Solving Business Challenges Requires Going Beyond Soundbites

When we are wanting to dig into the strategy behind an employer’s benefit offerings, I wish I had a dollar every time I hear a corporate benefits manager say either:

1. “We want to try and provide a comprehensive plan of benefits at the most affordable cost”;

OR

2. “To compete for talent, we want best of breed benefits so people will join our firm and want to stay because of our benefits package.”

These statements are commonly heard among those in the corporate benefits industry. They can serve to bolster our sense of self-worth hearing the importance of what we might aspire to deliver for an employer sponsoring a corporate benefits plan. There is nothing inherently wrong about either.

The problem is that both are not factually correct.

The first statement is a soundbite … not a strategy. Every decision we make in life has tradeoffs and designing and deploying employee benefit, compensation, equity, corporate perks (i.e. total rewards) is no different. The best consultants in our industry seek to quickly get past these “fantasy land” overtures and delver further into whether the incumbent broker or consultant has helped build an actual strategy to deliver value and outcomes and how we can potentially help.

As an example, it is much easier to follow instructions after a doctor’s visit to get imaging done from the machine down the hall than to have to schedule this service elsewhere at a third of the cost. That trusted doctor is not openly sharing that his/her practice is owned by a large hospital system or private equity firm that bolsters its margins by having you take the least path of resistance. Deploying a benefit for direct contract of imaging services is an example of an actual strategy to lower costs with a tradeoff.

The second statement has also been disproven from independent workplace studies that confirm people will leave their employer over a toxic culture, a bad boss or leadership failures that have impacted the business well before than the deficiencies of a benefits program. Most employees would struggle to recall their plan deductible, copays and plan contributions. They often perceive whether they have “good” insurance based only on the “brand name” of the carrier.

We will often guide our clients to first seek to understand how they may stack up by comparing their benefits to our peer benchmarking analytics. The next step is then to intentionally design an innovative plan offering towards where you aspire to be. Most often the industry does not require an employer to be in the top quartile, but rather to merely be average in order to compete effectively for talent. Astute union negotiators at our collectively bargained clients will strive to negotiate first for rich benefits over higher wages because they know healthcare costs rise much faster than wages and that is to the benefit of the dues paying union worker they represent.

Our duty to our clients in this inflationary environment is to go beyond the soundbites to solve real problems for a business under attack from all directions. These statements may feel good to say in front of the less sophisticated, but they get in the way of where we all need to go so that we can authentically challenge each other in serving more effectively.

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