2006 winners
Congratulations to our 2006 Award Winners! Learn how their service excellence to their organization won them the Department of the Year Award.
QVC
QVC, Inc is a $6.5 billion company headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania. QVC has 18,000 employees worldwide. There are 11,200 employees in the US with 3,400 in Germany, 2,200 in the UK and 1.200 in Japan.
QVC was founded in 1986 and today is the number one television shopping service in sales, profits, and reputation in the United States. QVC's worldwide headquarters are in West Chester, PA with distribution and telecommunication centers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina and Florida.
QVC is a virtual shopping mall that never closes. QVC is a place where customers can, and do, shop at any hour, at the rate of two customers per second. Themed programs are telecast live 24 hours a day, seven data a week, to 87 million households in the United States.
QVC's company vision is to 'Change the Way the World Shops." In order to do this, the Human Resources team is charged with attracting, retaining, and training the best people. A key component of this strategy is the ability of the Benefits Department to provide an above market benefit plan with an average market cost. The recent double digit growth of healthcare costs makes this goal all the more critical to attain, yet also all the more challenging to accomplish.
Shifting the rising healthcare costs to employees or reducing the quality of our plans are simply not acceptable options for QVC. Therefore, the QVC Benefits team has created a strategy to reduce healthcare utilization of preventable conditions by employees and their dependents. By influencing our workforce to live a healthier lifestyle, QVC realizes long term financial savings while helping employees and dependents enjoy a higher quality of life. With this higher quality of life comes the prevention of some chronic lifestyle related diseases and the costs associated with treating such conditions. QVC will realize direct savings from these reduced healthcare costs, as well as indirect savings though a more engaged and productive workforce.
The Healthy Lifestyles Club is a program that rewards employees for attaining and maintaining certain personal health goals through a combination of education and one-on-one medical care. It a chance for them to take charge of their health, develop a relationship with their physician, and earn a monetary reward once they meet their targets.
QVC's Healthy Lifestyles Club is focused on targets and success. At QVC, they have a culture where employees feel that the company cares about them. The Benefits team has created a homegrown, customized program that taps into that culture and leverages it to foster success in this program. When employees are given the right tools, information and direction to perform well in their job, they raise to a high level a performance. QVC and the Benefits team have provided all of these, as well as a supportive environment, to have employees attain a healthy lifestyle.
Although The Club is just over 1 year old and still in Pilot mode, 33% of eligible employees have enrolled in the program. Projected savings in healthcare costs is over the next 5 years exceeds $9 million. An innovative program such as this exemplifies the QVC environment, and is just one reason why QVC believes that they have an exceptional HR Department, and wish to receive the designation, “HR Department of the Year”.
virtua health
In 1998, Virtua Health was formed through the merger of two health systems, and became the largest provider of healthcare services in South Jersey. Virtua is a multi-hospital healthcare system that employs more than 7,100 clinical and administrative personnel and has approximately 1,800 medical staff members. It has distinguished itself as one of the first Six Sigma organizations in healthcare and as an early adopter of clinical and digital technologies. It is also recognized for its innovative strategy to partner with nationally renowned organizations – GE Healthcare, Fox Chase Cancer Center and A.I. DuPont Hospital for Children. Virtua Health provides medical and wellness services through inpatient acute-care hospitals, ambulatory surgery services, long-term care, sub-acute rehabilitation, primary care, specialty care, emergency services, home care, fitness, and community education services.
In 2002, Virtua partnered with GE to adopt a performance management process called the Best People Review (BPR) Process. This process is a talent management program that encompasses a 360-degree feedback survey, values review, goals and objectives evaluation and a performance rating comparison. Using a forced-distribution system, all participating managers are placed on a bell-shaped curve into one of four categories – the top 10%, the next highest 10%, the valued 70% and the least effective 10%. This rating helps deploy high performers to those initiatives that drive achievement of the global goals, strategic imperatives and the action plans associated with each. It has also proved highly effective in differentiating talent, creating promotion and stretch assignments for high performers and identifying employees who need additional coaching and/or adjustments to their current role. This process is also an excellent foundation for succession planning and leadership development.
In conjunction with the Best People Review (BPR) process, Virtua has created a team of dedicated internal coaches who have scheduled coaching, leadership development sessions with the management team. Intensive, regular coaching enhances skills and core competencies of Virtua managers and prepares them to accept increased responsibility within the organization. It also provides redirection to managers who are not being effective in their current roles, thereby maximizing talent and resources within the organization. Virtua’s HR team has the aggressive goal of expanding this model to all 7,100 employees by 2008, thereby creating a culture of coaching. In this culture, HR would serve as master coaches and would provide direction and guidance to other coaches within the organization.
The development needs that are identified through this process drive the agenda of our Virtua University. Programs are developed or purchased to address these leadership development needs.
Virtua is unique among its peers because it has managed to grow without losing sight of what is most important – the employees. All too frequently, employee satisfaction and career development are moved to a less prominent position behind items like expense management. Virtua has been able to be highly cost-effective while still providing an outstanding employee experience. We are the largest employer in Southern NJ, and were ranked by Philadelphia Magazine as one of the “Top 3 Best Places to Work in the Delaware Valley."
The HR Department of the Year is a recognition that Virua's HR Department has worked very hard to obtain, and we thank them for their participation in the 2006 Awards Program.
special recognition
ARC Mercer County
New Century Transportation
SEPTA
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