Pathways to Excellence
Feb. 15, 2007

PREPARED REMARKS
OF
Barbara Young,
Chief Human Resources Officer

Welcome:
Good morning, everyone!  I’m Barb Young, Chief Human Resources Officer here at the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. It is my honor and pleasure to welcome all of you to the first Pathways to Excellence event of 2007! I’m so glad that BWC is able to host the event this time around, and it’s so nice to have all of you here in our building today.  It’s great to see so many quality champions from such a vast array of agencies all assembled in the same place.

Event sponsored by OQN:
The Pathways event is sponsored by the Ohio Quality Network. As you may know, the OQN is made up of quality coordinators representing labor and management from various state agencies. These folks work very hard together to plan and coordinate these events that provide such a valuable opportunity for our many state agencies to come together to network and share their accomplishments and process improvements in the quality arena. We in Ohio government have been very fortunate for many years now to have the opportunity to form partnerships of labor and management to improve the services we provide the citizens of Ohio and to make our employees’ work lives richer and more fulfilling.

Successes/ importance of quality/partnership/measurement
I wanted to say a few words about the individual team successes of Ohio’s quality teams, but I have to admit to you that it’s a very difficult task to single out a few teams from among the hundreds that have successfully implemented their recommendations to improve services and save money. Instead, it might be more important to note the subtler, more deep-seeded cultural changes which have come about in Ohio government as the result of literally hundreds of quality-oriented initiatives throughout the state. As a result of these initiatives, Ohio government now embraces such quality-based principles as:

• Continuous Process improvement
• Process measurement
• Partnering across employer/employee lines
• Employee involvement at all levels
• as well as remaining customer focused, and utilizing strategic planning all of which are accepted quality principles.

I know that positive cultural changes have occurred in Ohio because I have witnessed them first hand. I started as a QStP basic trainer back when QStP started in the mid 90’s.  I've seen first hand how the use of quality tools and principles can create a workforce that is involved in the creation of its own future and how our customers are the ultimate beneficiaries of the improved services and products. I’m sure that any of you who have been employed in state government for 10 or more years can attest to how much better things are than they were “back in the dark ages.”

BWC Successes:
It is in no small way due to our focus on the continuous improvement of our work processes in the true spirit of partnership that we here at BWC have been able to turn many of our challenges into successes. Today, we here at BWC - and I’m sure in many of your state agencies - see quality at work every time there is a problem to solve by putting a team together to make recommendations, by utilizing facilitators for teams, by creating data driven recommendations with measurable results and using the quality tools and principles to help us deliver the best possible customer service we can to the citizens of Ohio.

There’s one final thought I’d like to share with you this morning: That is that if you hear yourself or a colleague saying something like, “Whatever happened to quality? Do we still do that?” it’s not because quality has gone away or has become less important. It’s because quality has now been embraced as a natural part of the culture of Ohio State government, and is simply “the way we do business.”

Final Thank You’s & intro of Ron Alexander:

(Andy Douglas, OCSEA Executive Director is here today)

Once again I want to thank the Ohio Quality Network for bringing Pathways to BWC today and for the honor of sharing some opening remarks with you, and perhaps most of all, I want to thank you, our true quality champions, for coming today.

Next, it is my great pleasure to introduce our next speaker, Mr. Ronald Alexander.  Ronald Alexander has been President of OCSEA since 1984 and has served on the OCSEA Board of Directors continuously since 1978.  Ron has served on every standing committee of the board and has served as our president during every negotiation since 1986. 

Since 1995 Ron has given us a voice on the Public Employees Retirement System as a member of the board and was Chairman of the PERS Board from 2004 through 2006.  He is currently chair of the Deferred Compensation Board.   Ron has served as OCSEA Chair of the Legislation Committee and Political Action Committee in the past and still remains active in this area today as a registered lobbyist.   

Ron Alexander has been a champion of quality since its inception in 1992.  He was instrumental in working with Governor Voinovich to implement the quality partnership that has saved state government over $350 million dollars in its first 10 years.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ron Alexander.

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Prepared Remarks of Barbara Young, BWC Chief HR Officer