Taking It Personally

Quite simply, Audrey Boone Tillman is a people person. From beginnings in law, her rise to EVP of Corporate Services at Aflac, a major provider of insurance and health benefits, has been characterised by a tenacious commitment to improving the lives of workers. Taking an interest in the person, rather than just the employee has been central to her approach, and it’s one that has drawn significant rewards. During Tillman’s tenure Aflac’s award cabinet has been filled to bursting by accolades from Forbes, Working Mother and Training Magazine, to name but a few. Speaking to us at Aflac’s headquarters in Columbus, Georgia, her approach to the human elements of HR really shines through. Tillman makes for a very easy interviewee, as comfortable talking about her experiences at the company’s numerous extra-curricular team days as she is about retention rates. The relationship between the ‘fluffier’ side of her job and the bottom line is something she clearly understands.

HRM. Aflac has won numerous awards for diversity, childcare and so on. How important is it to you to ensure the company retains its reputation as a good place to work and how much of your time is taken up with managing these efforts?
ABT. Well, it’s very important to me that we maintain our reputation. We consider ourselves a good place to work. We’ve marketed ourselves as such so it’s important to me that what we’re telling people that we actually are and that we’re living our message. As for my thoughts about the awards, and the recognition and so on. We like those. We appreciate those. It’s nice to have someone validate the efforts that you’re making.

But what’s most important to me is that our employees actually believe those things and believe we’re awarded or recognized but as who we are. It’s critical to me that our employees, our policyholders and our shareholders believe that we’re a great place to work and a great company.

There’s obviously a mechanical side to the HR function, in areas like sourcing and staffing, but there’s also the element that focuses on diversity and creating a good working environment. I would say the split for me between these two sides is virtually fifty-fifty. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time working on our culture, maintaining and enhancing it, and making sure that our leadership understands and embraces our culture.

HRM. Would you agree that employers have a responsibility to workers that extends beyond office hours? Should things like healthcare and retirement provisions be a priority for business and how does Aflac approach these issues?
ABT. It’s absolutely a priority. Everything starts there. At Aflac, we see everyone as people, not just as employees. A lot of our efforts are aimed at ensuring our employees have a strong balance between work and those things that are most important to their personal lives. The best example I can give you is something that really illustrates how important our employees are and how important it is that they feel valued as people rather than just producers for the company. Our CEO, Dan Amos, likes to say that we don’t produce a tangible product. We don’t make tires, or automobiles, or things that someone can look at, touch, feel and judge for themselves. We produce a promise and the only contact that our policyholders have with that promise is when they make contact with our employees.

So our policyholders will judge our product, so to speak, by their interaction with the employees. If they happen to reach someone who doesn’t feel valued, who feels like they’re working for a company who doesn’t care about them as a person and who doesn’t support them both professionally and personally, that’s going transfer over to the customer. Then they’re going judge our product based on that. We want our employees to feel that we do care about them as a person. We do value their lives outside of Aflac. We want them to feel connected to this company so that that is what transfers to the customer.

HRM. So it’s an economic decision as well as a social one?
ABT. Absolutely. We get the connection between valuing the employee as a whole person, and supporting them in their personal and professional goals, and how that translates directly to the bottom line. We understand that relationship.

HRM. Aflac is a major provider of voluntary benefit programs to external customers. Are they something that also forms a part of the work you do internally?
ABT. Yes, they’re very popular with our people, especially now in times where major medical is not covering everything that might be an expense in a healthcare situation. It’s an extra safeguard, extra security for our employees and their families. I think the current financial climate is a big contributing factor in the growing popularity of voluntary benefits. People are concerned about their ability to withstand a financial or a health crisis and so they would be wise to avail themselves of anything that could help protect them in circumstances like that. Employers would hopefully also recognize that these are their employees concerns and offer things that would bring a little peace of mind. For us it goes back to what I said earlier: peace of mind translates into productivity and the bottom line.

The same goes with the childcare and onsite daycare. I get a lot of questions about, “Well, how do you get ROI on that and how do you measure?” The answer is how do you measure peace of mind? How do you put a metric on your employees knowing that their children are just yards away, that they’re safe and well taken care of? That translates to productivity which translates to the bottom line, but it’s not something that’s necessarily measurable.

HRM. It’s doesn’t necessarily show up on the balance sheet but it’s something that you can see and you can feel in the business.
ABT. Exactly, and you can feel it with retention. It’s a wonderful retention tool because leaving the company means that your child is leaving the facility, and we know that we provide excellent care for the kids, so that makes people think twice. We’ve seen some excellent results in our recent turnover rates. Our turnover was slightly over 9 percent last year, which we’re very proud of. In HR we’re driving a focus on retention and turnover and we keep that in the forefront of our management’s mind. We always want them to be mindful that poor retention comes out as a cost. There’s a price attached to it, not just a financial cost with recruiting but with knowledge that’s lost. So far it’s worked very well. Even in our call center, which typically has turnover that averages in the thirties and forties, ours is in the low twenties.

HRM. How do rewards and recognition feature in your plans? Do you think extra incentives are an essential part in sort of attracting and retaining good talent?
ABT. I’m very proud that we have always been very focused on incentives, awards, and recognition. It’s something that’s been a big part of our planning in the last several years during the talent management process. But I think we’re having to go back and have a fresh look at it because we’ve got a new type of employee coming through, in the shape of the millennials and the Gen Yers

We want to make sure that the awards and recognition that we think are appropriate are going be received well by the entire workforce population. Different folks like different things. They like different types of awards and recognition, so my philosophy is let’s always look at it. Just because something has worked in the past doesn’t mean that it’ll work now or in the future, so let’s look at it with fresh eyes.

It’s the same thing with benefits. We query our employees frequently on our benefits offerings. Maybe something that has been valued previously won’t be valued in today’s economic times? We want to hear exactly what people think is meaningful in terms of compensation, benefits, recognition or incentives. We are always mindful that things can change.

HRM. Do you undertake employee surveys to get this kind of information?
ABT. We do a benefit survey every few years and we do an employee satisfaction survey twice a year. We also do surveys with new employees. We query them at six months and then again at 12 months. We survey our employees on everything, right down to questions like ‘who do you want to play at the Christmas party?’ We are not afraid of gathering feedback from employees and that’s really important. I think that’s where some companies may fall short. But when you query your folks, you have to be prepared for the results. Happily for us, the feedback we get is usually good. We keep a close enough eye on our employees that I’m never surprised by any of the feedback. Sometimes there are things that are notable and we want to dig a little further. We might do a focus group or something similar just to validate the survey results. If there’s something that we’re clearly going in a wrong direction on then we’ll do our best to fix it.

HRM. You obviously do a great deal to find and hold on to your people. We hear a lot about the war for talent that’s raging these days, is this something that you’ve been aware of?
ABT. Absolutely. I am particularly interested in it because we are a growing company and we have plans for expansion and growth. Our business is very sound and doing very well and we are actively out in the market. We’re not based in a major metropolis. We’re in Columbus, Georgia, which is a wonderful town but maybe not on the short list of some of the people that we’re recruiting, and that raises the stakes for us. So I really need it to be sharp in terms of our message, what our offerings are, and selling those parts of Aflac that we think we do better than anybody else. I’m talking about things like our culture and our values, the way we look after our people. I kind of I saw this situation coming. It was brewing and now it’s here, so I’m very glad that we’ve put some things in place on the front end so that we could be prepared for what really is a war for talent.

Health matters
A big focus coming up for us is on wellness. We have a pretty strong wellness program that I want to continue to beef up. I want people to understand that those things we’re talking about in terms of wellness and health also translate into positive effects on the bottom line. A workforce that takes better care of itself helps to reduce healthcare costs and premiums. That’s really important in an environment when the rising price of healthcare is a major issue. There are some certain steps we can take that are within our control as employees and employers.

So we started a really rigorous program. We’ve done some things with our cafeterias, with our vending machines. We’ve strengthened our exercise programs. We’ve added a new gym to our campus. We’re starting to bring in speakers and people who can give testimonials. We recently brought in Dominique Wilkins, who is a retired Atlanta Hawks basketball player – very famous in these parts. He suffers from diabetes although he’s very, very healthy. He’s an exceptional Hall of Fame athlete but, because of lifestyle and genetics, he has diabetes. He came and spoke to hundreds of our employees for a class on preventing and maintaining good health despite diabetes.

We’ve also partnered with Iron Girl, which is like the Ironman triathlon but for women. We’ve got a really robust sponsorship with them and we are fielding teams of our headquarters’ employees who are going to participate in a walk and also in the triathlon itself. We’re grabbing any type of opportunity that we can use to make health, physical fitness, and wellness forefront in our employees’ minds. That’s a big thing that we’ve got planned.

Aflac’s honor roll

• 10 years on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For
• Seven years on Fortune’s Most Admired Companies in America list
• Three years on Black Enterprise Magazine’s 40 Best Companies for Diversity list
• Named one of the world’s most ethical companies by Ethisphere magazine in 2007
• On Working Mother’s list of 100 Best Places for Working Mothers
• In Training Magazine’s Top 125
• Eight years on Latina Style’s list of 50 Best Places for Latinas to Work
• Nine years on Computerworld’s 100 best Places to Work in IT chart