Culture is the key in companies with sustained success, says BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee’s chief executive.
“Our mission to serve, our focus on our members, and our foundation of ethics and shared values make us who we are,” says Dr. J.D. Hickey, CEO of the Chattanooga-based health insurer. “We’re committed to making a difference for our customers, our members and our communities. Our people see that being lived out by one another every day, and it just builds on itself.”
Hickey says that BlueCross has a 75-year history of serving Tennesseans, and it has had to evolve over that time.
“Over the past 10 years especially, we’ve made constant change our new normal. We had to build on the foundation of our mission and our shared values and put a big focus on communications – and central to that was increasing the level of conversation between our senior leaders and our employees,” he says. “Employees need to hear from our leadership team about where we’re going as a company and how we’re going to keep delivering on our mission.”
Hickey says that employee engagement is easy to talk about but hard to achieve, and that it boils down to helping people understand how they contribute to something bigger than themselves – and knowing that their voices matter.