CUSTOMER STORY
Reece Group Optimized Smarter Global Decision-Making With Integrated Data Insights From Visier
Facing disconnected data that hindered growth, Reece Group used Visier to integrate business and workforce data sources. The resulting insights enabled leaders to make better decisions, improving operational stability & efficiency, optimizing talent investment, and driving tangible business impact across their global network.
INDUSTRY
Construction
HEADQUARTERS
Melbourne, Australia
EMPLOYEES
8,000
The Reece Group is a global company specializing in the supply of plumbing, waterworks, and HVAC-R products. It operates in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
With Visier's workforce analytics, Reece Group has:
Optimized business-critical decision-making across a global workforce
Identified top recruitment sources to reduce new hire turnover
Predicted employee absences to minimize operational disruption
THE CHALLENGE
Lack of integrated data was hindering effective decision-making across a growing global business
As a leading distributor of plumbing, waterworks, and HVAC-R products across Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, The Reece Group's global scale and network of 800+ branches presented complex operational and strategic challenges. Especially following the 2018 acquisition of Morsco, leaders needed a holistic view of the business that connected people data with operational and financial metrics.
Optimizing performance across a global, distributed workforce
Reliance on disconnected data sources made it difficult for leaders to gain rapid, clear insights needed to optimize performance across diverse regions, manage talent costs effectively, ensure consistent service delivery in branches, and make informed decisions critical for continued growth and integration. Reece Group identified a pressing need for a solution that could provide this integrated business intelligence.
To address this, Reece Group sought a people analytics platform like Visier. The business case focused on enabling more efficient operations and reducing costs (like those associated with attrition) by providing leaders with the necessary data at their fingertips, a far more timely and economical approach than building a solution internally.
"Leaders want to be able to answer three questions: what happened, why did it happen, and what’s going to happen next. If people analytics can answer those three questions for leaders, they can make better people decisions—and that’s the goal."
Adam McKinnon
People Data and Analytics Lead at the Reece Group
"Visier makes people data easy to use. Visier gives our leaders a holistic view by creating insights about our business and our people. Once leaders can see that people analytics is applicable to solving their problems, they use it, which in turn helps build their capabilities as strategic people leaders."
Sally Young
Chief People Experience Officer
THE SOLUTION
Empowering leaders with integrated business and workforce data insights
To address the challenge of disconnected data hindering effective decision-making, The Reece Group implemented Visier. The goal was to provide leaders and branch managers—the heart of their distribution business—with easy, rapid access to integrated business and people data insights, empowering them to make more effective decisions.
Visier delivered the insights needed to:
- Target retention for business stability. By analyzing turnover drivers, Reece Group could pinpoint and focus retention efforts on specific areas where talent stability was most critical to maintaining operational efficiency and performance, allowing leaders to take timely, impactful action.
- Predict absences to protect operations. Leveraging predictive analytics, Reece Group gained the ability to forecast employee absences up to two weeks in advance for key initiatives, such as a new same-day delivery trial. This proactive visibility allowed leaders to arrange cover before disruption occurred, ensuring operational continuity and the successful execution of new programs.
- Inform smarter workforce strategy & DEI. Visier insights challenged traditional assumptions. Data revealed that certain part-timer groups had longer tenure than full-timers, informing strategic decisions about where to invest training resources for long-term team success. Furthermore, insights into part-time hiring patterns highlighted opportunities to improve gender balance in certain geographies, better reflecting the customer base and aligning talent strategy with market representation.
By providing these specific, actionable insights derived from integrated data sources, Visier empowered leaders to make smarter decisions that directly impacted operational efficiency, the success of new business initiatives, strategic workforce investment, and alignment with customer demographics.
UNCOVERING THE CAUSE OF A COSTLY EARLY EXIT
Analyzing first-year turnover patterns, Visier analytics revealed that new hires who didn't complete onboarding were 5x more likely to leave within their first 12 months on the job.
THE OUTCOME
Enhanced business stability and efficiency through improved talent sourcing, retention, and deployment
By providing leaders with a consolidated, holistic view of their workforce integrated with core business data, The Reece Group is now equipped to make significantly more effective decisions that directly drive tangible business outcomes across their global operations.
Building on their success in key areas—such as improving talent retention in business-critical functions (enhancing operational stability), proactively managing workforce availability through predictive absence analytics (boosting operational efficiency and program success), and gaining data-backed insights for smarter talent investment (optimizing training impact and workforce composition)—Reece Group also clearly demonstrated the value of its referral program.
Identifying the top recruitment source with analytics
Using Visier, they analyzed referral hires and found their retention was significantly higher than other recruitment sources. This insight highlights the program's direct contribution to reducing the business costs associated with recruitment and onboarding, decreasing time-to-productivity, and fostering a more stable, potentially higher-performing workforce better aligned with Reece's culture and business needs across its distributed network.
This strategic use of data now empowers leaders at all levels to leverage workforce insights for better business results. As Adam McKinnon, People Data and Analytics Lead, notes, managing people and data effectively transforms HR into a strategic partner capable of driving organizational success. For The Reece Group, this means ensuring a high-performing, stable workforce that supports their ambitious business goals now and in the future.
"One of my fundamental beliefs is that the HR function of the future will manage two resources well. One is people, and the other is data. The latter doesn't always come naturally to HR, but it's through data that we can personalize at scale and make our organizations a better place to work for current and future employees."
Adam McKinnon
People Data and Analytics Lead
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About Visier
Visier is the recognized global leader in people analytics, workforce and compensation planning, embedded solutions, and GenAI for people answers. At the core of Visier’s innovations is a simple premise: People impact is business impact, and you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Visier gives people-powered organizations the tools and insights to drive productivity, performance, and business outcomes through people impact. Founded in 2010 by the pioneers of business intelligence, Visier has over 65,000 customers in 75 countries, including enterprises like BASF, Panasonic, Experian, Amgen, eBay, Ford Motor Company, and more. Visier is headquartered in Vancouver, BC with offices and team members worldwide.
For more information, visit visier.com