Rebuilding Trust After a Toxic Culture Scandal at Cedar Pay
Overview
What this challenge is about.
Diagnose Cedar Pay's toxic culture and design a six-month transformation program. Earn a verifiable certificate.
The scenario
Cedar Pay Inc. is a venture-backed Toronto payments startup of about 200 people whose rapid growth outpaced its people practices, and a public toxic-culture accusation triggered roughly 30 percent annual turnover and reputational damage. The company operates in a regulated, trust-dependent financial-technology market where employee and customer confidence are tightly linked.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
How can Cedar Pay rebuild a healthy, trusting organizational culture within six months to restore employee confidence and reduce turnover, without layoffs and within a 75,000 Canadian dollar budget?
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Diagnose organizational culture problems by triangulating quantitative survey data, qualitative exit interviews, and 360-degree leadership feedback.
- Translate evidence-based diagnosis into feasible interventions constrained by a fixed budget and a no-layoffs mandate.
- Design change-management and communication plans that center employee co-creation rather than top-down directives.
- Define measurable, instrument-anchored key performance indicators to track culture change over a defined horizon.
- Benchmark internal results against credible external engagement data to set realistic targets.
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Aligned coursework coming soon.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Organizational Culture Diagnosis
Apply organizational culture diagnosis to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Change Management
Plan and guide organizational transitions to achieve lasting adoption.
- Employee Engagement
Apply employee engagement to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Leadership Development
Apply leadership development to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Data Analysis
Analyze real datasets, build models, and communicate findings that drive decisions.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:
People & Culture / Organizational Development Lead
This challenge mirrors the core work of an organizational development lead: diagnosing culture from real employee data, designing evidence-based interventions, and tracking change over time, giving you a portfolio-ready transformation program built under real constraints.
This challenge sharpens
- organizational-culture-diagnosis
- change-management
- employee-engagement
Change Management Consultant
By sequencing a constrained six-month roadmap with co-creation, owners, and risk mitigation, you practice the consulting craft of turning diagnosis into a fundable, stakeholder-backed change program that leadership can actually execute.
This challenge sharpens
- change-management
- leadership-development
- data-analysis
People Analytics Partner
Triangulating survey scores, exit-interview themes, and 360 feedback into measurable key performance indicators builds the analytical backbone of a people analytics role, where evidence and instrument design drive human-resources decisions.
This challenge sharpens
- data-analysis
- employee-engagement
- organizational-culture-diagnosis