Denver Water

Like many public utilities, Denver Water is facing the impending retirement of nearly half its workforce in the next 5 – 7 years. In anticipation of the significant loss of talent and the influx of many new workers, Denver Water created Employer of the Future, an ambitious initiative to counteract the impact of mass retirement, to build a culture of innovation, and to position the organization for performance improvement for years to come. The Schnur Group was hired to design and lead the initiative. The primary goal: Create a workplace that could deliver superior performance and, in the process, help make Denver Water a terrific place to work.

Leading cross-functional teams of employees, we:

• Designed a streamlined talent acquisition process
• Created a new onboarding process
• Repositioned HR to add greater strategic value to the organization
• Improved internal communications and the flow of ideas to increase performance
• Implemented a novel workforce planning process
• Developed a comprehensive career development program
• Conducted an employee-led study of Total Rewards (e.g., compensation, benefits, other workplace benefits), and
• Built an enhanced program for retirees.

As is our style, we created internal capabilities to ensure that the effort could be sustained without a long-term dependence on us. Success for us, after all, is whether the initiative can continue after we’ve gone. And it has.