The Challenge: To revamp the organization in order to drive cost containment, safety, and efficiency.

The Solution: An integrated training approach targeting leadership, teamwork, and empowerment.

The Results: Medical incidents declined by 35% and lost time injury frequency declined by 47%. $103 million in improvements in 2004 with an additional $84 million in improvements estimated in 2005.

Open a newspaper, magazine, or phone book in any of 300 cities around the world and there’s a good chance you’re holding a Catalyst Paper product. As one of North America’s largest groundwood paper companies and one of British Columbia’s largest public companies, (formerly known as NorskeCanada) employs 3,800 employees and produces quality paper and pulp products used the world over.

The organization had flourished for years but began to flounder in the 1990s. New pressures on systems, processes, cost containment, safety, and efficiency began to surface. In addition strained employee-management relationships fed the need for change.

Catalyst was faced with a dramatic choice, either revamp the way it operated or close the doors. The organization chose to battle back and embarked on a journey toward operational excellence by creating a culture of open book management, educating employees at every level about the facts and costs of running the business, and involving employees in becoming part of the solution. One of the significant gaps identified was the lack of leadership skills at senior, mid, and frontline levels. Catalyst had an abundance of people in leadership positions who had never received any training or coaching.

The organization partnered with The Ken Blanchard Companies to implement Situational Leadership II (SLII), Situational Self Leadership, Building High Performing Teams, and Coaching Essentials for Leaders as well as the Leader Action Profile Assessments. The goal was to build a high performing and highly involved culture to improve productivity and efficiency without selling assets or cutting costs.

Senior leadership teams, managers and supervisors participated in the comprehensive process that included online content via SLII on the Ninth House Network, two days of classroom training dedicated to skills practice and real time problem solving, and a coaching follow-up component. Since the initiative began, Catalyst has seen dramatic improvement in safety (reduction of workplace medical incidents and injuries), quality (reduction of service failures and press room complaints), environmental (reduction of non-compliant environmental emissions), cost (reduction of manufacturing cash costs), and productivity (improvement in operating efficiency).

Catalyst put a comprehensive tracking system in place to monitor progress in the areas of world-class safety and organizational excellence and continues to realize tremendous results and break many previous performance records.

• Within one year the organization experienced improvement from four to seven percent in the areas of focus, accountability, response, and involvement.
• Medical incidents declined 35% over a 3-year period, and lost-time injury frequency declined 47% in a 4-year period.
• The organization realized $103 million in improvements and trending indicates an additional $84 million in improvements through product and market development, energy efficiency measures, and supply chain optimization.
• Catalyst rallied employees company wide around quality achieving a 35% reduction in customer product complaints by year end.
• In a customer satisfaction survey by MGT Information, Catalyst ranked at or above the industry average in three of four major paper product categories.