Human Resources Excellence Awards
2008 Award Winners
HR LEADERSHIP
Nominees Name: Robert W. Coon
Nominees Title: Vice President, Human Resources
Nominees Company: Menlo Worldwide, LLC
Number of Employees: 7,000
Reasons: This nomination recognizes ROBERT W. COON as retires after 31 years of human resources leadership here in Northern California. For the past seven years, Bob has served as Vice President of Human Resources for Menlo Worldwide, the supply chain management company of Con-way Inc. During that period he helped build Menlo into a $2.3 Billion industry leader with over 7,000 employees in 21 countries around the world today.
Prior to this Bob served as the first corporate Director of Con-way Transportation and helped this freight company grow from $300 Million to over $1.2 Billion in revenue and from 3,000 employees to over 18,000 in just eight years. Under his direction, Menlo University won the national CUBIC award for the “Best New Corporate University” in 2003. With the positive employee environment Bob helped build, Con-way was recognized by Fortune Magazine as the “Most Admitted Transportation Company in America” in 2007.
One of our most innovative HR leaders, Bob constantly brings forth enlightened policies, best-in-class-processes, and advanced technology into every assignment. He’s established formal Organization & Management Development Reviews (OMDR) and has automated 360* reviews, performance management, and salary planning. His staff independently developed an integrated on-line Organization Development System (ODS) which manages, counsels, develops, tracks, and supports both employees and managers throughout the entire life-cycle of employment.
In fact, Bob’s unique approaches to making HR an active business partner have been written up in the now-classic book, Human Value Management, by Dr, Jac Fitz-enz and featured in articles on “Developing Warehouse Leaders” in WERC Journal and on “Tying HR Goals to Company Success” in Workforce Management Magazine.
In other HR assignments here in Silicon Valley, Bob was Vice President for Daisy Systems, Vice President at Sirius HRIS, and served as Senior Director for Motorola Computer Systems, Four-Phase Systems, and Ford Aerospace & Communications.
Mr. Coon was also the President and Chief Operating Officer of Saratoga Institute for two years. A recognized expert in HR metrics, Bob teaches “Measuring Human Resource Effectiveness” at UCSC Extension and given over 30 related presentations before The Conference Board, Council of Logistics Management, International Quality & Productivity Council, National Transportation Board, Intermodal Association of North America, AEA, SHRM, NCHRA, IHRIM, Human Resources Summit, and Australian Institute for Personnel Management, for example.
Bob is a past President of the Bay Area HR Executives Council and served on their Board of Directors for over 12 years. He has been an active and proud member of SHRM for over 26 years.
Most important to recognize are the many, many human resources professionals that Bob had managed, mentored, and developed over the years. These include two HR employees promoted to company president, at least seven vice presidents, and myriad HR directors and managers. Through his personal performance, solid guidance and coaching, Robert Coon has set an outstanding leadership example emulated by so many people throughout the companies for which he has worked, not just in human resources, but by fellow business executives.
HR INNOVATION
Award Category: Functional_Excellence_2
Nominees Name: Traci Wicks &
Intuit Candidate Generation Team
Nominees Company: Intuit
Number of Employees: 8300
Reasons: Our Structure follows strategy:
Most companies have created reactive pipeline programs to solve for talent needs. At Intuit, we designed a more strategic weapon called “Candidate Generation” to battle in the war for talent, which allows Intuit to be more proactive in building talent pools. Our centralized candidate generation team, which includes employment branding, University Recruiting, referral programs, diversity, networks, candidate experience, and sourcing, is designed to maximize our ability to identify and attract talent proactively. This team also provides vital market intelligence in the talent planning process, prospect management systems to deliver quality candidates, tools that leverage search/research, candidate experience initiatives to ensure that our candidates have the best experience. Candidate Generation’s fully integrated system provides all the pieces to solve the puzzle on immediate or future quality talent pipeline. By centralizing these functions, we decreased costs incurre d for outreach strategies by 15%, and name generation expenses by 57%, while increasing hires from these sources by 150%, and increased passive candidate channels by 36%.
Our Commitment to the Candidate Experience:
What truly sets candidate generation apart is our commitment and focus on the entire candidate experience. This candidate experience mindset is progressive, innovative and exclusive to Intuit. Just as we build our products from our customers’ outside view, our team takes the same approach to identifying and attracting candidates. Learning what it takes to make Intuit the employer of choice and how the concept of “employer of choice” is unique to each candidate is part of our DNA. Just as our candidates are not one-size-fits-all, neither are our solutions in working with them in the recruitment process. Intuit was recognized by ERE for Best Employment Brand in 2007 and every year since 2002, Intuit has ranked in Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”
Improving overall performance:
In our continued commitment to process excellence led to the development of an industry TA best practice “Requisition Diagnostic” tool that continues to be profiled by the Corporate Executive Board’s Recruiting Roundtable. We created a set of performance targets that allow the entire recruitment team (the hiring manager, account managing recruiter and candidate generation recruiter) to take steps to meet their collective hiring goals.
By utilizing the Recruiting Diagnostic tool, we were able to increase the sourcing teams overall output by 23% while decreasing sourcer headcount by 11%. Therefore, cutting overhead costs to the sourcing team and increasing their output. Also, a significant 63% increase in sourcers identifying senior leadership talent. Requisitions using the Requisition Diagnostic tool have had days-to-fill decrease by an average of 4.4% .Recruiting Roundtable shared Intuit’s methods with hundreds of companies nationwide. Participants from nine countries and 25 twenty-five states attended trainings and overall feedback provided by a majority of respondents felt our tool provided “excellent” value for improving their business processes. Intuit was recently recognized by ERE for Best Recruiting Department.
Of the nominees mentioned for this award, five have been rewarded Intuit’s Vision Impact and Partnership award (Intuit HR department’s most prestigious award) and two have received Intuit’s TA Awards for Excellence.
PARTNERSHIP WITH HR
Nominees Name: Jeanne Palmer
Nominees Title: President
Nominees Company: The Palmer Advantage
Number of Employees: 12
Reasons: Jeanne Palmer’s name is synonymous with the term Human Resources. Her colleagues point out Jeanne’s strong professional ethics and integrity, while focusing on results and accountability. Jeanne is driven to educate those inspired to develop a career in HR. Jeanne has a passion for the profession that is transforming; she wants to help people understand Human Resources and mentors her students with the same attention that she coaches a VP of HR.
Jeanne Palmer was the Coordinator for the HR Certificate program at University of California-Santa Cruz Extension in Silicon Valley for fourteen years. She founded and managed the quality of this highly regarded program for HR professionals looking to upgrade their skills or people looking to enter this exciting field. She created the curriculum, taught over 100 sections of 20 different courses and mentored new HR instructors into the program. Jeanne also helped develop the first Dean’s Advisory Board for UCSC Extension and continues to contribute to the Extension.
Jeanne was a founder of HR, Inc., known today as the HR Symposium and currently serves on the board. Jeanne is the founder and President of The Palmer Advantage, a human resource consulting firm and has served on numerous community and non-profit boards throughout her career, including the San Jose State University HR Advisory Board from 2002-2004. Jeanne is also renowned author of “The Human Resource Professionals Career Guide: Building a Position of Strength.”
Jeanne has served on the Project HIRED board since 2000. Project HIRED is non-profit based in San Jose that is “Assisting People with Disabilities to Gain Competitive Employment and Advance their Careers, Through Partnerships with Industry.” One of the key service components that Project HIRED makes available to job seekers with disabilities the monthly Job Search Workshop Series. The workshop modules detail the job search best practices like Resume Writing, Self Promotion, and Interviewing. In addition, client’s are able to put into practice what they have learned, by attending the Mock Interview and Resume Critique sessions.
The Project HIRED staff has been relying on materials that were written several years ago and the information needed to be updated. Jeanne and The Palmer Advantage took the initiative to review and revise the materials, and offered to take the lead in facilitating the workshops. By lending their industry expertise, The Palmer Advantage has breathed new life into both the materials and workshops. It’s been an incredible contribution that Jeanne started last summer. The response from our client’s is overwhelmingly positive and the information covered during the workshops series is helping to prepare our job seekers.
Why is Jeanne Palmer quoted in numerous publications from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times? Why do HR organizations like NCHRA, AIRS and Silicon Valley Women in HR seek Jeanne as a guest speaker? Jeanne Palmer has a deep passion for HR and people value her opinion!
FUNCTIONAL EXCELLENCE
Award Category: Functional_Excellence_2
Nominees Name: Jule Torre
Nominees Title: Stock Programs Manager
Nominees Company: Applied Materials
Number of Employees: 12,000
Reasons: Nomination for Human Resource – Awards of Excellence
We would like to nominate an individual for the Functional Excellence in HR award who is clearly an over achiever in the specialized area of stock plan administration. With a broad range of expertise in benefits management with an emphasis on designing, implementing and administering global compensation programs, this individual constantly pushes to work together to enhance the value of these important company benefits. .
With over two decades dedicated to this function, this individual is responsible for managing vendors, employees and internal stakeholders with experience gained at a major law firm, a start up, and two large Silicon Valley firms. At her current employer, she manages a team overseeing plans in 24 countries, using Stock Options, Restricted Stock Awards, Employee Purchase Plans and most recently Performance shares. Many of the over 12,000 employees and directors have multiple forms of equity compensation, for which she spearheads communications.
As manager of a team interacting with legal, accounting, payroll, investor relations, as well as other HR functions, accuracy is critical. Also important is the ability to recognize potential risks and to implement practical solutions proactively. This individual has repeatedly demonstrated these skills. Rather than rest doing a mere great job of stock plan administration, she actively networks with other professionals, looking for ways to adopt industry best practices to whenever possible.
She is known as a tough, but respected client to her external service providers. With her broad industry expertise, she challenges her vendors to enhance their services to keep up with her increasingly evolving high standards for the plan. In order to influence product development and vendor policies that will benefit her employer, she is an active contributor to her brokerage vendor’s advisory board and proactively leads peer-client discussions with other stock plan administrators .
This individual is a frequent speaker at various equity compensation professional events and conventions. She is a founding member of the now 6,000 member National Association of Stock Plan Professionals (NASPP), and the Global Equity Organization ( GEO), where she has earned a spot on both organizations’ advisory board. She is also a highly valued subject matter expert and board member of Santa Clara University’s Certified Equity Professional Institute. She was recently elected Chair of the 2008-2009 Advisory Board, and will be elevated to that position this fall.
We would like to honor the career of one of the most respected subject matter experts working in stock plan administrators in Silicon Valley. For the 2008 Functional Excellent in HR Award for expertise in a functional area, please consider, from Applied Materials: Jule Torre.
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