Harris House: Sort of a BIG Deal...

Little "stress balls" for the occasion

About a year ago, Corizon was awarded the LARGEST correctional healthcare contract in history. Seriously, this is sort of a BIG DEAL, because in the history of privatized healthcare (an industry we founded in 1978), this is the biggest contract EVER awarded, worth $1.2 billion (over 5 years), serving 55 prison facilities and caring for over 52,000 inmate lives. Seriously, HUGE!

So after a year of legal battles with disgruntled competitors regarding the RFP process, nurses union lawsuits (because they wanted to continue to work for the state, not privatize), court 'holds' and such, we finally started up the contract on Sept. 8th. We were already doing LOTS of things behind the scenes toward startup, but the actual contract began Sept. 8th, when we went 'live' in the facilities. Our startup process is very thorough and AWESOME, and it took 'all hands on deck' to get things up and going, get the 2500 employees registered for payroll, oriented and trained, and get our materials, processes and expectations out into the sites.

Normally, this is handled by the Human Resources dept., but with such a large scale project, they called in everyone! So I got to go to Florida for a week in September and help with training, collecting I-9 forms, and give a presentation to different groups each day regarding our Company Culture (my favorite 'work' thing to talk about).

It was RAINY, but still beautiful, the whole time we were there!

So, anyway, here are some photos from my week in Lakeland, Florida. It was a great experience, but I'm glad I don't do this every day! I like my day job.

We stayed at and had our training sessions at "The Terrace," an old-fashioned cool hotel right downtown Lakeland. They upgraded us to suites -- even though they were a tight suite, they were very cool!

We saw these little guys EVERYWHERE! This one on a window sill...

Me and our team lead, Jennifer Chambers

Georgia had bought this MASSAGER at the airport, and decided to bring it to the sessions to use on our
trainees. It was a HIT!! I liked it so much, I came home and immediately ordered one for Steve
for our Anniversary!

Our Training Team: Leesa Peterson, Mac, ME, Jennifer Chambers, Georgia Wayne

After our final day of training, we left Lakeland and drove to Tampa to stay closer to the airport for our early morning flight. We stayed at the GRAND HYATT, and they had a convention in town that needed more rooms for overflow, so they upgraded us to the little "CASITAS," which were individual little apartments separate from the hotel itself -- SCORE! Again, very cool!

AND...These ones below are the only photos we're going to post of my AWKWARD attempt to pose in the fun hammock! It provided some early evening entertainment, anyway...

This place was right on the water, and such a GORGEOUS setting!

We had a FABULOUS dinner at the hotel restaurant -- I had the Mahi-Mahi on the top. Scrumptious!

The whole time we were waiting for our food, and even after it came, I was hopping up to take photos of the AMAZING SUNSET taking place right in front of us!!