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Gene Bacher is a retired federal employee interested in improving government performance. He holds a PhD in Public Administration from Virginia Tech. He had considerable help in preparing this article from Adam Eckerd at Virginia Tech’s Center for Public Administration and Policy.

Gene Bacher

Summer 2013 - The Public Manager

You're Expected to Improve Your Organization's Performance. Now What?

Anthem’s eligible 55,000 full-time and part-time associates have a new employee perk: no-cost college degrees. Specifically, any Anthem employee who works 20 hours or more per week and has been employed with the company for at least six months can pursue an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree through a new national partnership with College for America (CfA) at Southern New Hampshire University. Anthem’s tuition reimbursement plan will cover the full price of the online degrees.Tuition reimbursement is a growing benefit among many companies, and health insurer Anthem Inc. is just the latest big employer to offer its workers a no-cost college education.  “Anthem is committed to offering its associates a robust benefits package that goes beyond salary and health benefits,” says Jose Tomas, chief human resources officer at Anthem, Inc., in a written statement. Gene Rodriguez, an Anthem spokeswoman, explains to Bloomberg Business how Anthem began the pilot program with College for America in 2013. Since its launch, nine employees have earned Associate’s degrees. “Our partnership with College for America has proven successful for our associates who participated in the pilot program in New Hampshire and we want to build on that success by providing opportunities for education, development, and career advancement to all our associates,” notes Thomas. College for America partners with employers to offer a competency-based, online curriculum that is engineered to align with business needs. For instance, the school offers Associate’s degrees in general studies, with focuses on business or healthcare, and Bachelor’s degrees in communications and healthcare management. More importantly, the program helps associates fit a fully-accredited college degree into the busy lives of working adults. For example, students are encouraged to progress through their education by completing projects at their own pace. “This is a tremendous win-win for Anthem and its associates.  As an employer, Anthem is building talent and the skills needed for promotion in its workforce while associates earn an accredited degree that will help them get ahead in their life and career without taking on debt,” said Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University.  “SNHU’s partnership with Anthem will educate thousands of associates and is a model for aligning employer demand with the kind of competency-based, workforce-applicable higher education we have pioneered at College for America.” Join the free webcast Wednesday, June 10, Bridge the Skills Gap With Competency-Based Education, to learn how Anthem and CfA are working together to advance the careers and lives of working adults while developing a thriving workforce.

Anthem Partners with College for America to Offer Free Degrees to Employees

Tamara J. Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and widely respected expert on organizations and the changing workforce – on the shifting relationship between individuals and corporations – and on enhancing innovation and workforce productivity. She is one of the 50 most influential living management thinkers in the world – named in the 2009 and 2011 Thinkers 50, a prestigious, biennial global ranking of business thinkers created by Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer and published in The (London) Times. Her work is based on extensive research on changing demographics and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations innovate through collaboration. Recently, Tammy founded and is CEO of Tammy Erickson Associates, www.tammyerickson.com, a firm of renowned thought-leaders and senior business leaders committed to developing insights into the challenges that today’s businesses are facing and offering a specific set of services that help companies re-shape their organizational practices. She has co-authored four Harvard Business Review articles: “It’s Time to Retire Retirement” (March 2004), winner of the McKinsey Award, “Managing Middlescence” (March 2006), “What It Means to Work Here,” (March 2007), and “Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams,” (November 2007), as well as the book Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent, published by Harvard Business School Press (2006). She has also co-authored an MIT Sloan Management Review article, “Bridging Faultlines in Diverse Teams,” (Summer 2007). Tammy is the author of one of Harvard Business Review’s Breakthrough Ideas for 2008, “Task, Not Time,” (February 2008), one of HBR’s Forethoughts on Unconventional Wisdom in a Downturn, “‘Give Me the Ball’ Is the Wrong Call,” (December 2008), and the HBR Case Study “Gen Y in the Workforce” (February 2009). Tammy recently completed a trilogy of books on how individuals in specific generations can excel in today’s workplace. Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation and Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work were published by Harvard Business Press in 2008. What’s Next, Gen X? Keeping Up, Moving Ahead, and Getting the Career You Want was published in 2010. Her blog “Across the Ages” is featured weekly on HBP Online (http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/erickson/). The research initiatives she and colleagues have undertaken include Demography is De$tiny, exploring the implications of current demographic changes on human resource practices, The New Employee/Employer Equation, developing new and powerful approaches to increasing employee engagement through segmentation, and the Cooperative Advantage, done in collaboration with a team at London Business School, exploring the working practices of over 50 teams in 15 multi-nationals, representing the most extensive academically-grounded study of industry-based team working ever conducted. Her current research is focused on the implications of social enterprise software on the way we work. Tammy is also a respected authority on technology and its implications for business and coauthor of the book Third Generation R&D: Managing the Link to Corporate Strategy, a widely accepted guide to making technology investments and managing innovative organizations. Tammy is a former member of the Board of Directors of PerkinElmer, Inc., a Fortune 500 company competing in advanced technology markets, and a former member of the Board of Directors of Allergan, Inc. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago and a MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration where she was the recipient of the James Thomas Chirurg Fellowship.

Tamara Erickson

Lori Mazan is the co-founder and chief coaching officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization. Lori is a seasoned executive coach who has guided hundreds of corporate executives through 1:1 coaching focused on business outcomes and developing critical leadership skills. Client companies advanced by Lori’s expertise include Fortune titans such as Chevron and Sprint as well as high growth and public companies like Intellikine, and Tapjoy, plus 10XGenomics, which became a public company in 2019 while top executives worked with Lori and the Sounding Board team.Lori has spent the last 25 years coaching C-Suite executives to leadership excellence. Many of those public and private company CEO’s expressed that they would have liked this caliber of coaching earlier in their careers.Before founding Sounding Board, Lori received her Masters’ in Adult Educational Psychology/Counseling from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelors’ in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Lori is an educator and has spent over 10 years as a professor of social psychology and group dynamics while acting as the interim Dean of Students at Holy Names University, She is certified by the industry’s gold standard, the Coaches Training Institute, and is a founding member of the Genentech Preferred Network of Coaches. Sounding Board is one of <3% of sole female founded startups receiving venture funding. In 2019 Sounding Board was selected as 1 of 7 startups (out of 100+ applicants) as part of SAP’s HR tech cohort, a group that represents the rising stars of the next-gen HR ecosystem.

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