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“Ruthless prioritization” doesn’t sound like the kind of HR tagline that is going to bring an entire organisation on board with a restructuring, but it worked for Jason Hollar.
Cardinal Health’s CEO credited it with helping to steer the healthcare giant back to profitability after a steep earnings drop, while also keeping employees engaged with the process, which proved to be a crucial part of the strategy’s success.
Root and branch restructuring doesn’t normally inspire much beyond doubt and fear in workers but by being transparent about the situation the firm found itself in, what was needed to return to profitability and the part that employees could play in that strategy, Hollar found a winning formula.
His ‘all for one and one for all’ approach found favour in a strategy that wasn’t just about financial discipline and jurisprudence but organizational discipline, too.
“I didn’t want people just to reprioritize everything they’re doing,” Hollar explained. “I wanted them to stop doing certain things.”
It meant a top-down push to eliminate inefficiency not by overloading teams with new goals, but by deliberately choosing where not to spend time, effort, or talent. Working smarter not harder, if you will.
Accountability for a behavioral reset
Hollar also called out a cultural gap within the organisation, saying: “There’s one value we don’t show up with every single day, and that’s accountability.”
His decision to tie leadership restructuring to that insight, points at HR’s ongoing challenge to try to align stated values with everyday behavior.
By removing two executive roles and adding three new ones, Hollar wasn’t just reorganizing his leadership team, he was building a performance culture that prioritized both results and responsibility.
It’s a lesson many HR teams in large, layered businesses are grappling with - balancing the need for agility with a clear line of accountability.
Transformation fatigue or mission clarity?
The level of employee engagement, especially during a period of intense change, is often hard to predict, but Hollar noted that employees were hungry for a turnaround. “It’s great to be with a great group of people, but people want to win, and we weren’t winning as much as we could have.”
Instead of leaving staff feeling powerless, which is so often the case in corporate restructurings, they became a central part of the solution and were motivated by purpose and outcomes, the Holy Grail for most employer branding and recruitment marketing.
Still, it is a challenge for HR to maintain morale and momentum when “ruthless” strategies mean tough trade-offs, staff exits, and retraining.
HR implications of “doing fewer things”
Hollar’s philosophy of “doing fewer things” may resonate with HR teams tasked with streamlining talent programs or pulling back on sprawling L&D or DEI efforts to focus on what creates real and measurable impact, but the risk is always that simplification becomes shorthand for cost-cutting, especially when paired with exits from product lines, countries, and leadership roles.
Cardinal’s decision to hold off on M&A for 18 months, and then execute $5billion worth of deals in a short span, added an extra level of pressure in terms of workforce planning, change communication, and culture integration at speed.
Rebuilding reputation
For an organization with a history of sector-specific product challenges, including opioid-related scrutiny, reputation management isn’t just external PR, it’s a retention and attraction issue, too.
Hollar’s insistence that “these are a lot more than happy words” and that Cardinal is “a great place to work” has certainly done no harm to its employer brand. In fact, it has been hugely positive for his reputation as a leader and Cardinal's emplyer brand reputation.
Whether that narrative continues to land with employees who lived through job cuts or exits depends on how authentically HR can connect the dots between Cardinal's strategy and employees’ real experiences.
