Success story

Onboarding

Lane Bryant – Onboarding

Industry: Retail: Plus-size Women’s Clothing

Key Challenges

Significant change with a new corporate owner, a new CEO, and other changes in operations
HR needed a strong talent acquisition and retention strategy and onboard the right people to position company for growth

Solution and Services

Built a company onboarding experience that was customized for each audience: store leadership, home office leaders and home office associates

Solution Highlights

Integrated new and newly promoted associate into the business and culture
Built operations knowledge base
Provided a model for coaching new leaders through their onboarding experience

Key Benefits

Both the field organization and home office new associates experienced an improved onboarding program over previous years.
Survey scores were consistently higher over time because of the onboarding program
An “up-skilling” of HR partners in their abilities to deliver onboarding support

Onboarding Leadership: Tailoring a Retail Women’s Clothing Store Chain Talent to Growth Strategy

Retailers realize there isn’t just one growth strategy. Rather, they rely on a diversity of approaches that vary by global economic growth, energy prices and even inflation trends.

But when that retailer experiences a vast amount of internal change, the stakes are even higher to bring in talent who can be flexible with changing structures while offering innovative solutions for future growth.

Lane Bryant is a United States retail women’s clothing store chain focusing on plus-size clothing. The first Lane Bryant store opened on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1904. Through the decades, Lane Bryant grew nationwide, offering a wide selection of fashion apparel. The chain operates over 800 stores in 46 U.S. states and is part of the Ascena Retail Group family. In the 1990’s Lane Bryant began a transformation of the brand that has today made it the plus-size industry leader.

The Challenge: Onboarding Leaders Who Face a Deluge of Organizational Change

The Lane Bryant organization had experienced dramatic change that included a new corporate owner, a new CEO, several new leaders and many changes in how they operate as a retail company.

Because the level of change was complex, there was inevitable attrition and turn-over in both the field organization and the home office. The head of human resources knew that they needed a strong talent acquisition and retention strategy to help accelerate the transition, and find and onboard the right people who would position them for success.

Creating and implementing an onboarding experience for each audience was a critical component of this strategy. Lane Bryant asked Connect the Dots (CTD) to partner with them to build such a program.

The Solution: Connect the Dots’ Onboarding Program

With CTD’s deep expertise in retail, leadership and all-associate onboarding, we collaborated with Lane Bryant to build a company onboarding experience that was customized for each audience. Together we created solutions for:

Stores leadership (Regional Directors, District Managers and Store Managers)
Home Office Leaders (Directors and above)
Home Office Associates (all home office associates)

Our experienced executive coaches applied CTD’s onboarding strategy, integrating Lane Bryant’s organizational culture with their longterm goals.

When leaders transition into new organizations and roles, it creates a complex environment. Both the new leaders themselves, as well as the organizations, have high expectations for results. CTD was able to guide the new leadership from the first stage of accepting the offer to the final onboarding stage of transition.

Leadership Onboarding: Building a Strong Foundation for Current and Future High-Performing Teams

The onboarding programs were created to meet these objectives:

Successfully integrate each new and newly promoted associate into the business and culture
Built knowledge of operations and the brand to maximize speed to performance
Developed a consistent, structured, yet flexible program that was customized for each new associate
Provided a model for coaching new leaders through their onboarding experience

Both the field organization and home office new associates experienced an improved onboarding program over previous years. This was documented by surveys that were sent to both the new associates and their managers to measure progress.

New hires and their hiring managers felt that their expectations from the hiring process were being met.
New hires and their hiring managers were consistently having discussions about the new hires’ roles, and the high scores on the new hires’ understanding of their roles reflected these positive scores.

Survey scores were consistently higher over time as the use of the onboarding program increased in the following areas:

Within three months, it reinforced the decision to hire/ join organization
Leaders and management were actively engaged in onboarding
Leaders received adequate training and resources
Feedback allowed the new hire to align behaviors with culture
Onboarding experience successfully prepared the new hire to deliver results
HR provided adequate support and coaching

Additional benefits to the organization included an “up-skilling” of human resources partners in their abilities to deliver onboarding support, provide early feedback and build relationships with new leaders.

Both the SVP of Human Resources and Lane Bryant have confirmed that their updated onboarding programs are a differentiator and a competitive advantage for hiring and retaining top talent.

To achieve stronger growth, companies must not only acquire the right talent, but also align these leaders’ roles and skills with the companies’ growth strategies. As a result, top companies will be fortunate to have excellent leaders with the skills needed to drive growth. Lane Bryant’s leadership team is now prepared to help the organization reach their goals for future growth – and success.