Models Of Excellence- Employee Focus

Introduction:

New model believers hold that employee satisfaction is a leading indicator of customer satisfaction, and that loyal employees develop loyal customers. As employee satisfaction increases, a company can expect its key customer satisfaction indicators to improve also, along with financial results.

Building Products Operations:

• Building Products Operations (BPO), a subsidiary of Armstrong World Industries, Inc., is the worldwide leader in manufacturing and marketing acoustical ceiling systems for commercial and residential markets.

• BPO employs approximately 2,400 people. Its headquarters is in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Armstrong BPO won the Baldrige Award in 1995.

• BI Performance Services develops, designs, and delivers program solutions that help its clients to improve the performance of their employ­ees and distribution personnel, and to develop higher levels of consumer loyalty and frequency of purchase.

• BI has nearly 1,000 associates at its Minneapolis headquarters, its Eden Valley (Minnesota) facility, and its 24 sales offices, located in major cities throughout the United States, in 1994, BI became the first service company to win the Minnesota Quality Award.

• Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., was founded in 1978 in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont.

• The company manufactures and markets super premium ice cream, low -fat and nonfat frozen yogurt, ice cream novelties, and sorbets, through supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, and restaurants, and also franchises Ben & Jerry's scoop shops.

• It has more than 700 employees "dedicated to the creation and demonstration of a new corporate concept of linked prosperity" that includes "holding a deep respect for individuals inside and outside the company."