Oriflame Cosmetics

The issue

The Turkish operation of Oriflame Cosmetics, the multinational direct selling cosmetics company, aimed to be the leader in its market. After carrying out an international employee survey, they identified several areas in their Human Resource strategy that needed attention. Oriflame decided to focus on:

• implementing a new organisation structure to support their business objectives
• defining the potential of the existing staff and actions to be taken for developing them
• improving the compensation and performance system to reward the desired behaviours and results.

Our approach

PricewaterhouseCoopers Human Resource Services had previously worked with Oriflame Turkey and had a good understanding of the specifics of the business and the unique culture of the company, which was founded in Sweden in 1967. As cultural transformation was an important part of the process, Oriflame Turkey chose us as their adviser with full belief in our sensitive approach to handling this important dynamic.

We started by carrying out a strategic review of their business, existing systems and HR policies. In close collaboration with Oriflame’s top management team we identified and evaluated possible solutions and then worked on articulating their chosen people vision and short-term strategies. This was translated into a project name and a powerful visual identity to be used in internal communications.

At the implementation stage, we broke the work down into several sub-projects, based around:

• redesigning the organisation structure
• developing a job evaluation system
• developing performance indicators based on individual jobs and personal development in line with a customer focused strategy and more closely linking performance with reward
• conducting an assessment centre based on core and management competencies for the targeted structure and culture
• identifying training needs for staff based on assessment centre results.

The outcome

Oriflame Turkey has completed its organisation restructuring and introduced new total compensation and performance management systems. We have helped them to:

• define their new organisation structure and prepare 54 new job descriptions
• create a competency model and development centre against which to assess the ongoing training and development needs of employees
• hold 11 days of soft skill training sessions for staff. Approximately 60 employees have been trained by using Experimental Learning techniques to develop their communication, planning and teamwork skills
• develop a new base & variable pay management system based on total compensation management principles.

The culture within Oriflame Turkey has become more focused on achieving business objectives. Financially, Oriflame Turkey has far outperformed its targets – in six months since the completion of the project, sales have increased significantly putting the Turkish subsidiary of Oriflame in its desired position as the leading direct selling cosmetics company in Turkey.

For further information about this case study, please contact Murat Demiroglu by emai l or on +90 212 355 58 58