When SiteOne Landscape Supply launched as a standalone company, its leadership team knew building a scalable talent strategy would be critical to supporting rapid growth. As the largest wholesale distributor of landscape supplies in North America, SiteOne operates across more than 750 locations in the US and Canada and continues to expand through double-digit acquisitions year after year. But with growth, came complexity. The organization needed a way to unify learning, performance, succession, and employee development across a geographically dispersed workforce where many of those employees work outside of a traditional office environment.
“We grow a lot through acquisition,” said Melissa Mirando, director of talent and organizational development at SiteOne. “That poses its own challenge from a talent management perspective when you think about compliance training, culture assimilation, and development across so many teams.”
From the beginning, SiteOne selected Cornerstone as the foundation for its talent strategy. They implemented nearly every available Cornerstone module within their first year as an independent business. More than a decade later, Cornerstone continues to power learning and development initiatives for SiteOne’s workforce of more than 8,000 associates.
Building a learning culture designed for growth
SiteOne’s talent philosophy centers on internal mobility, career growth, and continuous learning. The organization promotes between 10% and 15% of associates internally each year and has invested heavily in creating development pathways that empower employees to take ownership of their careers.
“We believe very strongly in internal growth and internal promotion,” said Melissa. “Because our culture drives it, ‘Talent Focused’ is one of our seven core values and our first statement in our ‘Vision’ is to be a great place to work for our associates. Most of our leaders are enthusiastic and engaged when it comes to developing and upskilling their teams. This fosters a ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’ experience when it comes to learning and development, which is refreshing.”
Using Cornerstone Learning, Performance, Skills, and Succession capabilities, SiteOne created a connected talent ecosystem that helps employees identify skill gaps, explore career paths, and access personalized learning resources aligned to future roles. As the company scaled to support more than 750 branch locations and a workforce of over 8,000 associates, Cornerstone enabled SiteOne to standardize learning and talent development while still creating personalized experiences for employees across the business.
The company is currently evolving its long-standing paper-based skills assessment process into a fully digital experience powered by Cornerstone Skills. Employees can evaluate themselves against role-specific skill frameworks, identify development opportunities, and connect directly to recommended learning content. “What I love is being able to show associates how they can take ownership of their own development. We’re giving people all these tools to help themselves grow,” Melissa said.
Delivering personalized learning at scale
As a largely frontline workforce, SiteOne needed a learning experience that was flexible, intuitive, and easy to access. Through Cornerstone Content and curated learning playlists, associates can search for relevant content on demand and add training directly into their development plans.
SiteOne still assigns mandatory learning but also enables employees to discover learning aligned to their interests and career aspirations. “Instead of saying, ‘Here’s your required training,’ we can also provide playlists and resources employees actually want to engage with,” explained Melissa. “When something isn’t handed to you and you choose it yourself, engagement is completely different.”
The organization also leverages AI-powered recommendations and suggested learning paths to help employees discover relevant skills and development opportunities based on their profiles, goals, and learning history. These capabilities have helped SiteOne support a strong culture of internal mobility, with 10–15% of associates promoted internally year over year.
Turning talent data into actionable insights
One of SiteOne’s most innovative uses of Cornerstone is its internally developed “baseball card” talent profiles. Built using Cornerstone Succession and reporting tools, the profiles provide leaders with a comprehensive snapshot of employee readiness, engagement, career interests, and development activity. Each profile includes career preferences, relocation interests, succession planning data, learning badges, performance indicators, and recognition achievements. These cards give leaders a fast, data-rich way to evaluate talent across the organization. “When a leader says, ‘Tell me more about this person,’ we can send them a baseball card with everything in one place. Leaders can quickly see who is engaged, learning, growing, and ready for investment,” shared Melissa.
The profiles have become an important part of SiteOne’s talent review and succession planning process, helping leaders make more informed development and promotion decisions while supporting the company’s continued acquisition-driven growth.
We’re really proud of the culture we’ve built here. Having Cornerstone as our partner since the beginning has been a huge part of that journey.
Melissa Mirando
Director of Talent and Organizational Development, SiteOne Landscape Supply
Supporting compliance and operational excellence
With more than half of SiteOne’s workforce in hourly roles, the company must carefully balance learning accessibility with compliance requirements and operational realities. Cornerstone helps the organization manage critical training programs while maintaining high completion rates across dispersed teams.
Today, SiteOne maintains more than 99% compliance for safety training completion through Cornerstone. Leaders can also track certifications, required training, and development activity across the business, while ensuring learning remains aligned to operational and labor compliance requirements. “Safety is always our number one priority. Having everything centralized in Cornerstone makes it much easier to manage and track,” explained Melissa.
A partnership built for the long term
Over the past decade, SiteOne has expanded both its business and its talent organization. What began as a two-person talent team has grown into a multidisciplinary function that includes instructional design, change management, facilitation, learning administration, and talent development specialists.
Throughout that evolution, Cornerstone has remained a key strategic partner. For Melissa, one of the biggest differentiators has been the collaborative Cornerstone customer community, from user groups and conferences to peer networking and shared innovation. “That’s where we get the most impact,” she said. “You’re learning from people going through the same things you are. Those connections are invaluable.”
After more than a decade with Cornerstone, SiteOne continues to expand how it uses the platform to support workforce development, skills growth, leadership readiness, and employee engagement. From implementing nearly every major Cornerstone module within its first year as an independent company to achieving more than 99% safety compliance today, SiteOne has built a scalable talent infrastructure designed to grow alongside the business.
