Bisaccia team player and leader for CVS

While most companies go through some growing pains when a leader adjusts to a new role, Lisa Bisaccia’s diverse skill set and take-charge attitude is making the transition virtually seamless at CVS Caremark Corp., where she took over as senior vice president and chief human resources officer in January.
“She has really blended in as part of the senior team very quickly,” said Mark Griffin, senior vice president of human resources for Woonsocket-based CVS. “Some people, it takes them awhile to really become part of the team. She is part of the team and it’s only four months into her role. She has the maturity and experience and savvy to operate effectively with CEOs and [company] presidents.”
Bisaccia first joined CVS Caremark in 2004 as the head of human resources for the retail-stores division of the company, where she focused on executive compensation and benefits. While Bisaccia began her career in human resources as a recruiter for a hospital, most of her experience lies in banking. For several years, Bisaccia held a senior human resources position with FleetBoston Financial as the head of compensation and benefits.
Now, after 31 years in the human resources industry, she’s back in health care, and her career has really come full-circle.
“It’s almost like destiny to come back at this point in my career to work for a company that’s so intrinsically involved in delivering high-quality health care to consumers and patients,” Bisaccia said. “I am personally satisfied that the work I do is part of improving people’s lives.”
In her new position, Bisaccia takes on a variety of tasks, including: enhancing executive compensation and incentive programs; boosting HR’s role in CVS Caremark’s business operations; overseeing talent development and training programs; interacting with labor unions; collaborating with CEOs in developing business strategies and tracking employee engagement, among other duties. With an HR staff of 500 and 215,000 employees working for CVS Caremark, Bisaccia certainly stays busy. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Bisaccia blended seamlessly into her new position as head of HR: During her six years at the company, CVS Caremark has gone through huge transformations. When Bisaccia joined the company in 2004, CVS was made up of only retail stores and pharmacies.
Since then, the company added two different businesses to the mix. In 2006, CVS pharmacies began incorporating on-site MinuteClinics, the No. 1 retail clinic in the country. Five-hundred and sixty CVS stores now contain MinuteClinics. In 2007, CVS merged with Caremark, a merger that combined a pharmaceutical services company with America’s largest pharmacy chain.
Then in 2008, the company acquired Longs Drug Stores, taking on an additional 547 stores. CVS Caremark now comprises pharmacy-benefits management (PBM), dozens of specialty and mail-order pharmacies, disease-management businesses, retail-based health clinics and more than 7,000 stores.
Bisaccia was key to keeping the business running smoothly as it went through all these expansions. For example, when CVS Caremark acquired Longs in 2008, about 1,300 people from the Longs headquarters eventually lost their jobs due to the consolidation. Bisaccia led her team in engaging with Longs associates, transitioning the stores from Longs to CVS and helping those who lost jobs plan for their futures. “There was a real effort to help those individuals transition to the next chapter of their work careers,” said Larry Merlo, president of CVS Caremark’s retail division. “I thought it was an outstanding effort.”
Helping people plan their careers is something Bisaccia oversees within CVS Caremark, too. Talent identification and development is one of Bisaccia’s key initiatives as the new head of HR. She and her HR team have developed several programs to promote employee advancement and help associates realize that working at CVS Caremark is not just a job, but can be a career.
For example, the CVS Caremark Women’s Success Network offers employees the chance to attend lectures, participate in volunteer programs and network with other women. The program was instituted a year-and-a-half ago and has already reached about 1,000 CVS Caremark employees.
“She’s been a real advocate for ensuring that we’re identifying and preparing the leaders of tomorrow for our business,” said Merlo. “She has worked with her team to develop programs for individuals that would expose them to different elements of our business and develop management skills required for positions of increasing responsibility.”
All of these programs evidence Bisaccia’s commitment to making human resources a vital part of CVS Caremark’s business operations. “I’m proud of us as a company because the people strategy is thoroughly embedded in our planning strategy,” she said.
“It’s not done as an afterthought – it’s intrinsic to our planning process,” she said. “And I think the entire HR community here at CVS Caremark should be proud of that.” •