At a Glance
MS International Inc. (MSI) is a leading North American distributor of flooring, countertops, wall tile, and hardscaping products. Headquartered in Orange, Calif., the company has more than 60 showrooms, offices, and distribution centers across the U.S., Canada, and India.
Founded in 1975, MSI has grown into one of the world’s largest importers and distributors of building material products. Today, the company generates over $2.5 billion in annual revenue; employs over 3,800 people in the U.S., Canada, and India; and supports over 400,000 jobs worldwide through its extensive supplier network. In recent years, MSI has earned recognition, including being named a top workplace by USA Today for its exceptional leadership, innovation, employee engagement, and commitment to purpose and values.
MSI’s growth during this time brought in new HR leadership who sought to redefine the role and strategic impact of the HR function within the organization. MSI’s HR strategy and team underwent a multiyear transformation, shifting from a traditional support role to an outcome-focused, strategic partner. This evolution centered on leveraging HR data to establish measurable links between HR initiatives and business outcomes. By emphasizing financial implications and demonstrating the tangible value of HR, the team successfully gained credibility and alignment with organizational leadership.
Challenge
Demonstrate the Value of an Effective HR Strategy
In 2017, MSI achieved a company milestone by surpassing $1 billion in annual revenue, supported by a workforce of over 1,750 employees. Since then, the company has experienced remarkable growth, more than doubling its revenue and almost doubling its workforce. Despite this success, HR at MSI was traditionally viewed as an administrative function, focused on routine personnel management, rather than as a strategic business partner.
This perception was reinforced by the absence of senior HR leadership for several years, which led to a fragmented, decentralized HR structure. HR services and practices varied widely across branches and locations, resulting in operational inefficiencies and misalignment with organizational goals. Recruitment efforts, for instance, suffered from a lack of coordination, hiring managers managed candidate pipelines independently, and a temp-to-hire model contributed to costly high attrition rates.
At the same time, company leadership questioned HR’s alignment with business priorities, perceiving the function as heavily process-driven and somewhat removed from the organization’s core objectives. This gap was not limited to operations: HR also faced challenges in efficiently tracking key business metrics and developing a deeper understanding of MSI’s products and strategies, which limited its ability to fully contribute as a strategic partner.
Together, these challenges created a critical need to redefine HR’s role within MSI. To support the company’s growth trajectory, HR had to establish a strategy to clearly demonstrate its value in measurable terms, shift from a support mindset to actively driving organizational success, and build a sustainable foundation capable of meeting future business needs, especially amid rapid technological change.
By developing a deep understanding of MSI’s business needs and providing company leaders with actionable insights derived from data, the HR team successfully addressed these challenges and implemented a highly effective HR strategy for the organization. This approach placed a high priority on business needs and goals, ensuring that HR’s efforts are guided by relevant data and metrics. Additionally, the strategy has driven a significant mindset shift within the HR team, fostering a focus on actions that deliver strategic value and support the organization’s growth, even amid evolving business demands.
Know the Business Better Than the Business
Most HR functions and their teams gain insight into the organizations they support through collaboration and regular interactions with the workforce. Over time, these experiences may build a foundational understanding of how the company operates and how HR contributes to its success. Much of this knowledge, however, is gained indirectly and shaped by personal experience, which can make it challenging for HR teams to fully understand the key drivers of business success and align their strategies to maximize their impact in advancing the organization’s goals.
When MSI set out to redefine its HR function in 2019, the organization hired Chris Courneen to lead this effort as the head of their HR organization. Working closely with the existing HR team and company leadership, Courneen recognized that meaningful transformation would require HR to develop a deeper understanding of the business itself. MSI’s HR leadership took a hands-on approach, stepping into the field to gain firsthand insights and inform the vision for the department’s evolution. In fact, much of the initial work in redefining HR at MSI was unrelated to HR, at least on the surface, as Courneen described: “I spent the first several months at the company essentially doing zero HR work. I was in the business itself. But it wasn’t just with departmental leaders: I was in the warehouse with colleagues packing orders, on the road with sales representatives, in the showroom helping customers, and in the truck with drivers. We needed to understand how our operations worked — and the people behind them — before making any meaningful changes.”
Through these experiences, MSI’s HR leaders not only gained a deep understanding of MSI but also established the foundation for HR’s revitalized strategy, defining HR’s role within the company. Reflecting, Courneen explained that this approach enabled him to craft an HR strategy that was closely aligned with business goals while effectively supporting workforce needs.
“Spending time with the business allowed us to align HR’s strategy with what the company actually needed. ... This allowed us to position HR as a credible partner to say, ‘We understand what you’re facing, and here’s how we can help you solve the problem.’”
Chris Courneen, Senior Vice President of HR at MSI
This business understanding doesn’t stop with HR leadership. MSI’s entire HR function takes an active approach to understanding the broader business and its objectives. From day one, new HR team members are required to immerse themselves in various aspects of the company, engaging in tasks such as filling orders, taking warehouse inventory, and participating in showroom sales conversations. Princess Riley, an HR director at MSI who has personally participated in these immersive experiences, emphasized their importance: “Understanding the business is No. 1 for us. The ability to sit with employees and understand the specific work and obstacles they face in their jobs helps to give us a deeper understanding into how certain departments operate and how we can better support them.” This hands-on approach equips HR team members with a comprehensive understanding of the business, enabling them to align their efforts with the company’s objectives.
These experiences also highlight a key factor behind HR’s successful transformation at MSI: building credibility. Farhad Khan, a team leader and head of operations for more than 10 warehouses at MSI, reflected on the importance of this during the early stages of the transformation. “At the beginning, I’ll admit there were moments when the HR plan felt like too much. It was a great strategy and partnership, but the time investment was significant, and we had plenty of other work to focus on. We stayed committed to our goals, though, and it helped me to know throughout that HR was genuinely trying to understand and support our business. Once I started seeing positive results in areas like safety and retention, it validated our approach for me,” Khan said.
Riley also acknowledged facing skepticism during the early stages of MSI’s HR transformation, both from fellow employees and other leaders. Employees would often associate HR with negative outcomes, such as terminations, while leaders viewed meeting with HR as a disruption to daily operations. “Leaders didn’t trust us,” Riley recalled. “They were hesitant to have honest conversations because they saw us as taking time away from the things that mattered.” Over time, HR built the credibility needed to drive change, with a major turning point being their effective management of operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. To many at MSI, this showcased HR’s value and opened doors for further opportunities. “The more we used data to support our recommendations, the more leaders began trusting us,” Riley explained. “We moved away from ‘gut feelings’ and focused on data-driven action items to inform priorities. It took some effort, but eventually our managers and leaders saw that what we were trying to do was ultimately rooted in helping them.”
By aligning new HR strategies with the realities of the business and clearly demonstrating their value, the organization developed trust and embraced these HR initiatives, recognizing their ability to advance and add value to organizational objectives and individual roles. Today, HR implements strategies that provide optional yet highly impactful resources for the organization. Through deeply understanding the business, HR can develop and deliver tailored resources to leaders across the organization, offering information that helps drive operations, such as live dashboards with real-time talent data (see Figure 1).
These tools empower teams with actionable insights, driving data-informed decisions across the organization. This approach has been highly effective for MSI, allowing HR to deliver relevant insights to each business function while enabling them to operate independently, which is critical to the organization’s culture. By thoughtfully cultivating a deep understanding of MSI’s business and its people, the HR function provides support that is closely aligned with the practical needs of organizational operations and goals.
Figure 1
MSI Employee Learning and Development Company Dashboard
Note: Data provided here are fictitious and are displayed to illustrate actual patterns in company data.
Key Takeaways
Gaining hands-on experience with the business and workforce enables HR to develop strategies that are firmly rooted in organizational realities and effectively applicable across the company.
Developing HR strategies rooted in practical business applications helps HR build credibility and trust with organizational leaders and stakeholders by ensuring these strategies directly align with and support company objectives and goals.
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Translate HR Strategy into Clear Business Returns
Many HR functions often operate in relative isolation from the broader organization, concentrating on supportive tasks that maintain day-to-day operations but failing to clearly align their efforts with driving business success. Research from SHRM revealed that this is a common scenario, with 8 in 10 organizations (80%) having an HR function of average maturity, meaning HR provides sufficient organizational support but may not fully align with broader goals.1
This description was once true of MSI’s HR function, which was primarily focused on supporting the organization through administrative duties. As Riley, who has more than 10 years of experience with MSI, noted, “HR processes were largely manual and paper-based, which made it difficult, at times, to operate efficiently and proactively support our employees.”
MSI’s HR leaders identified opportunities to revolutionize HR’s role within the organization by focusing on measurable outcomes and driving efficiencies. Over the course of several years, MSI adopted a data-driven and technology-forward approach to position HR as a strategic business partner at the organization. To achieve this status, the HR function undertook initiatives that reimagined recruitment, streamlined administrative tasks, and showcased HR’s direct impact on business success.
One of the first challenges the HR team addressed was related to retention. MSI grappled with rising attrition rates, specifically in warehouse operations, which increased operational costs and hindered revenue potential. To tackle this issue, the HR team needed to fully understand the impact of turnover on the business. This in-depth analysis not only clarified the situation but also helped link turnover directly to business outcomes, securing leadership support for change.
The team focused on evaluating entry-level roles, which experienced the highest turnover rates and were most frequently part of the temp-to-hire model. Their analysis revealed that each departure in these roles cost MSI approximately $25,000, factoring in lost productivity, onboarding, and overtime expenses. This amount and the methodology used to calculate it were crucial in helping MSI’s leadership fully understand the severity of the company’s turnover problem, which allowed them to design a tailored strategy to address it.
Figure 2
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“Transparency was key. We showed how we worked with the data, identified where we were losing money, and outlined how we could fix it. It wasn’t just about making changes, it was about proving that those changes would deliver measurable results,” Courneen said. The HR team clearly communicated their process, partnered to devise solutions, and secured leadership approval to develop strategies aimed at addressing these challenges.
Armed with these insights and leadership buy-in, the HR team crafted strategies and action plans to address MSI’s turnover challenge. These initiatives included improving talent acquisition processes, revamping hiring manager interviews, enhancing onboarding processes, providing personalized training programs tailored to employee needs, and increasing employee sentiment and engagement activities.
The effects of these efforts were striking: Within three years, these efforts reduced the organization’s cost-per-hire by 66%, resulting in more than $6.5 million in savings. The retention improvement during this period also resulted in another $4 million in savings for the organization and reinforced the value of investing in improving talent acquisition strategies and focusing on employee retention.
These outcomes highlight a strong link between HR strategies and overall business objectives. By understanding the actual financial costs of employee turnover under MSI’s old hiring model and its impact on various parts of the business, MSI’s HR team developed targeted strategies to tackle these challenges. In addition to providing financial and operational benefits, these efforts elevated the perceived value of those HR strategies, earning support and buy-in from leaders and managers across the organization.
Today, MSI’s HR function produces a biannual talent acquisition cost report and accompanying dashboard that is accessible to all regional managers, providing them with key hiring metrics, such as those displayed in Figure 3. The data available in these resources provide a clear breakdown of hiring costs across the company and locally, as well as the sources of new hires. Importantly, these HR-related insights are presented in a clear, business-focused format, ensuring these leaders and managers can easily understand and apply the information to their roles. Khan emphasized the importance and usefulness of this data, noting that it allows him and his team to focus on the right priorities to boost productivity and enhance customer experience.
Figure 3
MSI Recruiting Dashboard
Note: Data provided here are fictitious and are displayed to illustrate actual patterns in company data.
By delivering these practical resources, MSI’s HR team ensures this talent data is useful and actionable to the overall business, rather than being overly HR-focused. This approach embodies MSI’s HR functional strategy, focusing on organizational objectives to drive actions that advance the entire business. As a result, MSI’s HR function is now recognized as a strategic partner that drives meaningful business impact across the organization. MSI Co-CEO Raj Shah emphasized this viewpoint and trust in his organization’s HR function, saying, “HR is a large part of MSI and our company’s future. We consider our HR team a part of our senior leadership team. They are involved in company strategy discussions, and we take their point of view extremely seriously when making decisions.”
Key Takeaways
Aligning the HR function with broader business goals and measurable outcomes can transform HR from a support role into a strategic business partner, which can have a direct impact on organizational success.
Analyzing workforce challenges, such as turnover costs, and translating the findings into actionable business applications can yield insights that secure leadership buy-in and inform the creation of targeted, effective strategies to remedy these challenges.
Presenting HR data in clear, business-focused formats enables company leaders to effectively apply these insights, highlighting HR’s value and ensuring their contributions are recognized and leveraged throughout the organization.
Focus on HR Profits, Not Just Costs
Most HR functions focus on managing administrative tasks and finding ways to control organizational spending. As shown in Figure 4, responses from more than 100 senior leaders at MSI highlight the diverse topics many see HR managing. MSI’s HR team fulfills the traditional responsibilities of human resources, but their strategy goes further by directly aligning with business objectives that drive revenue and profitability. A pivotal aspect of MSI’s transformation involved using HR solutions to tackle business challenges and achieve organizational goals. By centralizing recruitment, adopting advanced technologies, and quantifying the financial impact of workforce turnover, MSI redefined HR’s role from administrative support to a key driver of business success. This transformation altered perceptions of HR not only across the company but also within the HR team itself.
Figure 4
Poll Results on HR’s Purpose from MSI Company Leadership
Following the successful implementation of the new strategy to address key business challenges, MSI’s HR team earned widespread recognition and value within the organization. To sustain this success, a critical challenge was ingraining this perception within the HR team itself. Rather than seeing themselves as an administrative function that implemented isolated initiatives, the team now had to work to see themselves as strategic business partners capable of creating meaningful impact. This shift was crucial to ensuring HR strategies remained tightly aligned with broader business goals and to avoiding a regression that prioritized administrative or isolated tasks.
As the leader of the HR function, Courneen highlighted this approach as essential for his team to continue driving HR initiatives that directly contribute to business success. “I remind the HR team all the time that we are not a cost center but a profit center. We always try to talk in terms of dollars and cents, especially when talking with our CEO or other organizational leaders,” Courneen said. “For example, when we cut our hiring costs in half, we didn’t present this as just savings. We converted it to the millions of dollars equivalent that it would be in sales revenue, because when we save money, that’s the same as earning profit to the bottom line.”
MSI’s HR leaders consistently encourage their teams to think strategically about the alignment of HR’s priorities with broader business goals. To reinforce this mindset, they integrate business-focused discussions into team meetings and even quiz staff on how their work aligns with organizational objectives. These actions foster a stronger, more strategic approach within the HR team. “This is how the entire HR team at MSI should be thinking, because this is how we connect with and provide clear value to the rest of the business,” Courneen said.
Riley described HR as moving from a “defensive” mindset to one focused on “offense.” She highlighted how this profit-focused approach is applied across the organization, citing the use of HR data in sales processes as an example of how this data has helped uphold performance accountability within sales teams. From an operations standpoint, Khan described the significant return on investment in the HR function, noting that HR-driven actions have been critical in retaining key employees, saving the company millions of dollars over the years. Additionally, HR-led initiatives have identified strategies to prevent workplace injuries, preserving upwards of millions of dollars annually by avoiding costly incidents. Both Riley and Khan emphasized that these are not only HR-driven cost savings but opportunities to reinvest those savings into other areas of the business, fueling growth and driving the company forward. Shah concurred with this view of HR’s impact, emphasizing the importance of having an HR team with the ability to effect change and grow long-term profitability across the organization.
HR at MSI is now viewed as a “service center” for other business functions, offering data-driven resources that business leaders and regional branch managers can apply in their daily work. By adopting this role, the HR team actively empowers and collaborates with leaders to make data-informed decisions, enhancing the capabilities for better business outcomes across the organization. Supported by a strengthened HR strategy aligned with business goals, this approach to sustaining a profitability and service mentality within the HR team not only meets organizational demands but also fosters a team culture in which strategy, data, and clear business connections are ingrained into HR’s identity at MSI.
Key Takeaways
Aligning HR strategies with business objectives can redefine HR as a profit center, strengthening its role in organizational success and driving measurable, impactful outcomes.
Shifting the HR team’s focus from a traditional support role to a driver of business strategies enhances alignment with organizational goals, cementing this mentality into the team culture and ensuring HR initiatives deliver meaningful value by providing leaders and partners with practical solutions they can leverage in their daily roles.
Prepare for Tomorrow by Supporting Today’s Workforce
Many organizations today are preparing for the future of work by exploring how emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, can transform their workplaces. These organizations are actively seeking AI-driven technologies, including HR management systems, equipped with cutting-edge features to improve productivity, efficiency, and other key business objectives. Even after addressing the challenge of selecting and implementing the right technologies, these tools often disrupt existing workflows, raising critical concerns about managing roles that are significantly impacted or displaced. With more than 15% of U.S. jobs, or about 23 million positions, being at least half automated,2 the magnitude of this issue is clear. Furthermore, many traditional HR strategies fall short in adequately preparing affected workers to successfully adapt and excel following the introduction of new technologies, resulting in reactive measures and an unprepared workforce.
MSI encountered similar challenges when determining how to effectively integrate advanced technologies and AI into its workforce to better support the business. Over the years, the company has introduced various technological solutions to equip the business with actionable data for informed decision-making. For instance, wearable technologies were implemented for warehouse staff to gather ergonomic data and guide practices aimed at reducing worker injuries. Additionally, cab-mounted cameras were installed in trucks to ensure drivers adhered to safety protocols and prioritized their well-being. “We want to be a high-tech company in a traditionally low-tech industry,” Courneen said, highlighting the multiple ways that MSI leverages technology in the workplace.
The HR function introduced an AI assistant platform, named Mira, to handle repetitive recruitment and administrative tasks. This technology reduced the time spent on these activities by 20% and cut HR’s administrative involvement in these processes by 40%. More importantly, Mira eliminated all of the rote onboarding tasks that typically fell on the local management teams’ plates, freeing them up to focus on training and onboarding new hires instead of completing paperwork and compliance tasks. This also allowed the HR and recruitment teams to focus on more strategic priorities, including identifying opportunities to implement this technology in other areas of the business, which significantly reduced the length of the hiring process, as outlined in one example in Figure 5 for a driver position.
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Figure 5
Driver Candidate Velocity
Time between recruiting milestones in calendar days.
| Recruiting milestone | Before strategy changes | After strategy changes |
|---|---|---|
| Time between candidate profile created and phone screening scheduled | 6 days | < 1 day |
| Time between phone screening scheduled and phone screening completed | 4 days | 2 days |
| Time between phone screening completed and onsite interview scheduled | 5 days | < 1 day |
| Total time between candidate profile created and onsite interview scheduled | 15 days | < 3 days |
These implementations at MSI, like at many other companies, did not come without collateral consequences, particularly for tasks and roles now handled by these advanced technologies. In addition, as HR strategies became more deeply integrated into the broader business, the demands on HR roles evolved significantly and, in some cases, became obsolete.
To ensure the HR team was prepared for these workplace changes and to avoid layoffs, HR leaders took a proactive approach to shaping the future of the HR function. By implementing a targeted upskilling initiative, HR roles were restructured to align with future business needs. For example, HR generalists, whose administrative tasks were increasingly managed by AI assistants, transitioned into strategic HR business partner roles that demanded stronger strategic capabilities. These changes positioned the HR function to prioritize high-impact initiatives such as workforce planning and workplace data analysis, directly driving decisions that supported organizational goals.
A key factor in the success of these transitions was the organization’s transparent and forward-thinking approach, framing the changes as opportunities to enhance employees’ impact on the business. As MSI introduced several technological advancements, leadership acknowledged that these implementations would build upon one another and inevitably affect certain roles. However, rather than presenting this as a warning, they communicated openly with the HR team, emphasizing how these technologies would elevate their contributions. Instead of fostering fears of displacement, MSI highlighted the benefits of these changes, such as eliminating repetitive, low-value tasks and enabling employees to focus on work that directly supports business objectives. In addition, HR leaders reiterated their commitment to supporting the lives and livelihoods of their team, meaning that even if the current role was being eliminated or changed, the company would work to avoid layoffs and identify new opportunities for the affected team members through upskilling, reskilling, or repositioning them. This framing encouraged staff to embrace the changes, viewing them as opportunities to increase their impact and engage in more meaningful, high-value work.
“When we successfully rolled out AI in talent acquisition, we could see a year ahead that we were going to eliminate jobs, which of course would impact our people’s lives. So, we were incredibly transparent with our team. ... Did they want to be trained to do the next-level work, or did they want us to help them identify other roles in the organization that better fit their skills? Regardless, the goal was to be proactive with these changes while supporting and empowering employees to contribute to something meaningful.”
Chris Courneen, Senior Vice President of HR at MSI
This approach enabled the HR function to grow alongside the organization while developing the skills required for future success. With strong organizational support, HR staff who chose to remain embraced the upskilling opportunity, equipping themselves to meet the demands of the company’s evolving direction. This transparent communication did more than outline the business’s path forward — it provided HR staff with sufficient time to consider their options and reinforced the organization’s commitment to helping them successfully transition into new, higher-valued roles. “The amount of transparency we provided upfront helped our team to form trust and made the transition much smoother. People appreciated knowing what was coming and having the chance to prepare for it,” Courneen recalled.
When HR staff chose not to pursue upskilling opportunities, MSI continued to collaborate with them to explore other potential roles within the company. Courneen noted that even these workers appreciated the organization’s transparent and candid approach to delivering this information. “Just like those who took the upskilling path, staff who decided against it were still appreciative of the organization’s approach. At the same time, we respect their decisions, especially given how hard they are. It was never about forcing anyone to do anything. Instead, it was about being candid and giving them options,” Courneen said. Ultimately, MSI retained most of its core HR staff, many of whom underwent training to take on new responsibilities and advance their careers following these transitions.
MSI’s transparent, proactive approach to workforce transformation proved to be a pivotal success as the HR function aligned more closely with business demands. By openly communicating the projected direction of the organization and clearly outlining future opportunities to enhance their work after adopting these changes, MSI demonstrated to its workers that they are valued and integral to the company’s growth, even if their future paths lay outside of HR. Notably, engagement surveys revealed that trust within the HR team increased during this period and remained higher than industry standards, despite the elimination of certain roles. Reflecting on this outcome, Courneen attributed this success to the organization’s forthrightness, saying, “People felt respected and supported, which made all the difference.” This upfront candor fostered a sense of respect and collaboration, ensuring workers felt secure and empowered as the company moved forward.
Key Takeaways
Transparent communication about workplace changes helps to build trust and prepare employees for business transitions while fostering a sense of respect and collaboration during these periods of disruption.
Proactively upskilling the workforce and redefining roles to align with future business needs ensures smoother workforce transitions while maximizing the value of advanced technologies.
Integrating AI and other technologies can enhance efficiency and strategic focus, but organizations must address the human impact by offering clear options and support to affected workers.
Results
MSI’s strategic HR transformation demonstrated how HR can evolve from a traditional administrative role into a strategic partner driving business success and can establish practices that ensure this transformation is sustained over time.
This shift prioritized deep immersion and understanding to ensure alignment with business goals. Following the example set by HR leaders who sparked this change, new HR team members at MSI are now required to directly engage with the business by performing tasks such as filling orders, taking inventory, and participating in sales conversations, fostering a firsthand understanding of operations. These hands-on experiences help HR team members develop a clear understanding of how HR strategies can support the broader organization while building business acumen and the collaborative language needed to work effectively across functions. This approach also strengthens HR’s credibility and trust, which are critical to successfully implementing strategies throughout the company.
MSI achieved success in several initiatives by adopting data-driven, results-oriented HR strategies based on business needs. Tackling workforce retention challenges was a critical focus, with the HR team identifying that turnover in entry-level roles cost the company approximately $25,000 per departure. By presenting this analysis and demonstrating the broader business impact, HR gained leadership buy-in to implement targeted strategies, such as improving onboarding processes and tailoring training programs to employee needs. These efforts reduced hiring costs by 50% within two years, saving millions of dollars and reinforcing HR’s value to the organization. In addition, the team realized savings of $4,500,000 by reducing attrition by 13% in the same time period. These successes guided leaders and regional branch managers to place greater value on HR data, recognizing its importance in enhancing their roles and their ability to achieve optimal business outcomes.
These achievements prompted HR to redefine its role as a strategic business partner within the organization. HR leaders reinforced this shift by consistently fostering a data-driven, outcomes-focused culture and encouraging HR staff to approach their work with a strategic mindset. This forward-thinking approach is further reflected by MSI adopting advanced technologies to enhance organizational capabilities. By remaining proactive and transparent in HR workforce planning and connecting actions with business needs, MSI ensured smoother transitions, strengthened team engagement, and solidified HR’s role in driving meaningful business impact to advance the organization.
Case in Point
By implementing these HR strategies and fostering stronger collaboration between the HR and Operations departments, MSI achieved significant business improvements, as reflected in the following metrics from its Atlanta-based locations between 2021 and 2024:
- Attrition: Reduced by 88%, now one-third of the industry average.
- Safety (Total Recordable Incident Rate): Down 64%, now half the industry average.
- Same-day shipments: Up 68%, with 99.5% of orders now shipping on the same day as order placed.
- Quality: Improved 84%, with credits on just 0.08% of shipments.
- Workplace experience and engagement: Increased 21%.
“It is important to empower and trust the HR team with responsibilities beyond what would typically be written in a job or department description. ... We expect them to have the same work ethic as the rest of the business, and they do.”
Raj Shah, Co-CEO of MSI
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