C A S E S T U DYE M P L OY E E R E V I E W S W I T H D E S E R E T B O O K

“I WAS GETTING VOICES FROM THE STORE ASSOCIATES CALLING ME AND

TELLING ME ONE STORY, I WAS GETTING A DIFFERENT STORY FROM THE

STORE MANAGER AND THEN I WOULD GET A DIFFERENT STORY FROM THE

REGIONAL.”

Deseret Book is a 150 year-old omni-channel bookstore with 31 retail stores in Utah, California, Idaho, Arizona, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, and Oregon, 12 licensed dealer relationships and an online ecommerce website.

In 2013, Jeff Gillette, was hired as the vice-president of consumer sales and merchandising at Deseret Book to try to figure out if anything could be done with the ailing and highly disrupted bookstore that was seeing competitors like Borders go out of business and the contraction of Barnes & Noble stores.

The company was struggling to achieve profitability, struggling to understand the retail market and had already closed six stores. Internally, store morale was low and associates lacked direction, expectations and goals. Knowing this, Jeff needed a tool that could provide data and insights into the performance within his stores, to identify problems quickly and communicate solutions across all stores.

C A S E S T U DY : D E S E R E T B O O K

- J E F F G I L L E T T E , V P S A L E S A N D M E R C H A N D I S I N G , D E S E R E T B O O K

T H E C H A L L E N G E S

L a c k o f p e r f o r m a n c e m e t r i c s a n d d a t a

P o o rC o m m u n i c a t i o n

T u r n o v e r a n d T r a i n i n g

After reviewing the challenges that Deseret Book faced, Jeff was able to narrow the store issues down to three primary categories; lack of performance metrics and data, poor communication, and turnover issues that included training and engagement.

These issues, Jeff felt, were at the core of many of the store performance and culture issues that his team was suffering from. Working with Cambeo, he began to break down the needs and situation each of these challenges presented:

When Jeff arrived at Deseret Book, there were many issues to tackle. Despite looking at store-by-store sales, Jeff really didn’t have adequate insights into what was really happening in his stores. He would often receive conflicting messages from associates, managers and even his regional managers with no processes in place to provide feedback.

Because of these issues, it was no wonder the stores were struggling to hire, train, and retain good talent.

Like many retailers, dealing with turnover and retaining top talent is a huge challenge.

If associates aren’t happy, then your customers probably aren’t being served well and the chances of the employee leaving are high. Deseret Book lacked the resources to adequately find and recognize associates that might have problems or are frustrated.

Those associates would either leave or stay on too long, not being happy, or engaged in their work which costs the company time and money. In the event managers did want to prescribe training for their associates, the company also lacked a learning management system that could be rolled out across all stores to establish training standards.

Deseret Book needed to find a way to increase employee morale and provide their associates the necessary resources that would contribute to their personal success. In addition, they needed systems and processes that would recognize their star associates and spur associate engagement that would ultimately increase retention.

“I was getting voices from the store associates calling me and telling me one story, I was getting a different story from the store manager and then I would get a different story from the regional.” In addition, there were no feedback processes or systems in place for associates to know how they were performing and managers also lacked the processes to perform regular reviews.

Without these in place, associates lacked ways to openly communicate with managers, and managers didn’t communicate goals and expectations because communication from management was also fragmented. As a result, associates had no voice, infrequent feedback and a feeling management didn’t care for them.

“WHAT WE’VE BEEN ABLE TO SEE THROUGH THE UTILIZATION OF THE

CAMBEO TOOL, IS THAT WE HAVE BETTER QUALIFIED, BETTER TRAINED,

HAPPIER INDIVIDUALS... RESULTING IN 200% REVENUE GROWTH.”

C A M B E O E M P L O Y E E R E V I E W T O O L

1 ) I m p r o v e d C o m m u n i c a t i o n

2 ) E s t a b l i s h e d a C u l t u r e o f P e r f o r m a n c e a n d P r o d u c t i v i t y

To address these challenges, Jeff turned to Cambeo’s Employee Review Tool. The tool provided a way to quickly address Deseret Book’s communication issues because the employee review tool is built to create conversations and culture, rather than JUST ‘industrial efficiency’. The tool helps drives social interaction, growth, discussion, constructive feedback, and recognition--all of which Deseret Book needed. For Deseret Book, this resulted in:

Prior to Jeff coming to Deseret Book employee reviews were only conducted once or twice a year. This meant that management would seldom get associate feedback and performance updates. With Cambeo’s employee review tool, Deseret Book started to conduct and automate reviews every other month to better understand and communicate what is going on in the stores, communicate and receive associate feedback and address any issues. Management could then better communicate their expectations and goals to the associates, get a pulse on how they’re performing, and address associate and store issues sooner before they become bigger problems. The reviews also provided opportunities to recognize achievement and truly give the associate a voice.

- J E F F G I L L E T T E , V P S A L E S A N D M E R C H A N D I S I N G , D E S E R E T B O O K

Using Cambeo’s employee review tool, Jeff was able to discover the type of culture he was dealing with by asking culture centric questions during the review process. Combining this data with 360 reviews, Jeff could then find the gaps in performance amongst associates and managers. Frequent employee reviews also kept associates and management on task in terms of store goals and productivity. The increased frequency also meant increased data and insights for Jeff where he could start to see productivity trends and cultural insights across the organization, store-by-store and down to a single associate.

3 ) T r a i n i n g

Using Cambeo’s employee review tool, a manager could easily evaluate an associate’s performance and determine how to best help them. Managers could identify problem areas and using Cambeo’s Learning Library, upload or use current training content that could then be assigned to a single associate, or to any and all associates. And because of the frequency of these reviews, the associate and manager can easily see if there was continued improvement.  

T R A I N I N G V I D E O

C O M P L E T E

E M P L O Y E E R E V I E W

C O M P L E T E

S T O R E E V A LO P E N O R

C O M P L E T E

S T O R E C H E C K L I S T

T R A I N I N G A R T I C L E

6 5 0 7 5 9 3 8 7 3 3 1 9 0 1 6 0

203 TRAINING VIDEOS VIEWED186 EMPLOYEE REVIEWS410 TOTAL ACTIVITIES

O N A V E R A G E

P E R S T O R E P E R Y E A R

T H E S O L U T I O N S

RESULTSCambeo allowed Deseret Book to gather relevant insights on their team members’ performance and culture via our breakthrough Employee Review tools. This gave Jeff Gillette the visibility he needed to make the best decisions for team dynamics, employee growth, turnover prevention, and training. He was able to define specific employee skills and actions that predicted sales growth at up to an 80% accuracy. These predicted skills included specific competencies such as employees accurately assessing and responding to customer needs, and team members having a positive cultural influence on those around them. Top performing Deseret Book stores in 2016 saw Cambeo Employee Review scores that were 3.6 percentage points better than the company average alongside net sales growth of 11.6%. Additionally, management was able to make informed hiring, retention, and succession planning decisions. This allowed them to maximize talent, make strategic personnel changes, and boost net sales - with a result of 200% year-over-year revenue improvement. Most of all, the Cambeo tools helped Deseret Book identify future high performers and drive targeted improved retention. In Jeff’s words: “We can be proactive. We can be a partner in that associate’s career path within the organization. Where we can say, through the performance of this individual--they should be on a track to become a supervisor, they should be on a track to at a future date to become a manager. The tool has allowed us to identify those individuals and partner with them so that we can improve retention and improve the baseline net results of our organization from a top and bottom line standpoint.”

Stores saw an 80% correlation between employee review and store revenue success.

B r i n g s o t h e r s u p v s . b r i n g i n g t h e m d o w n , G R E AT AT T I T U D EBy improving its survey score by 20 percentage points on this question, an employee could impact their predicted sales performance average over the course of a day by $18.70.

75 95+$18.70

DAILY AVERAGESALES

INITIAL SCORE IMPROVED SCORE

A c c u r a t e l y A S S E S S E S A N D R E S P O N D S T O N E E D SBy improving its survey score by 20 percentage points on this question, an employee could impact their predicted sales performance average over the course of a day by $24.46.

75 95+$24.46

DAILY AVERAGESALES

INITIAL SCORE IMPROVED SCORE

Top stores saw +3.6 points avg employee review scores alongside

11.6% NET SALES GROWTH.

DESERET BOOK’SMOST IMPACTFUL SKILLS