50
HEALTH CARE
SERVICE CORP.
No. 4
Business Type: Health Insurance
Corporate Headquarters: Chicago, Ill.
Number of U.S. Employees: 15,000
Annual Worldwide Revenues: $8.1 billion
ACEO relishes praise from his board of directors or the
media. When he gets praise from his wife, he knows he
must be doing something right. “I hadn’t consciously
thought of it, but four of my six direct reports are women,”
says Ray McCaskey, president and CEO of Health Care
Service Corp. (HCSC). “I even got credit at home.”
Ray McCaskey
President and CEO
Rita Taylor-Nash
Director, Corporate Diversity
High-level representation of
women at HCSC, which provides a
range of group and individual insurance and medical plans to nearly 11
million members, does not stop at
McCaskey’s direct reports. Of
HCSC’s senior management, 46
percent are women. Representation
of people of color also is strong at
HCSC, as blacks account for 19
percent of its employees and 19 percent of its board of directors, and
Latinos account for 8 percent of senior management.
McCaskey attributes the company’s diverse work force to the
incredible success it has had in providing relevant medical plans that
offer coverage above and beyond
the traditional “worker-spouse and
one-and-a-half-children” families.
“Over the years, we’ve repackaged pricing to recognize single
families and we’ve come up with
more flexible pricing that recognizes the different compositions of
the family unit,” says McCaskey.
Now HCSC also provides coverage for single parents and
domestic partners of gay, lesbian
and heterosexual employees.
HCSC, which is made up of
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois,
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas,
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New
Mexico and Blue Cross and Blue
Shield of Oklahoma, as well as various subsidiaries, is a non-investor-owned company. The company
experienced a 12 percent growth
and total sales of $8.1 billion in
2003, which is the most recent
financial information available.
Each business unit at HCSC is
required to create their own diversity plan, says McCaskey.
“So the diversity direction is not
just coming from corporate but is
embedded in the business unit’s
plan,” says Patrick O’Connor, senior vice president and chief human
resources officer.
Business-unit directors have
four key diversity areas on which to
focus: mandatory diversity training, hire/selection and development, HCSC’s diversity principles,
and the enterprise-wide diversity
week to promote shared commitment and unification. —Yoji Cole
