Bob Mills Furniture
Oklahoma - Bob Mills Furniture
Workforce Success Story Submitted By: Central Oklahoma Workforce Investment Board
Workforce Challenge
Bob Mills Furniture is a growing retail furniture business with 186 employees. It was experiencing severe turnover at 200% in its sales and warehouse positions. Repeating hiring mistakes and the cost of the turnover was putting the company competitiveness at risk. While management recognized the problem, they needed assistance to understand why it was occurring and how to make needed changes.
Workforce Solution
The Central Oklahoma Workforce Investment Board (COWIB) worked with the Bob Mills Furniture to determine the reasons why people were leaving the jobs. The wages were competitive when compared to similar jobs in each hiring area, so that was not the reason.
The warehouse positions were very low skilled jobs, and many new hires were just taking a job to have a job, leaving soon thereafter because they did not like the work duties and warehouse environment. On the sales side, new hires were most often not a good match for the position or company culture.
The COWIB business services team helped write more accurate job descriptions, completed job analyses, and then gave the employer access to a soft skills assessment to help identify job candidates who would best fit its sales and warehouse positions. The company committed to using the JobFit assessment in all hiring decisions in its sales department and warehouse for 90 days.
Outcomes & Benefits
After implementing the JobFit program provided by COWIB, an ROI study compared the 1st quarter use with the assessment to the 1st quarter of the previous year, showing a turnover reduction of 50%. The first quarter of the second year of use with the assessment showed a continued turnover reduction of 60% to baseline. By using assessment tools recommended by COWIB, Bob Mills furniture realized a cost-of-hiring savings of over $269,000 for those two quarters.
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