BenefitsEmployee Engagement

2008 HROA Awards Preview

A look at the nominees for this year’s most sought-after industry prizes.

by HROT Staff

The HROA Awards Gala is the highlight of the industry’s year and an aspiration, as the HROA gathers the best in the industry to celebrate its leaders in an environment that highlights on the HROA, its members, and its mission. This year’s event will be held at the New York Hilton on April 16.

The theme for the 2008 Gala is “Be Ingenious,” recognizing the ingenuity, industriousness, and industrial-strength dedication it takes to succeed in this field.
Any new contracts, relationships, and/or projects with start dates in the award year and existing contracts, relationships, and/or projects with start dates prior to the award year (January to December 2007), are eligible for the awards to be presented on April 16. Nominees must have demonstrated in the award year their insight, vision, service, or other ingenious attributes. The HROA Awards Committee reviews nominations to ensure at least two qualifying nominees exist in each category. Nominations also should show excellence in service delivery.

Once nominations are approved, they are published on the HROA web sites. Winners are selected by an open vote of the full membership of the HROA.
The categories include: Person of the Year; Thought Leader of the Year; Buyer Executive of the Year – Middle Market; Buyer Executive of the Year – Large Market; Provider Executive of the Year; Customer Relationship of the Year – Large Market; Customer Relationship of the Year – Middle Market; Technology Relationship of the Year; Sourcing Relationship of the Year; Payroll Relationship of the Year RPO Relationship of the Year; Relocation Relationship of the Year; and Benefits Relationship of the Year.



Person of the Year

Carrie Hotz, Convergys: Carrie Hotz had a vision: To capture learnings from HRO service delivery to mature client accounts combined with emerging expectations of global HRO “mega-clients,” and framework models provided by industry experts including HROA within a repository.

Lowell Williams, EquaTerra: As one of the most influential HRO thought leaders today, Lowell focuses on helping the industry to sustainability, e.g., by emphasizing the importance of the standardization of delivery models and the appropriate leveraging of technology within those.



Thought Leader of the Year

Christian Baader, SAP AG: Christian has been instrumental in conceiving and developing SAP’s BPO Powered by SAP program, a unique collaboration model between a software vendor and BPO provider-partners.

Michael Beygelman, Adecco: As executive director of the HROA, Michael directed operating activities and promoted education, the exchange of information, and advancement of best practices in HRO.

Scott Gildner, TPI: Scott championed the cause for industry standards for HRO, resulting in the publication of HROA Industry Standards for taxonomy, service level metrics and pricing units published by the HROA.


Technology Relationship of the Year

SAP AG and ADP: Integrated best practices service processes into technology designed to support template-driven model to ensure successful implementation, upgrade and maintenance.

Trovix, Inc. and VMWare: Using Trovix Recruit, VMware reinvented its hiring processes to take full advantage of the talent pool. Trovix Recruit shows recruiters the resumes with the best-matched skills and background for a job so recruiters can spend their time doing the real work of recruiting—reaching out to top candidates and bringing them onboard.



RPO Relationship of the Year

Beeline RPO and EG&G Technical Services, Inc.: By effectively leveraging Beeline RPO’s sourcing services and depth of skill EG&G was able to not only significantly reduce its backlog but also close requests that were over 400 days old.

Beeline RPO and SI International: Beeline RPO ensured that SI was able to address SI peak times when there were new business initiatives/proposals and contract wins that needed to be immediately ramped up.

FutureStep and Catholic Health Initiatives: The Futurestep-CHI RPO relationship is characterized by a series of efforts of a progressively strategic nature, based on a growing level of trust created by successful hiring results and process improvements.

Illuma and eLoyalty Corporation: eLoyalty took advantage of illuma’s research operation to supplement its in-house recruiters on an as-needed basis, while leveraging illuma’s dedicated project staff to build talent pipelines for its areas of perpetual need.

Kelly HRFirst and GE Healthcare: Kelly HRfirst and GE Healthcare advanced the practice of RPO through transformation of service delivery models to meet the demands of the talent acquisition market.

The RightThing and Pepsi-Bottling Group: By using best practices and initiating smart solutions, The RightThing was able to solve PBG’s biggest hiring headaches with technology and innovation.

RPOworldwide and TalentBridge International: By using RPOworldwide to expand recruitment bandwidth, TalentBridge ensures that the precise amount of high-end recruitment bandwidth is deployed onsite, while leveraging the lower-cost model of RPOworldwide’s Global Recruiting Centers.

Select International and Goodyear: Select International implemented a fair, legally defensible assessment system to mitigate legal issues surrounding one of Goodyear’s North American plants. In 2007, Select team worked to assess 51,361 candidates to fill 3,425 positions for Goodyear.

Spherion and Honeywell: One key innovation on the engagement has involved the use of SWAT teams to assist recruiters/sourcers with aged and hard-to-fill positions. Spherion has also built "project teams" to handle "special project surge hiring," which is common at Honeywell.

Manpower Business Solutions and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners: Manpower Business Solutions created one best-in-class hiring process for the entire Boardwalk Pipeline organization. Today, Manpower delivers only top talent candidates for review and interviewing.

Veritude and Boston Scientific: Veritude’s central recruiting team, which includes a 24/7 sourcing engine, disseminated a continuous flow of candidates to the on-site recruiter to help ensure that the right person was hired for the right Boston Scientific position at the right time.


Customer Relationship of the Year – Large Market

Accenture and Kimberly-Clark: The team achieved complex transformation of multi-process HR while outsourcing finance, procurement, IT applications, and IT infrastructure to other providers. The results far exceeded stakeholder expectations.

ACS and Freescale Semiconductor: Freescale and ACS were aware a period of significant change was approaching, driven by the privatization of Freescale in 2007. Both organizations had to truly partner for success, focusing on communications, knowledge transfer and process improvement.

ADP and EMC Corporation: In 2006, EMC expanded its outsourcing scope to include outsourced payroll, HRIS, time and labor management and benefit services from ADP—its outsourcing partner of 18 years.

Convergys and Fifth Third Bank: By leveraging a centralized and automated Convergys Service delivery model, Fifth Third Bank achieved near 99 percent utilization of employee self-service tools and greater than 96 percent utilization for manager self-service.

Fidelity and ABB: ABB and Fidelity have an exceptional and cutting-edge approach for end-to-end quality and metrics in HR service delivery. The philosophy is to concentrate on stretch goals and to ensure measurement focuses on key priorities with alignment to the business and strategic objectives.

Hewitt Associates and Medco: Medco and Hewitt communicate openly and focus on the future. Medco’s expectations and requirements are completely consistent with Hewitt’s delivery model objectives, and Medco’s high expectations are consistent with Hewitt’s strengths.

Mercer and Wyeth: Mercer integrated Wyeth’s retirement, health and benefits, call center, and absence management functions. This enabled the company to operate more efficiently and free up its staff to address higher-level issues, while creating a better benefits experience for employees.


Customer Relationship of the Year – Middle Market

Accenture and Strategic Restaurant Acquisition Company: Strategic leverages Accenture’s technology and talent investments to reduce operating cost, manage growth and turnover, and provide real-time access to Human Capital Management (HCM) and financial data.

ADP and JT3: JT3 has automated its HR, payroll and benefits-related processes, introduced new employee services such as flexible spending accounts and self-service, standardized employee support procedures and fine-tuned the management reporting to assist with business decisions.

Ceridian and NXP Semiconductors: NXP and Ceridian established nine timeline milestones that had to be met in order to ensure success. The ingenious approach was in offering material incentives for each milestone that was met and an aggregation at completion of the implementation.

Veritude and Boston Scientific: Veritude developed a customized recruiting plan and deliverables proposal for Boston Scientific’s CIO. Veritude mastered the details of Boston Scientific’s business by sending a senior recruiter with IT experience and an understanding of the architecture, to gather information on the company’s culture, operations, and requirements.


Buyer Executive of the Year – Large Market

Edwin Garcia, Kimberly-Clark: Edwin positions HR as a strategic enabler of business growth, demonstrating its business value by leveraging the outsourcing model and utilizing business intelligence tools. This enables Kimberly-Clark’s vision of a leaner, more strategic HR organization.

Ed Golitko and Joe Scott, EMC: As an executive team, Ed Golitko, senior director of human resources and Joe Scott, senior director of shared services accounting, have consistently proven themselves to be visionary and disciplined leaders in the HR field.

Beth Johnston, Delta Airlines: Beth’s contribution to the HR Transformation of Delta was made possible by her commitment and leadership. She is true partner to her business and to ACS, her business partner in HR outsourcing. Through this partnership, difficult decisions were made thoughtfully but swiftly.

Aanand Murthy, VMware: With Trovix Recruit, VMware was able to nearly double the number of requisitions per recruiter. By giving recruiters better information about the candidate pool and more time to spend on the best qualified candidates, VMware reduced its time-to-hire and cost-per-hire without sacrificing quality.


Buyer Executive of the Year – Middle Market

Lisa Knutson, E.W. Scripps: Lisa worked with EquaTerra and candidate service providers to craft the outsourcing component of the HR transformation initiative while working on a redesign of the retained organization with another third-party (Towers Perrin.)

David Lutterbach, Hess Corporation: Most oil and gas companies have not yet outsourced nonbenefits-related HR work. Dave saw the potential for transformation and initiated a strategic assessment, including development of a detailed business case, to explore this opportunity in 2007.

John Murphy, DIRECTV: John Murphy has been integral to the success of DIRECTV’s HR BPO experience. First as the VP of audit, and now as the controller and chief accounting officer, John has provided the vision, leadership and hands-on effort that has allowed DIRECTV to thrive in the BPO model .



Provider Executive of the Year

Patrick Goepel, Fidelity HR Services: Patrick led his organization to achieve results for clients in solving HR service delivery challenges. Fidelity’s approach to service and quality combines Six Sigma principles, kaizen, and an end-to-end view of HR processes, thanks to Patrick.

Jim Konieczny, Hewitt Associates: In 2007, as the leader of Hewitt’s HR BPO business, Jim took a complex, struggling business from a collection of independent client contracts to a predicable, well-organized, disciplined organization that generated significant year-over-year improvement.

Ted Rudich, ACS, Human Capital Management Solutions: With ACS’ relatively short history in the HRO industry, but numerous past experiences to build upon, Ted recognized that the future for the HRO industry required the review and potential overhaul of some existing practices.

Caroline Brown, Tata Consultancy Services: Caroline helped launch HRO as a whole within TCS. After joining the organization two years ago, she helped TCS build an appropriate strategy, gain executive buy-in, and take its strategy to the global marketplace.

Gary Butler, ADP Inc.: As leader of an $8 billion dollar enterprise, Gary faced the challenge of growing a successful, financially stable business. He addressed all of the goals that would strengthen ADP’s standing as a worldwide leader beyond its reputation as a niche payroll provider.


Sourcing Relationship of the Year

EquaTerra and E.W. Scripps: This relationship helped the service provider community understand what it needs to deliver to the mid-market in a comprehensive HRO scenario, and how. The relationship and initiative helped define some of the “templates” service providers can use to create a repeatable solution for the mid-market with economies of scope and scale.

TPI and Hillenbrand Industries and Hill-Rom Company: The initiatives led by Jon May and the Hill-Rom team over the past three years have positioned the HR department of Hillenbrand Industries and Hill-Rom Company to serve as strategic business partners to their business leaders.



Payroll Relationship of the Year

ADP and DIRECTV, Inc.: In December of 2005, DIRECTV partnered with ADP to deliver fully outsourced Payroll services to its workforce. The partnership on this effort resulted in 99.9 percent payroll accuracy for DIRECTV, as well as host of new processes and deliverables.

Ceridian and Johnson Diversey: Johnson Diversey’s contract with its existing provider expired in July 2007. This meant the partners had to work fast to implement and go live on a new system before that expiration. The phased go-live for all affected regions began in May 2007, right on time.

CheckPoint HR and Nickelodeon Family Suites: Nickelodeon Family Suites used CheckPoint HR’s web-based human resource management system to reduce the amount of paperwork, enhance team members’ ability to “self-service” their information, and create faster input into the system.



Relocation Relationship of the Year

Cartus and Raytheon: New approaches and programs were initiated through this relationship, demonstrating ingenuity in two primary areas: The application of the Six Sigma measurement standard to the entire relationship, and the transparent and consultative nature of the relationship.

Hewitt Mobility Services and Unisys: The Unisys-Hewitt relationship is a solid example of partnering to achieve results in a rapidly changing business environment. Both Unisys and Hewitt share in their experiences, successes, and challenges —and each firm’s respective clients benefit.



Benefits Relationship of the Year

Hewitt Associates and Dell: The innovations developed and implemented jointly between Dell and Hewitt have helped Hewitt achieve and maintain a competitive position in the market and lowered Dell’s plan costs.

Hewitt Associates and Freescale Semiconductor: Freescale worked with Hewitt to develop both the design and administrative processes that met its needs without impacting the value of the benefits offered to employees and existing retirees.

Hewitt Associates and Johnson & Johnson: The transformation of J&J’s healthcare program to consumer-driven is considered to be one of the single largest changes to J&J benefits in its history.

Hewitt Associates and Kraft Foods Inc.: Auto enrollment, automatic contribution escalation, "quick" enrollment, and "easy" escalation were all used to address various segments of Kraft’s employee population. Kraft saw great results through these efforts and Hewitt is helping Kraft refine the model going forward.

CheckPoint HR/The Wilshire Group and Pro Tapes and Specialties: With the help of The Wilshire Group’s open enrollment, Pro Tapes secures the best rates and plans for all insurance needs. Additionally, The Wilshire Group has helped Pro Tape secure long-term strategic planning and monitoring related to the management of premiums.

Tags: Benefits, Employee Engagement

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