Cascades, a leader in packaging, hygiene, and recovery solutions, employs over 10,000 people across 70 facilities in North America. With such a vast workforce, Cascades needed a robust leadership program that could unify their management approach while staying true to their mission of improving the well-being of people, communities, and the planet through sustainable solutions. This is where Dale Carnegie came in.
Since Cascades began integrating the Dale Carnegie Course in 2019, the impact on their Vaughan plant has been significant. The company uses quarterly pulse surveys and biennial reviews to monitor progress, and the results have been promising. The overall employee engagement scores at the Vaughan plant rose by 11% from 2020 to 2022. In the breakdown by category, the leadership and management dimension rose by 22 points from 48% to 70% from 2020 to 2022 —an improvement that speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the program.
Chelsey Stamegna, Human Resources Manager, highlights the alignment in leadership style and company values as a key driver of this success: “It’s not just that people are the priority, it’s that people and our leadership style are really the value that we can all tie back to.”
Challenges
Internal restructuring and rapid expansion at Cascades led to the hiring of new management who needed to quickly adapt to a unified companywide management style. This posed a challenge in ensuring that all team members were aligned with the company's mission and could effectively collaborate.
Solutions
The Dale Carnegie Course provided a common language and set of principles for managers and employees at the Vaughan plant. This training was instrumental in aligning the new management team with the company’s mission and fostering cohesive teamwork across the plant.
Results
The impact of the Dale Carnegie Course was significant. Employee engagement at the Vaughan plant increased from 50% to 61% in just two years. Even more impressive, management and leadership effectiveness scores rose from 48% to 70%, reflecting the successful alignment of leadership practices with Cascades’s goals.
“It’s a way of being. It highlights that we still need human interaction and to build relationships.”
