AD, the member owned buying/marketing group, has been awarded a Delaware Valley Top Workplaces 2019 honor by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The list is based solely on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey administered by research partner Energage, LLC, a leading provider of technology-based employee engagement tools. The anonymous survey measures several aspects of workplace culture, including alignment, execution, and connection, just to name a few. 

Bill Weisberg, AD’s chairman & CEO, said, “Making AD a great place to work is a top priority for our organization. While this was a huge team effort which involved AD Associates at every level, it would not be possible for us to receive this honor if it wasn’t for the leadership of our HR department helping us strategically improve our company’s employee engagement, retention and development.There are many companies our size that don’t have an HR department and I understand their concern about ROI. But the decision we made to invest in HR has demonstrated a clear and tangible return on this investment.”

Weisberg continued, “The results we have seen in our own company motivated us to identify ways we could give back to our members and help them access Service Providers, like Energage, and build a strong AD HR community.”

In 2015 AD launched AD HR Services with the goal to connect their 600+ members with high-quality, innovative and cost-effective HR service providers, provide them with best practice sharing and professional development opportunities, and create a foundation for a strong AD HR community. Since the launch of the program, AD HR Services has saved AD members over $3 Million. 

Neil Cohen, senior vice president, human resources added, “Employee engagement is about winning the heads, hands and hearts of your employees. Highly engaged employees are willing to go above and beyond to meet your company’s goals. They are committed to their jobs and their colleagues and act in the best interests of your company. Part of AD’s mission is to ensure that our Associates reach their potential and have a great place to work. We’ve used our third-party engagement survey for years to help us benchmark against other top-performing companies and learn where we are strong and where we have opportunities to improve. So, the entire AD team has a lot to be proud of in winning this award.” 

“Top Workplaces is more than just recognition,” said Doug Claffey, CEO of Energage. “Our research shows organizations that earn the award attract better talent, experience lower turnover, and are better equipped to deliver bottom-line results. Their leaders prioritize and carefully craft a healthy workplace culture that supports employee engagement.” 

In addition, On February 5-8, 2019, AD Bearings & Power Transmission hosted its 4th annual AD Winter Meeting at the Trump National Doral in Miami, FL. More than 300 members and supplier partners were in attendance, with over 95 independent distributor companies present. This was the first AD Bearings & Power Transmission event since the merger with IDC-USA on January 1st, 2019, and by all accounts, was the largest gathering of independent distributors ever to assemble in the Bearings & Power Transmission industry. 

George Graham, president of AD Bearings & Power Transmission stated, “The AD Winter Meeting was an incredibly exciting event in which to participate. All attendees got a first-hand view of the sheer scale of the organization we have created with the IDC-USA merger into AD.  We have received tremendous accolades from both members and suppliers on the value they garnered from the gathering.  We can only look forward to bigger and better meetings in the future.”

Throughout this historic meeting, members and supplier partners experienced the best of both worlds as a result of the merger. Presentations were made to share the benefits of innovative programs such as Warehousing, AD Marketplace, AD eCommerce Solutions, and AD HR and Procurement Services. Additional highlights of the AD Winter Meeting included best in class networking, strategic partner briefings, and one-on-one booth appointments.