This document summarizes the author's experience as an HR consultant and former VP of HR. It discusses how the author helps clients maximize their HR efforts by analyzing costs, increasing efficiency, gathering data, and evaluating initiatives. It also provides an example of how the author reinvented a food manufacturing company as VP of HR by questioning everything, restructuring, and engaging employees to accomplish major projects quickly during a transition period.

1. Inside the Minds:
Maximizing Your HR Efforts
Nationwide Book Published by Aspatore Books
Author Contact Info:
Janie Minkin
Minkin & Associates L.L.C. (formerly of HRadvantage)
Owner and Managing Principal
847-942-2924
Janie.Minkin@gmail.com
Janie Minkin is the Owner and Managing Director of Minkin & Associates, L.L.C. and formerly a Sr.
Consultant with HRadvantage, a division of Gallagher Benefit Services. She has also held the position of
Vice President of Human Resources at Chef Solutions/Orval Kent Foods. She holds an M.B.A. in finance
from Loyola University of Chicago and a B.A. in mathematics from Northeastern Illinois University. She
has over 25 years of HR experience both as a practitioner and as a consultant in such industries as food
manufacturing and distribution, healthcare, and private equity. Janie resides with her family in Evanston,
Illinois.

2. Creativity and Questioning: Solving HR Problems
Introduction
I am a currently an HR consultant, and am a former Vice President of Human Resources.
Having been a practitioner is extremely beneficial to adapting to being a consultant, as I
have walked in the shoes of the clients I now assist. At HRadvantage, our focus is total
rewards consulting, which begins with linking the business strategy to the people strategy
and spans workforce planning, base compensation, incentive plan design, employee
engagement and communication.
Facing Challenges
With today’s global recession, companies are facing challenges that are more serious than
most have ever experienced before. Many of our clients are hospitals and the financial
challenges are enormous. As the cost of healthcare continues to escalate, people are
losing insurance coverage at an increasing rate. Loss of jobs make affording healthcare a
hardship or near to impossible, and yet people continue to need care. As HR consultants,
hospitals, and companies in other industries, turn to us to help them to better understand
and manage their human capital. We challenge companies to think differently, to get
better results. Many are experiencing hiring freezes, and some have experienced layoffs
for the first time. Other companies have already implemented several layoffs and cannot
cut any further. Institutions are temporarily suspending merit increases. These are
uncharted waters, no matter the industry. All have a common goal, to become ever more
efficient while preserving quality and jobs. Our consulting practice has shifted in the
short term from a focus on total rewards to assisting management in analyzing their total
human capital operating expense and suggesting ways to trim expense and retool policies.
Increasing Efficiency
Hospitals never close their doors. They are a 24x7, 365 day operation and are a very
labor-intensive microcosm. It’s like running a small city. Not only must quality
healthcare be provided, but service areas such as foodservice, housekeeping,
maintenance, security and administration must run effectively and efficiently. Our
expertise can help administrators understand their current human capital cost structure
and practices. Our approach is to analyze and determine true baseline costs in such areas
as base pay, premium pay programs (overtime, shift differentials, week-end differentials,
on call pay, lead pay, etc.) and absenteeism, and help administrators develop new and/or
revised policies and procedures that eliminate the waste while preserving efficiency and
effectiveness.
Understanding and support of new policies by both management and staff is also
essential to successful implementation of changes, and this fact should not be overlooked.
This is accomplished through a well thought out and formulated communication strategy,
several communication vehicles with targeted audiences, and management training,
before programs are actually implemented.

3. Information-Gathering Technology
Today’s technology allows for easy access to information. Almost all companies have an
HRMS system, be it homegrown or a known software package, which allows
administrators to manage their programs. These can be utilized to help gather vital, real
time information. We, at HRadvantage, gather key data elements and use statistical
algorithms to determine average costs over a period of time. We can then predict cost
escalation, leveling or deceleration using statistical modeling linked to a key set of
assumptions and economic indicators. This tool and exercise assists clients to determine
the impact of several scenarios presented and allows them to choose the best option to fit
their organization and culture.
Evaluating Effectiveness of Initiatives
As senior HR leadership has taken its place at the business table and become true
business partners to the rest of the executive team, the human resource function has
evolved. No longer can an HR department function solely as an administrator. It must
play a vital role as internal consultant to the different functions. Human Resource team
members must understand whatever business their company is in and be able to assist and
support the company through employee engagement, performance management,
organizational development and helping to train all employees to understand, interpret
and track the key metrics of the business. Compensation plans are then linked to these
key metrics and outcomes, and become quantifiable indicators of success. In today’s
market, every employee must be fully engaged and ever questioning the status quo for a
company to remain successful.
Major HR Initiatives: Reinventing a Company
In my former life, I was Vice President of Human Resources at Chef Solutions, Orval
Kent Foods. When I joined the company in 2004 as their HR Director, Chef Solutions
had just been purchased by a private equity company. Chef Solutions was deep in debt
and in need of reinvention in order to remain a viable business. It had once supplied
foodservice to the domestic airline industry, a market that had disappeared overnight after
9/11. I joined the company as part of the new management team. The new CEO, a
former colleague of mine, had partnered with the private equity firm to look for new
opportunities. The strategy was to diversify their portfolio and enter the food industry.
As the PE Company had no prior experience in food manufacturing, they sought food
manufacturing expertise and thus began the partnership between the PE Company, and
the new CEO. He put together a new management team, one that was a mix of key
executives from before the purchase and new external members. The CEO decided to
“double team” the HR function as there was much to accomplish in a short amount of
time. The current VP of HR also happened to be a former colleague of mine, and we
worked closely, splitting the function between his expertise (labor) and mine (strategy,
comp, benefits, OD and communications).

4. The beginning months were extremely busy as the former owners had operated Chef
Solutions as a division of their much larger global company. They had used a service
center concept to support the staff functions of HR, Payroll, Finance and IT, none of
which were part of the sale. Thus, we had no infrastructure for these areas and had to
work quickly to develop these capabilities. As part of the sale, there was a service
agreement that allowed us to continue to use their infrastructure and service center
through the end of 2004. January 1, 2005, we were on our own. Within that short period
of time (June through Dec.), we chose, tested and implemented a new payroll system, a
new time keeping system, designed and implemented all new benefits, conducted an
active Open Enrollment where everyone in the company had to re-enroll in benefits and
moved our 401(k) plan to a new administrator. This had to be accomplished on a tight
budget, keeping benefits costs flat from where they had been under the former owners.
Simultaneously, strategy sessions were being held and the company was under-going a
restructuring. Three separate divisions were defined, each with dedicated executive staff.
Creative Strategies and Solutions
To successfully accomplish all of the above, I solicited and engaged the entire human
resource team (both at corporate and within the plants), sought input, put teams together
and empowered those teams to accomplish the projects they were assigned. In assigning
both project managers, and team members, I asked for volunteers, a strategy that proved
to be very effective. The HR department became very energized and focused and took
charge and ownership of their projects. I did not have to sell them or work to gain their
buy-in as the projects became theirs and they proudly accepted the responsibility and
ownership. This also helped to assure that these projects would be successful within the
culture of Chef Solutions, a culture that was in a state of change and redefinition.
Questioning Everything and Reinventing the Company
As members of the new senior leadership team, we questioned and analyzed everything
about the business. HR had a seat at the business table through this metamorphosis. We
questioned and redefined who we, Chef Solutions, were. As mentioned, we restructured
into three distinct divisions to better focus and leverage divisional strengths. We
resurrected brand names that had name recognition and brand equity in the marketplace.
We analyzed what products were making money and which needed to be retired (the old
80/20 rule), which plants were best suited to make these products, which customers we
not only wanted to keep, but further court, as preferred customers (deeper penetration).
We identified and targeted new potential customers and put together a marketing strategy
to win those customers, and identified which current customers did not fit our portfolio.
We studied our logistics strategy to assure that our products could get to our customers in
a timely, cost effective way and we designed and posted key metric reports to track our
progress daily. We had plants that were operating at about a 50 percent capacity level,
thus we needed to determine which plants would remain open and which would close
and/or be sold. We also needed to retain key talent, hire certain critical skills that were
lacking and grow the culture into an empowered, trusting, and engaged workforce.

5. Cultivating a New HR Team
We had many critical initiatives moving forward simultaneously, and all were key to the
business’ success. The plant HR team understood their plant and what it took to get a
product produced and shipped, but were not aware of the world outside their own plant.
They needed to learn what else made up Chef Solutions and how those pieces fit together
to make the whole. The HR team at Corporate had to learn what transpired at the plant,
sales and distribution level. There needed to be a knowledge transfer between the two
and the team needed to come together as a single unit, trusting each other, and not be
polarized (corporate vs. plant). This group needed to help champion the new culture
which was being cultivated throughout the organization. It began with the CEO and the
executive team and sought to reach employees down to plant floor and out to the field.
The VP of HR left the organization before we successfully divested the first of the three
divisions and I was promoted to the VP of HR role. I continued to nurture and build our
culture through several communication channels and through the new programs we had
developed. We used Town Hall meetings, employee surveys and cross-functional teams.
Our performance management system tied to our business strategy and there were timely,
annual reviews. Within the first year, employees not only had the first merit increase in
over two years, but the first incentive payout in the history of the company. We shared
back to employees the success the business began to experience through incentive
payments. Most importantly, there was a continual stream of communication. There can
never be enough communication and the messaging must be consistent.
A Case Study of Reinvention
Today, to be successful in HR, a person must be a business person with an HR toolkit. It
is imperative to know and understand the business that you are in. HR needs to
understand its business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and be able to
design an HR strategy that helps serve and support all of those components.
My experience at Chef Solutions was a wonderful case study of taking an organization
apart and putting it back together, redefining it, and refocusing it. It was a full-scale
reinvention, and HR was there at the business table every step of the way. Overall, the
experience at Chef Solutions was phenomenal. I used to joke and say that we lived in
dog years. The experience gained in those few years surpassed anything a person would
normally receive in ten years. The metamorphosis touched on every aspect of the
business, from reinventing ourselves as a viable business, to defining our strategy,
determining how human resources would support the business, determining and
identifying the right talent, and being able to attract and retain key individuals. We had to
look into our organization and decide who we really needed to keep and how we were
going to groom and grow them, how we were going to leverage their past experiences
and skills, and how we were going to attract critical new talent to our organization. It is
difficult to attract talent to an organization that, from the outside, does not look very
stable, so HR had to be business people who could help candidates envision the potential
of the business and the future they may have, if they joined our team.

6. Once two of the three Chef Solutions divisions became profitable and were divested, it
was time to begin transitioning non-customer facing, senior management team members
out of the organization. This further reduced overhead and strengthened the bottom line
for the final sale.
As I began seeking a new VP of HR position, I realized that there were other ways I
could use these skills, which ultimately lead me to consider a career in consulting. At one
point, I was interviewing for a VP of HR position and was discussing my experience at
Chef Solutions. My interviewer commented, “You were way too operational. I haven’t
heard much HR out of you — Where is your HR?” My HR had been integrated
completely throughout my discussion with him, but he didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t the
HR role he had been used to. HR is no longer a stand-alone administrative silo. HR is an
integral component of the senior leadership team and a full business partner.