out how you’re doing, and each individual assessment or evaluation feels less
stressful or punitive.
Build Clear Expectations and Establish Clear KPIs
We’ve addressed the concept of data several times already,
but it cannot be stressed enough: The only way to turn performance management
into a true performance driver is to stay rooted in data and objectivity.
One of the biggest issues managers have when it comes to
assessment is that they might be responsible for assessing a team of 25+ people
in a variety of different roles and simply don’t know where to start.
Data-minded thinking absolutely obliterates that issue and provides strong
anchor/talking points for any employee evaluation.
In order to make that work, though, your organization and HR
departments must have a well-defined organizational chart with goals and
measurable KPIs established for each professional, team, or department. Again,
that sounds like a major task at first, but once it has been completed, there
is a much more comprehensive vision for the organization and talent in place,
and far greater clarity when it comes to who should be doing what.
When you have clear KPIs and measures of success for each
position or role in the company, it’s easier to onboard new hires in a
meaningful way, help laggards see where they need to improve, and identify
superstar leaders of tomorrow. Employees can track their progress over time,
and managers can mold each worker’s skillset or professional growth in
relevant, individualized ways. That data-minded thinking makes everything less
personal and less punitive, inviting each worker to create a vision of success
for themselves in their particular role.
Establish High Performance as a Key Company Value
One of the biggest reasons employees fall short of
expectations is because they didn’t fully understand those expectations. Either
the importance of the work or the
value of doing an exceptional job is unclear or employees
aren’t sure what great work looks like to you.
By making performance expectations clear, visible, and a
daily part of the work experience in your organization, you can create a
company culture in which your employees strive to be their best selves, meet
identified goals, and brainstorm new ways of doing work better. When doing
great work is a foundational pillar of what you do, employees will continuously
be encouraged to go above and beyond.
Establishing a culture of high performance is much more
complex than simply saying you want to do it. In order for that culture to feel
authentic and for workers to buy in, you must create a clear roadmap that shows
what excellence looks like and how collective excellence will grow the company
and improve the lives of each employee.
Getting that right requires strong employee education, both
to get new hires oriented and to provide veterans with the tools they need to
grab onto the evolving face of work in their organization, as well as
outstanding communication and a commitment to fostering a strong bond between
the organization and its team.
Key Takeaways
Performance assessment has the potential to help a business
become its best, most profitable self, but in order for that to happen, a
modern, responsive system is required. Remember:
Performance assessment must be an on-going
process to work well
When you get performance assessment right,
everybody gains value: the business, the individual workers, and the middle
management who does the assessing
Quantifiable data and KPI tracking make
performance assessment easier, fairer, and help the whole process stand up
better to scrutiny
The key to any performance-centric strategy is
making sure team members truly value excellence and know what excellence in
their role looks like on a day to day basis
How to Learn More
If you’re a business leader looking to build an impactful,
forward-facing performance management strategy, be sure to join us on
Wednesday, December 11th to learn about
The Future of Performance Management!
This free webinar from Launchways will be packed with
actionable insights about emerging best practices for performance assessment
including…
How to assess the impact of your current
performance management program and get started on building something even
better
How to recognize the common pitfalls of
performance management
How to replace an annual assessment system with
a continuous feedback loop
How to deliver difficult feedback and establish
a shared view of reality
How to manage both high- and low-performing
talent effectively
The hour-long learning experience will feature presentations
and Q&A time with an all-star panel of veteran business leaders who know
what it takes to build, manage, and continuously improve a great team.
Presenters will include:
Jodi Wellman, Co-Founder of Spectacular at
Work, a leading executive coach who specializes in helping business leaders
maximize their teams to build success and balance.
Adam Radulovic, President at XL.net, an
experienced entrepreneur and small business leader with a track record of building
and managing profit-driving teams.
Gary Schafer, President at Launchways, who
has built multiple businesses from the ground up and specializes in scaling
high-performing teams for growing organizations.
Jon
Howaniec, VP & HR Director at Clark Dietz, who has over twenty years
experience building high-performing HR processes at fast-growth organizations.
Any business leader, HR Director, or manager hoping to
improve their skills as a coach, mentor, or accountability partner should make
time to check out The Future of
Performance Management: How to Modernize Your Approach and start the
process continuously improving their team this December.
