Getting to the Heart of Business

Audrey Boone Tillman manages most of the non-core business functions for Aflac Inc. As executive vice president for corporate services, she oversees operations for the divisions of Facilities and Health Services; strategic sourcing and procurement; corporate learning; the company’s print business; and human resources. But for this former professor and practicing attorney, employees are at the core of her work for the insurance company, which is recognized as one of Black Enterprise’s Best Companies for Diversity.

Tillman has spearheaded several creative and progressive programs to improve not only the quality of Aflac’s work environment, but also its employees’ personal lives, particularly in the area of finance. “If [employees] are focused on financial stresses, it will absolutely transfer to their roles as Aflac team members,” she says. As a result, Aflac has offered classes ranging from how college graduates should manage their finances to how to recover financially after a divorce. Through a partnership with NeighborWorks America, a nonprofit homeownership organization, 43 employees were enrolled in Aflac’s custom homebuyer program in 2011.

In 2010 Aflac initiated Just Stop It, an employee competition judged by senior-level staff that presents outdated or inefficient work processes and systems that employees think should be eliminated. Team members submitted more than 1,000 ideas. Two top prizes of $5,000 were awarded–one to Nick Demko, a technology analyst whose suggestion of eliminating postage-paid reply envelopes would save the company $186,474 a year in mailing costs. Twenty runner-up prizes of $1,000 each were also awarded.

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Tillman has restructured the healthcare coverage at Aflac from two categories to three: Individual, Family, and Employee with Children, reducing the price of healthcare for single-parent households. Savings range from $145.25 per month on a b

asic plan to $329.19 per month for a deluxe plan. “A lot of business leaders do things through their own eyes,” Tillman says. “I like to see things from the employees’ perspective.”

Here Tillman explains the value of happy employees, and what the ultimate cost benefit is to the company.

How did you achieve such high levels of participation in Aflac’s 401(k) plan?
We match 50%, but it wasn’t utilized the way I thought it should have been. I said, “Let’s start thinking of ways that we can incentivize people. Not just educate, but incentivize.” People knew what a 401(k) is; people know that it’s a great savings vehicle for the future. It’s just getting them to take that step. We did two things: First we did auto-enroll, and people who didn’t opt out would receive $250 seed money from the company. We also found that it was much easier to have employees stick with their 401(k) if they started from the beginning. Now our participation is north of 85%.

You’ve also championed homeownership for your employees.
When I was first introduced to the concept of NeighborWorks,

I wanted something that could be tailored to our employees. I know the importance of homeownership in terms of financial stability. So NeighborWorks created a program, a curriculum. The program is rigorous. We have a lot of people start but fewer complete it. We give seed money as a graduation gift to those that do. We have a number of employees who are now proud homeowners.

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As an executive, what have you learned from your focus on keeping employees happy?
We have two onsite daycare facilities. Together they are the largest onsite corporate daycare in the state of Georgia. I get a lot of questions about how you measure ROI on onsite daycare. I don’t have specific metrics, but I can tell you that our turnover rate is 8.9% [the industry rate is 20.3%]. A good number of our employees are moms, and when that mom answers the telephone for a policyholder and they know that their child is well taken care of or that they’ve seen them at lunch, the interaction with that policyholder is going to be a whole lot different from a lot of experiences customers have. In our environment the heart portion is just as important as the business case, because our team members are going to be engaged. Those employees who are living in homes for which Aflac provided the seed money–they have so much allegiance to us, and we to them.

What inspired the Just Stop It competition?
Talking to employees. I’ll also pull up a chair in the cafeteria and ask what’s going on. I’d heard enough employees say that there were things that weren’t necessary anymore. I talked with our president and told him, “You need to run some sort of program or

contest and let’s brand it and let’s get employees to submit their suggestions about things we just don’t need to do anymore.” He bought it immediately. We went straight to the people who were in the best position to say that a process was unnecessary–the employees performing them. We got a lot of great ideas and stopped doing a lot of things, and more than that we were able to say, “We heard you.”

You have an interesting philosophy of “just ask a question.”
It may come from my legal background, but I have to know. I’m not going to fake like I know, so I’m going to ask a lot of questions. And in the course of asking questions, especially if you’re in an arena where people haven’t asked questions, you’re going to discover something that you can do better or that you don’t need to do anymore. I don’t ever want any of my teams to rest on what we’re doing. We should be validating that what we’re doing is still relevant and still appreciated. Just look at things a different way and ask the question.