VANNOY:

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar, reimagining Benefits for the Hybrid Workforce. Really excited about this topic. It, it, it, it’s just so timely. So we are obviously on a continuum for the last, call it 20 years around more and more virtual, I think more specifically, more and more flexible work in in the pandemic really just accelerated things a whole bunch, right? Companies had to reinvent their work models and between changing demographics and a panem coming out of a pandemic, and just the, the shift to flexible more digital work that was already underway. I, I, I think this is a really timely topic as we just, just are about to enter open enrollment season. So this is the time when companies are finishing up their plans. The employers are finishing up making their elections for, for the benefit plans they’re putting together as we enter the season where employees then choose those plans.

And so I think what I would wanna encourage everybody to think about today is, is kinda broadening our minds of, of, of benefits beyond health insurance, dental, vision, right? And, and, and, and really understand what the purpose of benefits for are, are for. So if we haven’t met before, I’m Mike Vannoy. I’m vice president of product and marketing at Asure, and I got two guests that are, that are really well equipped to take on this topic today. So I wanna welcome Cheryl Trbula, our, our VP of Human Resources, and Heather James benefits manager, operations manager in our Tampa office. So, Cheryl and Heather, welcome.

JAMES:

Thank you. Thank you.

VANNOY:

I think it’s interesting vantage point here. So Cheryl, you live this every day thinking about how, how benefits and, and the expanded view really helps us to attract talent and to retain talent. And then how do you do that in a way that, you know, you, you, you don’t go broke, right? Because obviously healthcare costs continue to skyrocket. And so you have expectations of the marketplace, you have expectations of employees, you have expectations of the business, and, and, and this mix has changed so much. So really looking forward to you, the, the, the, the stories you can share from from your Asure hat and then Heather, as you serve clients in helping them putting together components of their benefit plans around flexible spending and, and, and healthcare savings accounts, et cetera to, to really help not just us, but our clients, think about rounding out benefit plans that attract and retain talent.

So with that, let, let’s go ahead and jump in. So, what we’re gonna do today is we’re gonna unpack our most recent ebook, and it’s the same title of our webinar, reimagining Benefits for the Hybrid Workforce. And I would invite you to, to hop on the website, Asure software.com/ebook-reimagining benefits, and follow along. We’re not gonna read this thing word for word trust, that you, you can do that on your own. We have lots and lots of research charts, graphs, stats, things that can be really helpful, helpful for you guys as you, as you think about how to build a benefit plan, plan and run an open enrollment cycle that will help attract and retain talent for you. So encourage you to download it and follow along. If not, you can, we’ll, we’ll be sharing a recording of this on demand on the website, so you can just hop on the website any time, watch this webinar, download the book at another time if you wish as well.

So, let’s jump into our first topic in, Cheryl, I’m gonna start with you on this one because boy, we, we’ve lived this one coming out of the pandemic, right? So we’re we’re a small employer as the SBA would define under 500 employees, but we’re on the big side of small with multiple locations around the country. You have some offices, primarily operations and customer facing, customer support oriented functions, others that are more engineering and maybe finance and HR back office. So we have this kind of multi-location mix where you know, lacks of really strong opinions on flexible work coming outta a pandemic. What may, may maybe share with our audience, you know, some of your learnings coming outta this.

TRBULA:

Yeah, I mean, you know, once Covid had employees have had that opportunity to work from home for the past year, year and a half, you know, they’ve really had the opportunity to understand what it’s like to be able to work, but then also balance, you know, their family, their pets, and just have that flexibility where they can pop out and take their kid to practice and come back and work or work in the parking lot. So, I do think that at, it’s something that employees expect now and I do think that it’s something that will drive their dec decision on, you know, who they, where, who they wanna work for. I do think that companies should look at this as a benefit. You know, it’s not just about medical, dental, vision. There are other types of diverse benefits that employees are looking for. And flexibility is certainly one of them.

VANNOY:

Yeah. You know, I I I, it’s a good jump off point, right? Because, you know, when we think benefits, and I try to try to set this expectation at the, at the jump here that when you think benefits, it’s easy to gravitate towards health insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance. But really, when you think about why is it that employers even offer these things, right? It’s over time. You know, insurance used to be to handle, you know, the, the catastrophic and people paid for out of pocket as they went. But our, our economy has obviously evolved over the last 30, 40 years where, you know, employees have an expectation that they will get benefits from their employer. So, so here we are and in that mindset of thinking, what is your benefit plan? What maybe even expand beyond flexibility, how, how do you think about it, Cheryl? When, when contemplating the end-to-end benefit package for, you know, attracting and retaining talent?

TRBULA:

Yeah, I mean, personal personalization and benefit packages is becoming more and more paramount. You really have to look at benefits that meet the needs of our multi-generational workforce and that bring value and true value to their lives. You know, you may have a younger workforce that may benefit from tuition reimbursement, or they may want a fitness reimbursement program or something like that, but then you also need to consider maybe your older workforce who would care more about like, long-term disability and things like that. I think it’s important, and you can even, it do, it doesn’t have to be covered by the company to offer it. I know here at Asure we offer pet insurance for our pet lovers out there. And it’s not that we’re covering the cost, it’s just that we’re making it easy and accessible for them to have access to those kind of benefits.

VANNOY:

Yeah, it, it, it’s interesting cause I think the word flexibility. So, so much of the time, you know, takes us to a place of location. Where do I work? Can I work from home to work from an office? Do I get to, to do I get to, to, to share space? What, what does that look like? But in this context, flexibility really means a much wider range of personalization. Heather, as you work with lots of insurance brokers in, in health plans who, you know, embed our services as components of their plans, what do you, what you seeing across the broader market when it comes to flexibility?

JAMES:

The same thing. They’re definitely making it a lot easier for the teams to work from home. They’re updating their software so that they can do a lot more video management and different types of meetings online. But just like us here at Asure internally a a lot of these groups have just now started to return to work, but they’re also trying to find ways to stabilize that so that the employees can continue to have, you know, maybe a 50 50 balance, because obviously your life has changed now that you’ve, you know, become accustomed to this work-life home balance. So a lot of our groups, a lot of our brokers and clients, you know, they’re, they’re kind of, you know, strategically planning this out so that, you know, their groups are, you know, meeting together and doing team meetings a couple times a week, but then they’re still letting them kind of have that work-life balance at home because, you know, some daycares haven’t really fully returned or aftercares haven’t returned. So we’re definitely still seeing with a lot of our groups that they’re kind of doing some in-office, some out of office a whole lot more than you, than we’re used to seeing.

VANNOY:

Alright. Let, let’s, let’s, I’m gonna take this to our next slide here. So, acknowledging that, you know, the world is changing and in the purpose for giving supplying benefits, whether at employers cost or not, is to attract and retain talent. Given that, let’s, let’s talk through some of the mechanics of how you do that. I think, I think, you know, everybody on the, on the, on the call today understands that’s the shifting world, but what might not be as clear as how the heck do you pull that off? So, so let’s just kinda take some of these bullets down below and, and Heather or Cheryl, I don’t, I don’t care who those first come on, just jump in. Let’s, let’s start with technology and supplies and office furniture. H how should, how should our clients, how should small business owners and entrepreneurs be thinking about supplying this kinda stuff or not supplying it? What kinda policies, procedures should they have around the equipment to do work?

TRBULA:

So, in my opinion, the, the supplying office furniture and, and supplying basically furniture for employees that, that allow them to work ergonomically, I, it’s a no-brainer. You know, many employees will say they have health conditions or things like that. I never say no. I always provide any type of ergonomic item that it is employee request number one for their own wellbeing. It may, may save me on the backend on the health insurance, but number two, just to make that you’re, make sure that you’re covered from a compliance standpoint.

VANNOY:

Yeah, I mean, when you think about, you know, the, the cost for, you know what, I won’t put words in your mouth. Gimme some examples and maybe some accommodations that you, you in request that you’ve for employees.

TRBULA:

Yeah, so standing desk is probably my number one, but, you know, the larger monitors, threat of employee that might not be able to see as well. So larger monitors headsets, keyboards even I have one employee that requested she had carpal tunnel, so she requested that we have software installed where she could just speak her words rather than typing. So yeah, it’s kinda all over the board. But those are some of the main ones that we’ve done.

VANNOY:

Yeah, I mean, you just think about the cost. So as a self, and we would encourage, we, if you hop on our website, you can see where we’ve done webinars in the past, encouraging small businesses to consider being self-insured. It’s not just for big companies anymore. But as a self insurer, I mean, you think about the cost of the, the actual bills associated with somebody leave out on leave to get treated for carpal tunnel, right? Or back problems. It, it’s, it’s just not even close to what some of these things cost us, is it?

TRBULA:

And not only the medical cost, but the loss in productivity. I know we had one of our key employees had to go out for carpal tunnel for a month and a half, and the, the amount of productivity that we lost was, we couldn’t replace her. She was just an employee that had so much knowledge. So the more you can provide these things to kind of, you know, offset and keep those things from happening, it’s, it’s a, it’s a win-win.

VANNOY:

Yeah. And so that’s kind of the backend impact. And then, and the front end, if you supply these things, that can absolutely be a recruiting tool, right? A way to differentiate against your competitors you know, trying to reach that exact same talent pool.

TRBULA:

Agree.

VANNOY:

Heather, Heather talk to us about, so you, you live in the, in the world of, you know, the, the physical wellness benefits in the, in the social wellness as, as they become components of, of bigger healthcare plans. What, what, what, what advice would you give our entrepreneurs and our audience today?

JAMES:

So for the physical and social, what we’ve kind of seen in kind of some of the things that, you know, we’ve advised our clients and groups is we’ve, like I said, we’ve seen such a large workforce that’s been home. And, you know, and it’s a different mindset for these people because they’re used to interacting day to day with people face to face. And, and sometimes that’s a hard transition for people. So we’ve actually been working with a lot of our clients to find really cool ways to have them do interactive, you know, whether it’s happy hours or they’re just doing interactive meetings. You know, we’ve made sure that we’re turning that video camera on and kind of doing the face-to-face because really that social benefit makes a huge difference when, you know, you’re kind of stuck at home and depending on where you live.

 We had actually an example one of our clients, she was like in a little studio apartment, and she was like staring at a white wall all day. So it was just, you know, it kind of broke her down a little bit. So the client had actually sent over like some some artwork and things like that to, to put on her wall and just to kind of brighten up her mood and, and get her, you know, back on track with, you know, just feeling valued with that company since she was kind of stuck at home. So there’s just been a lot of different things. I’ve, we’ve seen a lot more of our clients that are opting to take through our consumer driven health plan product tuition reimbursement and different ways to get people out, you know, doing more physical activities.

They’re rewarding them with gift cards, you know, for tracking, you know, something we do internally here, tracking their steps and doing different things. Not that they can really feel comfortable going to the gym, or they didn’t in the past, but just kind of getting them outside since they’re, you know, they’ve been kind of stuck indoors. So you know, any way that we can do it through our system, you know, we’ve been helping them find different ways that they can provide social and both physical different benefits outside of just the normal realm of things that are usually offered.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Cheryl, can you comment that the, the two buckets I think I’m interested in where, where we see the trends kind of moving is the financial wellness and then all the psychological we wellness, right? I think you know, pretty, pretty, pretty well known the psychological impact of the pandemic, right? People with isolation and lack of contact and, and, and limited collaboration. You know the, the, the pent up demand for the, for the physical healthcare site may maybe speak first to what you see trending in the market for not just the need. I think that’s obvious, but what are employers doing? What can employers do to, to meet this need as a component of a benefit plan?

TRBULA:

Yeah, so I mean, just you hit it right on the head. So coming out of, of Covid, we’ve seen lots of psychological benefits being utilized and needed. And so a lot of insurance companies are offering, you know, free televisits for mental health counseling. I’ve even seen where employers are kind of treating out of network behavioral health services as in network to, you know, encourage employees to go and get that treatment. They’re also setting like a lower cost co-insurance for mental health. So really they’re just trying to get creative on, you know, how they can provide that benefit to employees to where it’s not gonna cost them too much and it’s, you know, it’s gonna give them the services that they need. And then the financial wellness benefits, you know that goes back to, you know, employers that are providing, you know reimbursement for tuition and maybe even 401K match. And another thing that we do here at Asure that’s not only financial wellness for the employees, but also benefits the company, is that we are, we help to fund their HSA plan. So typically, high deductible plans run much better than PPO plans. So by us, you know, funding an HSA plan for our employees, it’s benefiting them, but it’s also benefiting the company on the backend.

VANNOY:

What do add one more thing, I know this could, this is can be a little bit of a bit of a political lightning rod, but around not just tuition reimbursement. There’s been programs around forever, but student loan repayment. What, what do you, what do you see trends going on there?

TRBULA:

Yes. So this has actually been a pretty hot topic for the past two to three years when I’ve gone out to shrm. But many companies are offering kind of like an either or, would you like a 401K match or would you like for us to pay back your student loans? A lot of that, the younger workers that are coming into the workforce, you know, they’re getting ready to start families. They wanna get those student loans paid off, so may want that student loan repayment more than they would want the 401k plan. So a lot of companies are, you know, offering both and letting the employee choose, which would benefit them more. And then also with that too, they’re also contributing to to college plans for their children and grandchildren as well. And that’s one of the other benefits. It’s really been a hot topic the past three to four years.

VANNOY:

Yeah. You know what, I, I, I, that’s really, I’m glad you said it in that way because I, I think the way I would encourage entrepreneurs to think about this, so, you know, as you know, growing up in an entrepreneurial home and owning business to myself, and it, so much of the time you just feel so overwhelmed by all these things and you think it’s an and and, and, and you’re like, well, I I just can’t afford all this. How, how the heck am I gonna provide good health, vision, dental, and do mental wellness and do financial wellness and do this? But a lot of these things, it kind of ties back to the previous topic of flexibility, doesn’t it? It’s like, you know what, what, what all of us have assumed as, you know, the financial being a 401k, you know, maybe new entrant to the workforce would much rather have their student loans reduced in. You can still incorporate vesting in a long-term commitments as, as part of that process in the people at the end, at end, end of their time who have a, a, a funded retirement. It could be, you know student loans or, or tuition for children, grandchildren, right? So, so I, I think the key word when it comes to, to all these options is flexibility. Right? Anything else you guys wanna talk about before talking? Some of the trends we’re seeing costs and contribution?

TRBULA:

Nope, I don’t think so.

JAMES:

Nope. I’m

VANNOY:

Rubber meets the road. What, what are we seeing? So we know that because you know, not by choice, everyone, you know, millions of people, tens of millions of workers had to delay healthcare services that weren’t critical, right? During, during the pandemic. And so as a result, you know, you, you didn’t get your, your heart checked when you should, maybe you’re in much worse shape now. Maybe you didn’t, maybe that cancer didn’t get detected then it, it, and, and now it’s more advanced. And so the, because of people consuming these services and because of the, you know, the bad thing that happens when you don’t stay on top of your health you know, costs are skyrocketing. So, so what are you guys seeing from carriers when it comes to cost? But then also what kind of the changes are employers making in response to this? Cause you know, it can’t all fall to employers. It can’t all fall to the employees. So, you know, talk us through that.

TRBULA:

Yeah, I mean, healthcare costs are trending up, just like you said during covid. Folks weren’t able to get out and get to those, to the doctors and do those surgeries and other things that weren’t necessarily needed to happen right then and there. So costs are going up. I think that, I know we internally, we all, every year we look at our benefit plans and we get creative on, you know, how can we keep our plan rich without the cost going up too, too much for the employees and too much for the employer. One thing that I’m considering for this year is, you know, if we have a PPO plan that might have a little bit higher of a deductible, there’s such a small percentage of the population that actually have to use their deductible. So maybe we will have a plan with a higher deductible, but then offer an h r A for the employees that may need it. So we’re gonna have a $4,000 deductible, but if you need to use that, we’re gonna fund it a $3,000 hra. You really have to balance the savings you’ll get from having a lower cost premium for that plan, but then funding the HRA for the employees that may need it.

VANNOY:

So, so that’s a good transition to you, Heather, cause this is, this is the world you live in, you know, fsa, hsa, et cetera. You know, what, what kinda inquiries and requests are you seeing from the, the insurance and the broker community?

JAMES:

Yeah, no, that’s a, that, that’s a great topic cuz it, it’s kind of been a whirlwind this year. A lot of employers have gotten very creative really for one, just to make sure that that benefit’s available. But two, to make sure that people are able to use the funds. So whether it’s, you know, their HSA or their F S A, they wanted to make sure that because they were limited on, you know, going to appointments and being able to spend those funds a lot of our employers extended their grace periods and their run outs from 2020 into 2021. So, you know, where you would normally see a rollover in place of $500 that got up to five 50. The i r s actually allowed employers to do a full rollover. So if you still had like a thousand dollars left in your F S A that you weren’t able to use, you were actually able to incorporate that into your new plan year for 2021 so that you would not lose those funds, you contributed.

 So in addition to the rollover grace periods were extended so they could still use 2020 monies and they could incur new dates of expenses into 2021. We saw a lot of deferring of dependent care commuter a lot of people stopped contributing so that way they didn’t have this large amount of funds that they weren’t gonna be able to spend. The IRS also made some some changes to the parking and the transit commuter benefits where, you know, maybe you weren’t traveling so much from a transit perspective, but you were still utilizing maybe a parking you know, because you weren’t going into the office, but maybe you were, you know, staying home and, and there was parking opportunities. So they were actually allowing people to move funds from their transit into parking or vice versa to support you know, the upcoming trends as far as how they were working and so that they would not lose those funds.

 So, and then of course, with the dependent care, a lot of people were stopping that because daycares were closed. So employers were opting that into their plan documents so that people weren’t incurring all these expenses that they couldn’t use. So we’ve just seen so many trends. A lot of employers have just been doing whatever they can to support the employees to make sure that they’re able to use their money to make sure they can go to the doctors and not lose out. So anything that they can do, they, we’ve seen them updating all of their summary plan descriptions to incorporate these changes that the I r s have allowed. We’ve even seen employers get creative with building out you know, hybrid H r A plans, you know, to support, you know, different medical plans even to support their employees that are not even participating in their actual benefit plans too. So it’s it’s been really crazy in this world for the last about year and a half, you know, because of the pandemic. But I also think it’s setting a new trend of, of how employers are gonna work with these benefits in the future too.

VANNOY:

You know what, say, I think one of the things that has always kinda held, you know, HSAs, FSAs kinda held these things back from adoption is complexity, right? And, and just, I, I think complexity from an employer standpoint, cause you wanna be able to offer you, you want, you want fewer things to administer, right? So you want a sim as simple business model as you can. And if you’re an employee you wanna consume things as simply as possible and you don’t wanna have to have, you know, you know, different accounts to manage and understanding how it works. It seems to me that for employers to be successful with some of these new trends, and I, I can’t even say they’re new, right? I think, I think the pandemic has accel in the, in the rising healthcare costs are accelerating some of these not so new capabilities around hsa, hra, fsa but it seems to me that education is a huge component to drive adoption. And without adoption, you’re not bending the cost curve as an employer. Can either one of you guys kinda comment on, you know, what, how would, how would you guide entrepreneurs business owners to be thinking about not just participating, which they, we, we think they should, but how to make it successful? How to, how to, how to make it work in, and what role education plays in that?

TRBULA:

So I can touch on that, Mike, quickly. So education is the number one factor that drives your employees to which plan they’re gonna be in. And I can tell you the high deductible plan always runs better in terms of cost for the employer. And the more you can educate on the high deductible plan and how it works and the benefits the employee will see from that, the more they’ll enroll. I know one of the things that we did, and it, we went from having 5% of our population enrolled in the high deductible plan to over 50% in one year. We invested in a tool called Jelly Vision, and basically it’s a benefits counselor where the employee goes in and they go through scenarios, okay, how many do you have a husband? How many kids do you have? How many times do you go to the doctor?

Do you take prescriptions? They go through the entire thing and at the end it shows them, okay, if you’re in the high deductible plan, this is how much savings you have. Or if you’re in the P P O plan, this is what you’re gonna spend. So just by investing in that one tool, it drove an additional 45% of our employees to that high deductible plan. So education is everything. We also do, when it’s time for open enrollment, even before our open enrollment call, we always have just an educational webinar about the high deductible plan and why it’s beneficial for employees. So the more you can educate you just cannot do it enough. More, more, more.

JAMES:

Yeah, and I, and I would agree with Cheryl, even from, from the third party angle as an administrator too, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s the webinars. It’s providing the, you know, the software so that they can read up and get advice. Cuz sometimes the employees don’t know what questions to ask. So, you know, like Cheryl was saying with that Jelly Vision, I mean, it, it really forces you to answer the questions that you wouldn’t even think that you were going to ask. So we’ve seen a lot of our employers and brokers taking on different approaches throughout the year and planning on doing that in the future too, to incorporate that, that need for people to get involved and to participate and to benefit them and their families. But the education is huge. So sometimes it’s the live webinars, sometimes it’s just the surveys and, and the educational materials pointing them into an easy way to access that data without having to overread so much. Because that’s, I think, a lot of times where people miss out is because they’re like, oh, I don’t have time to read that, or I don’t have time to look into that. I, I just need something easy and spell it out for me. Like, what am I missing here if I don’t take this?

VANNOY:

Yeah. You know, I I think one of the missed opportunities here you know, if, if you’re, if you’re an owner of a small firm and you’re working directly with a broker or you’re an office manager of a mid-sized company working with your carriers and your broker, or you’re a VP of HR for a large organization like Cheryl, you know, you’re, you’re likely pretty well informed on, on these options and the drivers. And it’s so easy to forget that you know, your frontline employees, they don’t live this every day. And so this is scary and intimidating, right? And so without good information, they’re gonna err in the side of, I’m not gonna mess with my family’s health and I’m gonna do it in a way that costs me the least amount per paycheck. Right? And that may in fact not be the, the best for them. So I, I think you just cannot over invest in, in, in training, in communication and education. And I’m making this number up, so don’t hold me to it, but I, I, my my guess is every dollar you spend on education, training and awareness as you roll out these options probably returns five, maybe $10 back. You think I’m overstating that, Cheryl?

TRBULA:

Not at all. I mean, not at all. Just for example, the Jelly Vision, we spent under $20,000 and we had hundreds of thousand dollars in savings because of that tool. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s

VANNOY:

Worth it. Yeah. Yeah. And this wasn’t meant to be a plug for jellyfish, but go jellyfish.

You know what, I didn’t even know I was the consumer of the tool and then didn’t know what it was. So that’s it’s, it’s all good. Alright, let’s, let’s move on to our next topic. It, so this one is interesting for me cause sometimes I fear, like, we talk so much about flexibility and working from not working in the office, but, you know, being able to work from home and clearly the data says that you know, employees are more engaged when they can work, you know, in both places. But then we’re just immediately chewing out, you know, all of the hair salons in restaurants, in construction companies, in manufacturers that that are, that think it’s laughable when we, when companies like us talk about, you know, virtual work. Cuz it simply isn’t an option for them, right? So, so there is still the reality, however, that their workforce has a taste for it, right?

And so maybe their employees, some of these employees, they’ve chosen careers they know darn well requires face-to-face work. But, but many, you know, they, they have friends and family who work virtual and they, they, you know, they’d like, they’d like to get some of that <laugh>. So what, what are some of the things that we could guide our clients in, in, in small businesses when it comes to satisfying this, this need, this desire for employees to work from home when it’s not possible that, that might sound ironic, but I think there are things that we can do

TRBULA:

Well, like you said, I mean, I think places like restaurants, grocery stores, things like that, it’s, it’s just not realistic. Those folks are not gonna be able to work from home. And I think that’s where offering kind of that very diverse benefit package for, you know, our multi-generational workforce for, for, for folks of all ages, something that’s gonna appeal to everyone. I, I think that’s where that piece becomes more important because everyone’s not gonna be able to work remote. I do think being flexible with, you know, as much as you can with people’s schedules and things like that, that could help with some of this. But yeah, I just think that wide variety of benefit package that’s gonna appeal to everyone is, is the way to go.

VANNOY:

Yeah. In my brain, I kinda put these in a few different buckets. We, we, we, I’ll, I’ll quickly call the six that we talk about in the ebook. It’s compressed work, weeks off peak start times, cross training, job sharing stipends for community, you know, commuting and extra, extra paid time off. I, I, I think about, I kind of chunk those into two buckets. One is, even though it’s face-to-face work, you know, are there options beyond the traditional nine, nine to five, just because you’ve done it nine to five for the last 40 years, does that mean you can’t, you know, do four 10 hour days, right? Four 10 hour, 10 hour days? Could you stagger start stops? You know, so there’s the flexibility, but then there’s also this kinda cross-training job sharing knowledge expansion bucket, Heather washer. What, how, how would you, how would you advise small businesses to be thinking about this?

TRBULA:

I mean, knowledge sharing and cross training. So that’s a, I mean, that can be seen as a benefit by the employee, you know, I mean, I know working at ashore because we, we kind of work as a startup. We’re a smaller company. We’ve grown over the, over the years. I know our employees have the, the ability to, you know, learn jobs that they may not have even had the opportunity at a larger company. So I think being able to provide that cross-training and the ability to learn larger parts of the organization that you’re not necessarily a part of your job description, I think that can be seen as a benefit by employees.

VANNOY:

Yeah. You know what, I I, I wouldn’t say in the last five years we’ve probably have published 20 articles on our blog around you know, what is it that millennials and, and, and, and, and Gen z what, what, what do they, what do they want when they come into the workforce? And as much as anything they want education, they wanna be, they wanna be part of a mission clearly, and there’s a bunch of other stuff, but one of the things they want is to acquire skills and be trained in, in, in, and stay up and current. They don’t wanna learn their role in the assembly line, right? They wanna learn the end-to-end process so that they can grow and develop in their, in their career. So I, I think that’s a strong component. Heather, there anything you’d wanna add here?

JAMES:

No, and I would actually agree with that too. Most recently we, we’ve actually had some clients that are, you know, diving more into the reimbursement, you know, for you know, for schooling. But they’re even going so far to cover certifications, trade schools, you know, it’s beyond just the normal, you know, business degree and things like that. They’re, they’re supporting, you know, any, any millennial or younger or even older employee that is just wanting to continue on with their education and you know, do different things like that. So, and I know we’ve, even internally here, it’s been offered to employees here for, you know, HR certifications, payroll certifications. So I think any opportunity to, you know, expand that knowledge and encompass the ability to, you know, provide that to your employees is great.

VANNOY:

Yeah. All right. Let’s let, I wanna get real tactical. We just got a couple topics left here and, and we’ll wrap, but let, let’s just, just, let’s go through the, the seven tips that we’re providing for redesigning benefit plans. Cheryl or, or Heather, you guys just hop in. Let’s take the first one. Learn what your employees need. I mean, this is a novel concept, right? Let’s a ask your employees what, what, what they want and what they need and respond to that versus just doing what, you know, the executive team thinks that we should do. So what, what’s your guidance here?

TRBULA:

A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, and surveying your employees to find out, hey, are the benefits we’re providing, are they working for you? Are they giving you what you need? We may be providing a benefit that we’re spending a ton of money on that the employees see no value in. So surveying your employees and letting them tell you what they want and what they expect it, it’s, it’s a must. You, you have to do that. You can’t just look at it from an executive perspective because, you know, we have all levels of, of employees who are gonna consider benefits you know, in different ways.

VANNOY:

And, and I think, I mean, I, I, I, I feel like I, as I, I see this as both executive and consumer. I think sometimes, you know, entrepreneurs, business owners, execs who are, we’re afraid to ask the question because we don’t wanna, we’re we’re afraid of an answer that we can’t deliver on, right? And so if, if we ask, Hey, what do you want? And then they tell us, and we’re like, well, we can’t do that. That’s gonna break the bank, then you’ll, you have to run the risk of disappointing them, right? So but all you’re really doing is pushing the issue underground. But what would you tell, what would you tell employers about, so you just told ’em they should ask their employees, but what if they, what if the employees tell ’em that they want things that, you know, just aren’t realistic and can’t be done?

TRBULA:

So I can tell you, most employees will have higher expectations just because they don’t truly understand. I know here, a lot of times our employees don’t truly understand the value of the benefits that we’re providing. So the more that you can educate and set expectations on what they’re actually getting, like, you know, total compensation statements, you know, this is what we’re paying you and your salary, but this is what we’re spending on your medical benefits. The more you can educate, I think is it you can level set what employees expect.

VANNOY:

Yeah. And I mean, I can say as an entrepreneur, you know, your, your your, your employees can take a lot more than you think they can take two. And when you’re just honest with them and, and, and don’t say, Hey, we can’t afford that, but explain why you can’t afford that, or, Hey, we could afford that, but that’s gonna mean we a a trade off somewhere else. Where would you like that trade off? And when, when they, when you pull them into that conversation you know, give people more credit than, than you might think that, you know, they’re, they’ll, they’re smart, they’ll understand. Heather, anything from the broker in the plan side.

JAMES:

Just like Cheryl said, it’s really just the education. We’ve seen a lot of our employers and brokers do surveys throughout the year. Some will kind of leave it open and just kind of get the feedback from the employees, but we’ve also seen them indicate like, here are some of the things that we’re looking to possibly you know, offer in the upcoming plan year. And then, you know, provide some education, maybe do a webinar on what these things are. And then they kind of followed up with a survey just to kind of see what interest level they’re gonna have. So especially for smaller employers, you know, where they don’t wanna overly put too much out there if they don’t have a, a large workspace, but they, you know, wanna also make sure that they’re, you know, providing a rich benefit to the employees too.

VANNOY:

Okay. So we’ve, we’ve, we’ve listened to our employees and their, their needs and wants. Let’s bucket the next two together. Study ways to incorporate more flexibility and know your budget. Cause those two, two go hand in hand. What, what, what’s our, what’s our tactical guidance for if you’re, you’re, we, we want people to leave this call, how specifically should they go study for different ways? What, what would be your best advice?

TRBULA:

So I think in terms of, you know, incorporating flexibility, knowing your budget, I think there’s another important factor there. And that’s knowing your environment. So, you know, if you’re this large company like Google, where you have all of these amazing perks and there’s lots of work life balance, and there’s all these things you may not need as rich of a benefit plan, where if you’re a growth company where you know, your employees are gonna have to maybe work 50 hours or 60 hours a week, you really need to consider the benefit package that you’re offering because, you know, some places are harder environments than others. And if you know that you’re at a company where you have a a typical environment, you’re gonna wanna offer a richer benefit plan.

VANNOY:

Yeah, that’s, that’s really smart. Heather, any anything else from your perspective?

JAMES:

Nope, I would agree a hundred percent. But you know, the big thing is, is just the, the time off. You know, when you are in, you know, like Cheryl said, a different type of environment where, you know, you are working more hours, extra time, the job’s a little bit more stressful. I think having, you know, that work-life balance, maybe offering more time off. And then also the big thing too that we hear from a lot of clients and, and some of their employees is just making sure that there’s coverage when they do have time off. A lot of times employees don’t tend to take time off because they’re afraid that, oh, I might get behind, or, you know, do I have a backup that’s gonna cover me? And things like that. So it’s really giving the employees that, you know, that satisfaction to know that, okay, I can comfortably a day off and, and I know that, you know, I’m not gonna come into anything crazy the next day too. So, you know, I think reminding employees of that too and making sure they have a backup and, and, you know, the work’s gonna get done when, you know, they can freely take a day off and, and just enjoy their day.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Very good. All right, so th this next one, I wanna make sure this is, people understand this, this is not a plug. So when we say work with a benefits broker, this isn’t you know, we’re not given a name. Certainly we’ll work with a lot of brokers and, and we have, you know, people, if you, if you want, you know, give, give us a range hop online submit a contact request and, and we’ll connect you with someone. But you know, this is genuine guidance. We think people should work with brokers. Cheryl and, and, and Heather, you guys work with brokers in very different ways, Heather you know let’s, let’s start from your end. What, you know, what is the value that you see brokers providing all of your clients? Cause you work with lots of them.

JAMES:

Yeah, the brokers provide a huge, huge value. I can’t think of one group that we work with, one client that doesn’t have a broker somewhere in the mix, whether they’re kind of on the frontline doing the day-to-day, you know, they’re kind of point of contact or even really just from behind the scenes. But it, you know, the importance that they provide from shopping for benefits, providing that education that Cheryl was talking about helping them, you know, work the employer groups with their employees and, and getting that involvement into those, to those benefit plans. But, you know, on, on my side, you know, kind of as a third party most of the time the, the brokers are our point of contact. You know, they’re sometimes even in, in some way, shape or form is, is operating more of for like an HR standpoint too.

Like, they’re going out and shopping and getting that advice for them, helping them through, you know, getting them, you know, these third party relationships to kind of drag all their stuff in together just to make sure that cuz you know, some of your small groups, you know, their, their HR person is also their receptionist and executive assistant and you know, the finance person. So, you know, the broker provides a huge value you know, as just a day-to-day contact as just a, a confidant to bounce things off of. But I mean, the benefit piece is huge in, in helping that employer keep those benefit plans rich and getting the right offerings to the different size employer groups.

VANNOY:

Yeah, you know, Cheryl and then working directly with broker you know, even even though we’re self-insured, you’re still working with a broker, right? So I think on, on, you know, if I go back, you know, 20, 30 years, you probably saw the broker as the person who beat up the carriers for you to get you the best price on health, dental, vision. But now they really are a confident confidant and a consultant because this is damned complex. Right? In, in, in thinking about the broader term of, of what makes up a good benefits package, what value do you see in working with a broker?

TRBULA:

My broker is my, everything <laugh>. They, I, I don’t know what I would do without a broker. It’s not just a benefit piece, it’s the compliance piece. You know, being a small company and having a very, having a very lean team, it is, IM, it would be impossible for me to keep up with all of the ever-changing laws and the compliance piece of that. And that is probably the biggest benefit that I see from my broker is knowing that they have my back there, they’ve got a much larger organization and they’re able to push those items to me rather than me kind of stumbling across them months after they’ve been implemented. So I couldn’t imagine, yeah, my brokers my world, I couldn’t imagine not having them. Yeah.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Alright, so last bucket, these last three in one topic, cause I know I’m running long in time. Focus big thing things first as budget allows, checkoff priorities include the benefits that address all five aspects of employee wellbeing. Just maybe give a final word of, of guidance for for the small business owner as, as their, you know, right now pre open enrollment season putting together their plans, what final guidance would you give Cheryl?

TRBULA:

You know, I would say it goes back to point number one, find out what your employees want the most. And then once you understand your employee demographic and what your employees need, then you’ve gotta look at it from a budget standpoint and kind of determine, okay, what can we do and what can’t we do? I think the biggest piece is, you know, communicating and maybe even looking years ahead. You know, we’re not gonna be able to do the fitness reimbursement this year, but we’re gonna try to implement it for next year. Just recognizing that you’re hearing what the employees are saying and, you know, doing the best that you can with what, with the funds that you have available to.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Alright. I’m sorry Heather, I’m gonna, for time’s sake, I’m gonna jump to our next one. You know, we are smack dab, I’d say in the middle of the planning season, right? So if I think summer, June, July, August, you know, we’re, we’re develop companies are developing plans and strategies for the benefit plans you know, in the fall, September, October-ish, you know, it’s, it’s the enrollment packets in setting up the online portals and, and all the election options. And then, you know, October, November, December, it’s the actual open enrollment season for, for employees. Knowing that this trend is going more and more virtual, you know, give some advice to small business owners. You know, what, what top couple recommendations might you make for this open enrollment season that’s, that’s just a couple months away?

JAMES:

I, I would say from a third party angle in managing clients we have had a lot of virtual requests, a lot of virtual open meetings being that live person that the employees can ask questions to because they can do it anywhere, whether they’re in the office, whether they’re the group of employees that are at home it’s so much more impactful than just handing them a booklet of stuff to read. So most of our clients, what we’ve recommended to our, our clients is, is we’re just offering our time to be available to, to do the virtual webinars.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Cheryl, what, what, what, what guidance would you give our clients and small business owners as they enter this open, open season?

TRBULA:

Not only the virtual webinars, but having the ability for their employees to be able to do their enrollment online is another big piece of that. You know, with, with data privacy and things like that, you know, giving the employees the ability to just be able to do it online and submit it and not necessarily, you know, scan forms or social security numbers. And that’s actually another piece that brokers can help with. Most brokers will have a platform that they can provide to their clients at no charge. So that’s just the other piece of the virtual part of it.

VANNOY:

Yeah, I, I think my advice would be you know, think wearing my, wearing my product hat for a second is you know, not just the education, but the process of the enrollment itself. You know, i I I feel like this whole insurance world has been a real laggard technologically in the marketplace, right? So our employees are, are all trained to, to just pick up their phone and, and, and just do stuff. They, they’re, they’re, they’ve been trained to become impatient. They have been trained to hate paper and filling out forms, and it feels counterintuitive to, to be handed a paper packet that you have to fill something out and, and hand in when you know darn well the person who gave you that packet already knows your name, address and social security number. So why the heck do you have to fill out again, right?

So I couldn’t emphasize strongly enough that it’s going. Digital is not just a savings of labor and a savings of costs and, and accuracy. You’re creating a brand impression with your employees and employees do not wanna work for someone that makes them do old out of touch stuff because it makes you look old and out of touch, right? So, to, to me, this, this really goes back to employee engagement and really creating a brand that helps you attract and retain talent because the best talent has choices where they work and, and, and they don’t want to fill out paper forms. That might sound trite, but it certainly is a, a component in and how they see you as an employer. So, with that, boy, this is a ton of information. I would highly encourage everybody to hop out on our, our website, download the ebook and read all the detail, all the guidance.

 But Cheryl and Heather, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. As always, really enjoy your insight and I’m sure our listeners do too. So thank you, thank you. And to everyone else thank you for joining today. This is what we do. So we help small businesses grow their business, de-risk their business, de demystify the complexity of human resources in payroll, whether that’s tax, HR benefit plans, and then help remove cost by streamlining processes such as open enrollment. So with that, wish everybody a happy, open enrollment season planning in the open enrollment season. Look forward to helping you if there’s any way we can in this area. And until next week on our next topic, thanks.