York Risk Services: Bringing Culture to Crazy Town
By Danielle McMahon, CHRO
Creating culture is challenging. Creating culture and replacing entrenched habits and ways of doing things? That’s the kind of multi-year challenge that edges closer to near impossible. Which is why we’re all in.
But let’s back up a second. Because to understand where we’re at, you need to understand where we’ve been.
York was founded in 1962. Initially a third-party claims administrator, over the next 56 years, we grew to become a leading risk solutions provider serving corporations, the insurance industry, and public entities. And in 2017, as a result of our growth by acquisition strategy, we found ourselves with 5,000 associates, 1,500 job titles, 145 variable compensation plans, 86 businesses, 86 locations, 45 unique systems, 42 separate websites, 19 unique brands, and three separate 401k plans. Micro- and macro-cultures existed all over the place.
Confused yet? So were our associates and clients. It was, as one senior leader put it memorably, “Crazy Town.” But we were committed to tackling this challenge over the long-term — knowing full well that it would be a marathon, not a sprint — and investing in an evolutionary process that would allow us to create a more durable and positive organizational culture.
In 2017, York’s identity both in the marketplace and internally was unclear. Many of the businesses we acquired continued to operate under their legacy brand, leading to confusion and misunderstanding around who York was and what we did. We also struggled with competing and sometimes contradictory internal processes, stymying collaboration and inhibiting innovation. For example, those 1,500 job titles mentioned earlier? Many of those titles had no real bearing on what the actual job responsibilities were. A Vice President at one York business may be the equivalent of a Manager at another. And where multiple businesses were operating under different brands, it appeared that we were “competing” with ourselves.
All this created an environment of confusion and — often — frustration within the organization. Many associates did not feel a deep attachment to York or an understanding of what York did. “York is just the company listed on my paycheck. I work for...” was a common sentiment we heard in associate evaluations and surveys. There was no consistent framework for career development and compensation. Something had to give.
Our senior leadership team recognized the need to rethink our strategy for future success. Could we continue to operate and grow under the same “family of companies” model? Or was a bolder move necessary? After much internal debate and reflection, leadership determined that if we wanted to continue to grow and evolve, we had to challenge ourselves to come together as a unified York team and create the kind of transformational culture that could take us to a new level.
York’s mission — to reduce risk and get people and organizations back to health, work and productivity — served as the foundation of this transformation and as a reminder of why we came to work every day and why we were making this bold move forward.