Impact Food Group is a rapidly growing food catering service business whose primary clients are educational environments across the UK. They have seen rapid growth over the last four years going from £62million in turnover up to £82million in turnover and an increase in their workforce of around 3,000 employees.
With an expanding workforce and an existing HR team, Impact Food Group faced the challenge of managing a geographically dispersed employee base effectively. In 2021 Impact Food Group implemented CleverGoose to enhance their management approach and drive consistency into their HR processes.
Despite having a dedicated HR team, Impact Food Group grappled with several challenges as it scaled.
Scalability Issues - Previously Human resources representatives had been involved directly in every HR interaction that took place. This was unsustainable as the workforce grew and led to delays in resolving day to day HR issues.
Skills challenges in fast growth environments - As the company expanded the skills and capability of front-line management became ever more crucial and due to the pace of growth it was not possible to rely on the legacy approach to train managers on an annual basis in how to handle workplace management issues.
Lack of proactivity in the HR function - Because the workforce was expanding at such a rate, the ability for HR to be proactive and work as a partner with the organisation diminished, HR were left feeling on the back foot and only able to provide support in a very reactive way leaving the HR team feeling overworked with transactional HR matters.
Impact Food Group chose to embed CleverGoose into their operational management teams for its simplicity and ease of use. The key features that have had maximum results are:
The implementation phase involved close collaboration between Impact Food Group HR and operational teams supported by a dedicated member of the CleverGoose team.
Weekly meetings (which we call ‘The Elephants Backpack’) were implemented in the early stages to help give live sessions on the platform and answer any questions or issues as they arose.
The transition was completed within four weeks with 550 users going live into the system. We switched to bimonthly catch ups to ensure the team have everything they need from the ongoing relationship.
Two years after implementing the CleverGoose tool into their operations Impact Food Group were able to report remarkable improvements with how HR supports their operational management teams:
Efficiency Gains: Despite a significant uplift in the numbers of people in the workforce the HR team have been able to remain the same size whilst delivering enhanced support through the CleverGoose tool.
Tribunal Reduction: The turnover has increased by 18million and added an additional 3,000 employees and yet there has been an 80% reduction in tribunal claims submitted as a result of poor management or HR process.
Empowered Managers: The teams responsible for managing people feel trusted and empowered to make their own decisions using CleverGoose as a guide.
Proactive HR Coaching: The HR team have shifted from being a reactive team of professionals who were stuck in the constant churn of employee relations paperwork to coaching managers and building their skills using CleverGoose.
They even love it enough to have given us this amazing feedback;
Impact Food Group and CleverGoose have now been in partnership for more than two years. By harnessing the CleverGoose platform, our managers are more empowered to make effective decisions. The partnership has also unlocked more streamlined processes, as well as providing great data and insights, significantly improving decision-making within business operations. Our journey with CleverGoose has proven the power of innovative technology in making the lives of our operational teams easier and more productive.
- Richard Taylor CEO
