Case study: restructuring and workforce planning at national scale

The client

Two national Canadian retailers.

The first, a national coffee retailer that had spent years in aggressive expansion, opening roughly two sites per week. The second, a national grocery and pharmacy retailer working through the integration of a major drugstore acquisition.

Different businesses, different triggers, the same underlying problem: an organization that had to become a different shape without losing the people it would need on the other side.

The challenge

Two restructures, both at national scale.

At the coffee retailer, the business moved from high growth, through temporary closures, to a full portfolio review ending in three hundred site closures. At the grocery retailer, the acquisition created duplication across the pharmacy division that had to be resolved, including the closure of a number of pharmacy locations.

Hiring engines pointed the wrong way Both talent functions had been built to grow. They now had to do the opposite without being dismantled, because growth would resume.

No agreed basis for who was affected Hundreds of closures means thousands of conversations. Without a defensible standard, those conversations become arbitrary.

Leaders who had never done this Most had only ever opened locations. They were about to have the hardest conversations of their careers with no preparation.

A pipeline worth protecting Handled badly, restructuring costs you the people you most want to keep, and they are the hardest to replace when growth returns.

Integration complexity at the grocery retailer Two organizations with different structures, different pay practices, and different ways of running a pharmacy, being merged into one operating model.

The approach

Decide the standard first. Then teach everyone to apply it.

The difference between a restructuring that damages a business and one that does not is almost entirely preparation. The decisions were going to be difficult regardless. What could be controlled was whether they were consistent, and whether people were treated properly on the way through.

Built a workforce planning tracker Covering current and future staffing need, built with talent acquisition, so closure decisions and hiring decisions were made against the same picture rather than in separate rooms.

Set the criteria personally One standard determining which employees were affected, written down before any conversation happened, and applied without exception.

Wrote the discussion guides Every leader had language, structure, and answers to the questions they were going to be asked, rather than improvising in the hardest meeting of their year.

Trained HR and operations together Because a separation conversation goes wrong when the HR partner and the operating leader have prepared differently.

Redeployed rather than released wherever possible Moving people to locations where the need existed, which protected both individuals and the pipeline.

Redesigned the pharmacy division structure At the grocery retailer, this went beyond closures into how the division was organized: spans, roles, and where accountability sat, so the structure that came out was more efficient than the one that went in.

The outcome

Delivered cleanly, and both businesses came out stronger.

The measure of a restructure is not how fast it moves. It is what is left afterward.

300Sites closed

Delivered against a single consistent standard, with leaders prepared before conversations began.

3 monthsNo external hiring

The redeployment plan met its target, meaning affected people filled the gaps rather than new hires.

150%Target achievement

The business exceeded its operating targets through the period, and the talent pipeline held for the return to growth.

DivisionPharmacy restructured

At the grocery retailer, productivity and efficiency improved, business practices were optimised, and the division came out with the right people in the right roles.

At a glance

The engagement in short.

Clients

Two national Canadian retailers

Situations

300 site portfolio closure; pharmacy division restructure following a major acquisition

Scope

Workforce planning, separation criteria, leader enablement, organizational design

Result

Both delivered to plan; 150% target achievement; pipeline retained

Recognition

Internal excellence award

Why this matters

How you close locations determines what your brand is worth when you open them again.

The criteria are the whole thing

Every difficult decision in a restructure traces back to whether a defensible standard was set before anyone was told. Set it early, write it down, apply it without exception.

Leaders need language, not just policy

Policy tells a manager what may be done. It does not tell them what to say when someone who has worked for them for nine years asks why. That gap is where restructures go wrong.

Restructuring is workforce planning, not headcount reduction

The businesses that come out of this well are the ones that treated it as a question of what shape they needed to be, rather than what number they needed to hit. The second approach saves money once. The first one lasts.

Restructuring done properly, twice.