Volume
2006, Issue 2
September 11, 2006
Inside this Issue:
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Working in IIa
IIa values empowerment: “An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.”
—Stephen Covey
Committee Selects Impact Award Winners
Anderson, Burns, Leach, Martin, and UK team were selected from field of 12 nominations to receive $2,000 Impact Awards
Semi-Monthly Pay Dates Move to
Accommodate Bank Schedule
Change to be implemented November 7th
Cost Increases for Health Insurance Significantly Below National Average
Increases nationally average 7% more than what IIa negotiated for its employees
Committee Selects Impact Award Winners
Anderson, Burns, Leach, Martin, and UK team were selected from field of 12 nominations to receive $2,000 Impact Awards
When the president of the company calls, you only hope it is with the kind of news that our Impact Award winners received. That’s just what happened. Nikkia Anderson, Bridget Burns, and Penny Leach all got called to a meeting in the project manager’s office and weren’t given a clue what was going on. And then the phone rang. Bonnie Carroll was on the line and after a moment of pretending to be on serious business, she broke into congratulations about their awards.
Anderson and Burns are both at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Library in Greenbelt, Maryland, and coincidentally, are both working toward their master’s 
degrees in information science. But their awards came for their consistent dedication to excellence and innovation. Anderson, a computer programmer, was cited for her work as the library’s lead on the Landsat Legacy Project (joint undertaking by the library, the Landsat Program Science Office, and the U.S. Geological Survey).
Burns, who started as a library technician and is now the library’s acquisitions manager, has developed a lifecycle proposal for e-resources management and also planned and coordinated an e-Book Panel that brought 60 librarians and e-Book users together. After their initial “Wow!” Anderson and Burns thanked the company, both for the award itself and also for providing educational assistance support of their masters programs.
Edwards Winner
Penny Leach, Edwards training assistant, was speechless when she got the call about her award. Carroll noted that Penny was cited for her “can do” attitude and that her nominator thought that Penny’s photo should be included in the dictionary under “teamwork.”
OSTI Winner
Mark Martin, a software developer at DOE OSTI, eceived his award from Carroll 
personally in front of a gathering of the OSTI team. Martin’s award recognized his work to reengineer the software development lifecycle at OSTI. His ability to get “buy-in” to change was noted, as was his superb combination of technical and people skills. Upon receiving the award, Martin thanked all the members of the team for “the team’s willingness to embrace what they do everyday” that allowed him to be successful.”
United Kingdom Winner
The first Impact Award to a team went to our eight-person team in the United Kingdom. These team members work on two sites, 19 miles apart at U.S. Air Force bases located at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath in England. The team was cited for both their innovation in the services they provide and for their work to enhance the training program that resulted in dramatic savings in taxpayer dollars.
Looking Toward 2007 Awards
Submissions for the 2007 Impact Awards will again be due by July 10, but the form will remain up and nominations can be submitted throughout the year. In the coming months, we will post a tip sheet on how to write a good award nomination.
The new awards committee is Mark Martin (OSTI), Tim Litherland (UK), Penny Leach (Edwards), an at-large volunteer member, and a member of the Executive Committee. Susanne Dupes will serve in a non-voting capacity to facilitate the committee’s work.
The 2006 committee established the following guidelines for the awards program:
- Winners are not eligible to win the award in the year immediately following the year in which they were a winner (individual members of teams that won a team award will be eligible, but not the team)
- Committee members may not nominate or be nominated for the award
- Committee members must excuse themselves from rating nominations for projects or individuals at their own work location
In addition, the committee is preparing a “How to Write a Winning Award Nomination” tip sheet that will be posted on the nomination web page.
Semi-monthly Pay Dates Move to Accommodate Bank Schedule
Change to be implemented November 7th
In July, IIa’s Finance Office announced that the pay dates for employees who are paid on a semi-monthly basis will change beginning in November. The dates change by two days, from the 5th to the 7th and from the 20th to the 22nd. The changes are unavoidable if we are to meet our bank’s schedule for handling direct deposits into your accounts. The bank is requiring its customers to submit payroll direct deposits two working days prior to the effective pay date. So to ensure that your money is always there when you expect it to be, we must move our calendar to accommodate the bank’s requirements to compensate for weekends and holidays.
We will continue the practice that if the 7th or 22nd falls on a Saturday, the payday will be on Friday the 6th or 21st. If the 7th or 22nd falls on a Sunday, the payday will be on Monday the 8th or 23rd.
Note: monthly and bi-weekly pay dates will not change.
Cost Increases for Health Insurance Significantly Below National Average
Increases nationally average 7% more than what IIa negotiated for its employees
You hear about the rising cost of health insurance and healthcare almost every time you turn on the news. IIa is working very hard to minimize the ongoing cost increases in health insurance for our employees. When our Human Resources department re-negotiates the rates for the coming year, their top priorities are to focus on those aspects of a plan that impact an employee’s pocketbook most directly, such as holding down the cost of both office visit co-payments and the amount the employee is expected to spend “out-of-pocket.” They were successful on both fronts.
This year, we are staying with United Healthcare for our medical insurance, and will see an 8.1% increase in the amount we pay for coverage. We all wish that costs would not go up, but it is a reality of life. IIa was able to negotiate some employee-friendly tradeoffs for the cost increase. One of those is the amount employees have to pay when we visit the doctor’s office—the co-payment. This year, the amount is going to be less for “in-network” primary care providers, going from $20 last year to $10 this year. Primary care providers are physicians who are in general practice, internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatrics. The co-payment for specialists such as cardiologists, gastroenterologists, obstetricians, urologists, etc., will remain at $20.
There is also a $500 decrease in the annual maximum that we are expected to pay “out-of-pocket” when we use doctors and services that are in the United Healthcare network. Last year, the annual out-of-pocket maximum was $2,000 for an individual for “in-network” care. That drops this year to $1,500. In addition, employees who have co-insurance for services that are out of the UHC network will see better coverage, with United Healthcare paying 70% of the charges instead of 60%.
Prescription co-payments continue at the same rate as last year.
With all of these changes, one important thing to remember is that IIa is continuing to pay 80% of the cost for health insurance for both employees who participate in the program as well as their dependents.