The President’s Award is the highest honor bestowed upon Bob Barker Company Team Members each year. The award recognizes one or more Team Members whose contributions made the largest impact of the year. This year we recognized two individuals for the 2023 President’s Award. Learn more about one of our two recipients below.
2023 Bob Barker Company President’s Award Winner:
Erica Polson – Utah DC Systems Specialist & IT Support
“Erica is like a Swiss army knife, only if that knife was automated and could go walk around on its own, finding out where it could put its skills to use and fix stuff!” -Sean McNeely, Director, US Manufacturing & UT Distribution (Erica’s leader)
Erica’s accomplishments and contributions to the company in 2023 were immense. Erica was promoted to a shipping team lead role in March of 2021, a systems specialist team lead role at the end of 2021, and was doing an excellent job with her ERP responsibilities and taking care of the team’s system needs on the floor. But when there was an IT vacancy in Utah at the end 2022, she jumped right in and took on new IT responsibilities.
Not only did Erica fully absorb all her new responsibilities, but she found a way to accomplish more than ever, adding value across Utah and the company in so many ways.
She learned all the new skills needed to take care of the Utah Distribution Center, and she was self-sufficient in doing what is needed to support the warehouse team, customer service team and all other Team Members with their needs. From being able to setup a computer, program a scanner, fix passwords, network a printer, or most other IT functions, she’s got it!
She uses her skills to not only solve problems when they arise, but proactively find areas where things might go wrong, and she works to prevent them or get plans in place for how she will react when they do. She has improved the area more with less time that previous roles had to do it.
Through her time with the IT team, she has also been able to add value by being in a unique position to know the processes from an IT standpoint and exactly how things need to happen on the floor. She has also used these skills to complete many of our system enhancement testing for operations while continuing to work with various sub-teams throughout the company. She also helped ensure countless enhancements and fixes went into place.
In addition to serving there, Erica served on the Belonging Council, LIFT Team Member Resource Group, and helped lead the Utah Distribution Center Christmas party, running point in everything from RSVPs to ensuring everything went smooth at the venue.
While all that sounds impressive, where Erica adds the most value is to her team and leadership on a day-to-day basis. The team knows that if they have a problem and see Erica, she will do whatever she can to take care of it. Not only because she wants to help, but because she cares about them. Because of this, Erica is the de facto peer leader that everyone looks up to for success. And Erica takes on this role gladly. With everything from managing completing the daily plan with as little overtime as possible, helping to funnel time-off requests, and resolving whatever challenges come up on the floor or with staffing, she makes it all a success.
She even practiced furthering this strength this year, by working on a stretch assignment through the Solutions Academy. Through this work, she engaged with all Team Members to identify areas for efficiency improvements, and implemented changes to improve maintenance tracking, speed up shipping quality practices, and is actively leading a project to streamline the entire outbound flow.
Congratulations Erica on a job well done.
