The Q Works Group Case Study
The Behavioral Operating System Behind a Growing Consulting Practice
Company Overview
Industry: Business Staffing & Consulting
Location: Fort Mill, SC
Employee Size: 30
Instruments Used
ProScan®
TeamScan®
JobScan®
in Annual Revenue
Company-Wide and Client ProScan Completion
Client Satisfaction
The Challenge
- Hiring decisions lacked data-driven clarity
- Limited capacity to deliver coaching at scale
- Missing a framework to guide self-awareness and growth
When Michael Clegg (known as Clegg) acquired the Q Works Group, an executive recruiting firm, he set out to raise the bar on how senior-level talent was found, evaluated, and onboarded. He launched a second company a few years later, Leadership Squared, to provide leadership development and coaching support beyond the hire. As both companies grew, Clegg faced a challenge he couldn’t ignore: how to scale the insight and personal connection his coaching required without spreading himself too thin.
“I couldn’t scale myself. One-on-one coaching doesn’t work when your client base grows,” he explained. “I needed something that could introduce self-awareness early and give me a reliable framework to build from.”
Clegg had explored various behavioral assessments—DISC, Predictive Index, Culture Index—but none offered the speed, depth, and real-world application he needed. At the same time, his recruiting work required a more reliable way to match candidates to culture and role fit to avoid costly hiring mistakes before they happened.
The Solution
- Role-specific behavioral models to improve hiring fit
- A scalable foundation for hiring and leadership strategy
- Applying behavioral insights to all client engagements
Clegg knew he needed more than just another behavioral assessment. He needed a system that could bring consistency, clarity, and scalability to every client engagement. With PDP Global, he found a flexible framework that worked seamlessly across both of his businesses.
From recruiting senior executives to coaching high-potential leaders, PDP became his behavioral engine. It gave Clegg a way to introduce strategic insight early, align talent with team and role expectations, and coach with data-backed confidence.
Today, PDP powers a more measurable and scalable approach to both hiring and leadership development—without sacrificing the human connection that makes Clegg’s work so effective.
The Implementation
Every one of Clegg’s engagements begins with a ProScan, which takes just 5-10 minutes for participants to complete. He then uses the data as the starting point for conversation, whether it’s coaching, hiring, or onboarding.
“I have prior experience with DiSC, and the tools supporting you with PDP Global are so much better. Instead of leaders relying on training that happened a year ago to estimate what profile a potential hire is and maybe how they’re going to react to stress, I get great comfort knowing that we send out the PDP Survey and we’re going to have side-by-side reports, a unique motivational checklist, and information that really spells it out for you.”
John Hernandez
Vice President Call Center Operations, MAQ Management“I have prior experience with DiSC, and the tools supporting you with PDP Global are so much better. Instead of leaders relying on training that happened a year ago to estimate what profile a potential hire is and maybe how they’re going to react to stress, I get great comfort knowing that we send out the PDP Survey and we’re going to have side-by-side reports, a unique motivational checklist, and information that really spells it out for you.”
John Hernandez
Vice President Call Center Operations, MAQ ManagementUsing PDP to Build Self-Awareness
At the heart of Clegg’s coaching philosophy is self-awareness, something he believes is critically undervalued in leadership development. He uses PDP as a powerful entry point to help leaders understand how they communicate, make decisions, manage energy, and respond to stress.
“Most people think they’re self-aware, but they’re not,” says Clegg. “PDP gives me the data to show them things they didn’t know about themselves and that’s where the real growth begins.”
Building a Personalized SWOT and Coaching Blueprint
Once a PDP ProScan is completed, Clegg develops a customized SWOT analysis for each leader or new hire, turning PDP’s behavioral data into an actionable coaching tool. He identifies individual strengths, challenges, energy drains, and communication tendencies—then uses those insights to build a coaching blueprint tailored to each person’s leadership journey.
Tailored Reports Based on Individual Preferences
One of Clegg’s favorite features of PDP Global is its flexible reporting format:
“I love that you have the leadership reports for people that don't want to dive into the 19-pager. It lets me adapt based on how the person processes information.”
Using JobScan to Strengthen Hiring Decisions
Clegg uses JobScan to create role-specific behavioral benchmarks before presenting candidates to clients. Each senior-level candidate completes a ProScan, and their results are compared against the JobScan model to assess fit and flag potential gaps. This process brings clarity and objectivity to hiring decisions, reduces risk, and helps clients align new hires with team dynamics.
The Results
Increase in Retention
Reduction in Turnover Costs
Turnover During Peak Season
All-Time High Retention
HPOne’s retention skyrocketed by 20% to a staggering 80% rate after using the PDP People Management System to make the right hires from the start and intervene with employees close to quitting to support them. Of the 6% of the workforce identified as close to burning out during peak season, managers successfully intervened to retain every single one of them, contributing to a total 50% reduction in turnover costs.
Confident and Streamlined Hiring
Because recruiters could utilize PDP JobScan models to make informed hiring decisions, HPOne knew a 70% candidate match or higher would succeed in the role and perform well under the stress of the busy period. The Hiring Manager no longer needed to interview and give final approval for each of their 1,100 hires. When retroactively analyzing profiles of low performers hired before PDP Global was incorporated into the hiring process, HPOne determined that 75% wouldn’t have been hired in the first place had PDP job modeling been used.
Consistent Company Culture
HPOne’s company culture has always felt like being part of a family. But when Covid hit and that family shifted to remote working, it was harder to maintain that sentiment since employees weren’t experiencing the office community. PDP Global empowered the culture to grow in new ways, encouraging meaningful engagement from leaders and employees unique to their behavioral preferences. Colleagues attest that the culture still feels like a family: a fun environment with high integrity and accountability.
Leadership and Management Style Shift
Instead of leading and managing based on something “wrong” with an employee, the PDP People Management System shifted HealthPlanOne’s coaching perspective to capitalize and grow an employee’s strengths. Only after knowing someone’s strengths through ProScan can that individual be placed in opportunities to naturally succeed. HPOne used this behavioral knowledge to create small wins by giving certain tasks to individuals who genuinely enjoy doing them rather than someone who wouldn’t. Leaders appreciated hiring people who were not exactly like them because it created a more well-rounded team and released the pressure they often felt to be good at everything.
Moreover, HPOne’s HR department quickly realized that most complaints stemmed from simple miscommunication between people with different behavioral traits. ProScan equipped leaders and managers to conduct crucial conversations more effectively than before with insights into likes, dislikes, motivators, preferred communication methods, and logic styles.
The Results
in Annual Revenue
Company-Wide and Client ProScan Completion
Client Satisfaction
Expanding PDP’s Reach Across Client Organizations
Even within large companies, Clegg uses PDP to expand his influence and deliver value across multiple levels of the organization. For example, one client began using PDP Global with just 75 employees. As the company grew, so did the impact of the PDP people management system. Today, that organization has over 1,000 employees, and Clegg attributes their successful growth in large part to PDP Global’s insights.
Preventing Costly Misalignment in Hiring
In one high-stakes executive search, Clegg used JobScan to evaluate a candidate for a COO role. The results showed clear misalignment with the position: lack of assertiveness and low compatibility with the company’s fast-paced, direct culture. Despite Clegg’s strong recommendation not to proceed, the client moved forward with the hire. Over the next three years, the mismatch led to performance struggles and ultimately a separation that cost the company over $500,000.
“She's a super sharp individual, but was never a fit for what they needed. Now she feels like a failure, and it could’ve all been avoided if they had listened to the PDP data,” said Clegg. “They came back to me and said, ‘Wow, I should have listened to you and PDP.”
Becoming “Sticky” Through Scalable Value
One of Clegg’s earliest PDP-based engagements started as a $5,000 leadership workshop in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. That small group session evolved into an ongoing relationship that now spans multiple departments and generates more than $250,000 in consulting revenue.
“I call it getting sticky,” Clegg explained. “PDP gives me insights that make me indispensable to the organization.”
Today, he’s brought into hiring conversations, leadership development programs, and strategic planning efforts across that client’s executive team. What began as a one-time training quickly became a long-term, trusted advisory role, driven by the credibility and clarity that PDP brings to the table.
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