Episode 10 – HR and Benefits Guest Speakers Carol Harnett, Pam Little and Bernie Knobbe

Marcas Miles (0:09)

Hello, and welcome to the Employer’s Health HR Benecast, your source for clarity on health benefits, strategies, and trends. I’m your host, Marcas Miles. In this month’s episode, we will cover a number of topics, including a look at the agenda for our upcoming annual Innovations in Benefits Conference, along with a couple of interviews with some speakers that I recently had the opportunity to run into.

I’ll talk to you about Mental Health Awareness Month, which is the month of May, and then finally a lineup of other opportunities to learn and connect with your peers.

To start this month’s podcast, I’d like to remind you to listen for the keyword in each episode. Each month, a lucky listener will be eligible to win a $50 Visa gift card simply by submitting the keyword from the podcast.

So, I’ll give you a code word for this month’s drawing at some point during the episode, so be sure to listen closely to that. The word from last month was Awareness, and the winner was Kim Stephens. Kim is the HR Coordinator from Employers Health member, Hanover County in Virginia, so congrats to you, Kim.

Many from the Employers Health team, along with some of our members, recently attended the Health Benefits and Leadership Conference, which is hosted in Las Vegas. The conference, which is produced by the Human Resource Executive Magazine, provided an immense amount of knowledge, the opportunity to network with peers, and we also exhibited there with a joint booth promoting Employers Health, membership in Employers Health, and the Right Direction Initiative. We were able to engage with so many great employers from across the country, other vendors, learn and hear from experts in the employee benefits space, and really just have an all-around productive time while we were there.

Additionally, a few of the speakers that you will hear at our annual Innovations and Benefits Conference on May 16th also presented sessions at the conference. I took the opportunity to be able to catch up with a couple of them and have them just provide some insight into what they plan to present, as well as ask some other questions relative to the delivery of employee benefits. First, I caught up with Carol Harnett.

In addition to being president for the Council of Disability Management, she’s a speaker, writer, trend spotter, and employee benefits communicator, writing a regular column for Human Resource Executive Magazine. I’m here at the Human Resource Executive Magazine, Benefits and Leadership Conference, I guess it is called as the formal name, and speaking with Carol Harnett, who is going to be one of the speakers, actually our opening keynote, at our May 16th conference. I just wanted to catch up with Carol and talk to her about what she’s planning to speak about, and also a couple other questions.

Thanks for taking a few minutes with me.

Carol Harnett (3:02)

Oh, I’m happy to do it, Marcus. We were reminiscing about when Marcus and I met four years ago.

He’s come a long way, people, just so you know.

Marcas Miles (03:09)

At this conference, yeah. She met me when I was exhibiting Right Direction, which most of our listeners do know about.

We have an exhibit space here again and actually engaging lots of employers. Just to jump right into it, I know that when we reached out to you to speak, we had talked about you do a lot in the way of financial well-being and incorporating that into an overall wellness plan. I know you’re planning to talk about that, but what else can the attendees expect to hear from you?

Carol Harnett (3:37)

That’s a great question.

I am really thinking, well, not even thinking. I know I’m going to do a bigger and broader approach, because first of all, I believe it’s important to look at the issue globally. At this stage in the game, I believe that’s what’s missing in employee benefits.

I’m going to start with the classic stuff. Even though I know a lot of your members, or a good proportion of your members, still have pensions or are involved in unions. Just do a little bit of a headline on what we’re seeing with pension defaults and some of the things we’re seeing around that, just to at least address that, since it’s important to the members.

Then talk about what is it that’s important to employees from not only a financial well-being perspective, but the workplace itself. Interestingly enough, overlap, particularly when you see that the number two thing employees want, and pretty much actually only one percentage point lower than workplace flexibility, which is number one, the number two thing they want is paid leave. They want paid leave certainly for themselves, but they also want it for the care of a loved one and for the care of a child.

Then number four is of the other parents’ leave.

Marcas Miles (4:46)

Yeah, we’re hearing that a lot.

Carol Harnett (4:48)

So that’s important to include.

Also want to talk about caregiving, because caregiving has a huge financial impact on employers. I believe we’re missing how large a trend this is at this point. AARP is here, and they’ve just done a nice presentation on their data around the impact of caregiving.

They’ve minimized the financial impact, though, it has on employees and particularly on their earning, and it’s no longer classically just boomers. Actually, 50% of people giving care are under the age of 50, and millennials are almost 25% of the people who are giving care, 24%. So we want to talk about that.

I also want to talk about something I just wrote about in my column yesterday, which is genetic testing, which is at first going to seem like, why in the world is she talking about genetic testing? But we’re seeing a move from the direct consumer genetic testing companies, a couple of companies like Color Genomics, who are now going to employers and asking and recommending to them that they provide genetic testing to their employees. My fear, I usually don’t like the question, what keeps you up at night? What keeps me up at night is when we think about Geno, the Genetic Information Protection Act, basically, specifically in the act, it was omitted life insurance, disability insurance, and long-term care insurance. So the life and disability insurers are legally allowed to discriminate against people.

And there’s parts of that that make a lot of sense. You don’t want somebody who’s newly diagnosed with cancer applying for disability insurance, and they have to give it, right? That would be what’s called anti-selection. You sign up for an insurance once you absolutely know you’re going to use it.

But this is a little bit different. And what we’re seeing, what I’m fearful about is if employers aren’t ensuring that their employees have individuals, so purchased on their own, life, disability insurance, and long-term care insurance, and they have a less than positive result from their genetic testing, not only can they be excluded from any future use of life, disability, or long-term care insurance, but their families can as well.

Marcas Miles (6:53)

Really?

Carol Harnett (6:54)

So that’s new, but enormously important for us to talk about.

Marcas Miles (6:57)

Interesting. Okay. Well, I think it’s going to be a great session.

That’s a lot of information to pack into the hour that we’re giving you, but, and Carol is quite engaging with the audience. So I’ll just give you that little bit of information and come prepared with questions that you might have, right.

Carol Harnett (7:10)

On your cell phone.

Marcas Miles (7:12)

That’s right, on your cell phone.

That’s all we’re going to say. Two real other quick questions. One is, if there’s a theme that you’re seeing, a trend for HR and benefits managers, something they should be concerned about, what is that for 2018? Caregiving?

Carol Harnett (7:23)

Right.

Marcas Miles (7:24)

I knew that you’d say that. I figured I was going to say, which of those points you just made is the most one?

Carol Harnett (7:30)

I think caregiving is the one we’re burying our head in the sand with the most. So that’s what worries me quite a bit.

I will now add genetic testing only because of this enormous push that’s happening to the point that College Genomics has partnered with Amazon and people can get a discounted price via Amazon. We’re going to lose all the filters and ways to help people sort through that. So I’m worried about that.

But I also really think the big theme is how do we start integrating this stuff? Instead of, even when you look at employers and how they’re trying to solve for value-based insurance design and healthcare, and we’re doing it in pieces, right? Like, oh, maybe I’ll do a center of excellence, or maybe I’ll do this. And we’re not looking at the whole piece and logical ways to do it. So I think for people like myself and you and others who’ve been around for a while, which is just a way of saying we’re experienced, is that we’re ready for a time when we do the hard work.

We pull all the difficult stuff together. And I think that’s where HR is at this point.

Marcas Miles (8:28)

Nice.

Okay. And just tell our listeners how to engage with you or to find your stuff. Carol’s a writer and she’s very much a thought leader.

And so if you want to kind of locate her and read some of her stuff beforehand, where can they find you?

Carol Harnett (8:41)

Oh, that’s very sweet. They’re certainly on LinkedIn, where everybody in the world is found, I think. But I write the employee benefits column for human resource executive.

They have just redone the website. So they’ve removed the archive, which you can probably get about seven months worth of my columns.

Marcas Miles (8:56)

So just a quick search, Carol Harnett.

Yeah, okay.

Carol Harnett (9:00)

Those will be two ways people can search.

Marcas Miles (9:02)

Okay, good.

Well, we are looking forward to seeing you in Canton in May.

Carol Harnett (9:05)

I’m very excited.

Marcas Miles (9:07)

Good.

Next, I was able to track down Pam Little. She’s practice leader at Blue Communications and Bernie Kenobi, who is vice president of global benefits at AECOM. And this duo will be presenting using social media to achieve 540-degree employee engagement at our upcoming conference.

So I caught up with a couple more speakers that we have on our agenda for the May 16th conference. And here with me just I want to ask them a couple of questions because they’re on our agenda. I have Pam Little with Blue Communications, and Bernie Kenobi with AECOM.

Thanks for just taking a few minutes.

Pam Little (9:45)

Hi, Marcus. Thanks for having us.

Marcas Miles (9:47)

Sure.

Bernie Knobbe (9:48)

Thank you.

Marcas Miles (9:49)

Yeah.

So their topic is around benefit communications, put simply. And I know that I get that question a lot, probably because I’m head of communications for our coalition. So we’re always getting questions about how to better communicate with employees.

And I know, the use of social channels is something you’re going to be talking about. So, Pam, do you have just any kind of quick and dirty insight on how to, if employers really haven’t gone down the path of using social channels, you know, how to how would they get started doing that? What’s your best starting advice?

Pam Little (10:18)

I guess the first thing is to just realize that you do need to go there. That’s where the employees are.

So we want to meet employees where they’re at. Most of them are on social media. What platform they’re on can vary, but it’s either Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.

And then, of course, there are some others. So I would say first, accept that you do need to go there. I think historically, employers have been nervous to go there because of a lack of control.

Marcas Miles (10:42)

Right.

Pam Little (10:43)

There are not filters on social media. And we’ve all seen what can happen on social media when there are no filters in place.

So we today and at your conference, we’ll be talking about some of the filters that you can put in place to make sure that nothing inappropriate gets pushed out to your employee audience.

Marcas Miles (10:59)

And Bernie, you’ve implemented using social media in your efforts. What what are the couple of things that you’ve done? Just maybe just a quick couple of things that you’re going to be talking about in May that is working for you.

Bernie Knobbe (11:11)

OK, great. Thank you for the opportunity. So I think for us, it’s and it was the Sarah Bareilles’ song, but it’s brave.

You know, you need to have that courage to just take the leap and take the time and make the effort because employees, as Pam said, you need to meet them where they are. Otherwise, you won’t get their attention.

Marcas Miles (11:28)

Yeah.

Bernie Knobbe (11:29)

And it’s all about creating awareness. I mean, all large employers are struggling with this. The attention of the employee is being asked from so many viewpoints that people are looking for a way to engage them in a really short period of time.

Marcas Miles (11:41)

Right.

Bernie Knobbe (11:42)

So get them in 10 seconds, key messages, and then send them somewhere else for all the detail if they want it. But most people just want to know, what do I need to do? When do I need to do it by?

Marcas Miles (11:50)

Absolutely.

Bernie Knobbe (11:51)

How can I access this when I need it? 24-7, 365.

Marcas Miles (11:54)

Yeah.

Bernie Knobbe (11:55)

So partnering with Pam at Blue Communications, we’ve been able to do that in many ways that we think are really engaging for employees and multimedia, everything from print to online to high touch, low touch in person, et cetera, because you really do need the combination.

There’s four generations in the workforce.

Marcas Miles (12:10)

Yeah.

Bernie Knobbe (12:11)

And all of them think about communications in a very different way.

Marcas Miles (12:13)

Well, and employers are always saying, I have people in so many locations, and I don’t know how to reach them. Well, they’re missing out if they’re not using social media because it’s so easy, cost-effective, and a way to reach the masses, right?

Pam Little (12:25)

That’s exactly right. No matter where in the world you are, chances are you’ve got a social media platform that you’re utilizing.

Marcas Miles (12:32)

That’s right. And everyone has a smartphone in their pocket from the garbage collectors that work from municipalities to your banking teller. So I think that if you as an employer are not using social media yet, you need to get on that quickly, I think.

Pam Little (12:47)

I was just going to say, a lot of the struggle that employers are having too are around those groups that are the CBAs, the union groups, and how to reach them. Well, they also have smartphones in their pockets, and they have social media access. So that’s one way, I think, too, to reach out to that group, which historically has been a very difficult group to engage.

Marcas Miles (13:08)

Bernie, just for the benefit of our audience, maybe just a quick snippet of what AECOM is, and then because we’re talking about social channels and reaching employees, just tell us about your employee base.

Bernie Knobbe (13:20)

Sure. So AECOM is a large global organization that not everyone knows, but we’re expanding on our opportunities to publicize who we are as an organization.

But from a workforce perspective, which is what you’re asking, we have the broad array of possibilities there. So we’ve got hourly, we have salaried, we have people that are on site at actual construction sites, for example, we have people working in offices. And so some have computer access at work, some do not, and some are in remote locations.

So it’s really a challenge to reach them. We’ve also tried to reach out to spouses and domestic partners, because they’re a big part of the benefits population. So we’ve expanded our employee base and looked at it on another level, which is how do we reach the families and those at home.

So we’re doing both to try to pick up that entire employee base, because our customers are the employees and the dependents.

Marcas Miles (14:13)

Sure.

Bernie Knobbe (14:14)

And I don’t think everyone considers that when they consider their population.

That’s a long answer to it.

Marcas Miles (14:18)

No, I think it was fine. And then I’m just gonna ask another question, and maybe you don’t have an answer to this, but have you, so have either of you done any texting to employees?

And that’s a question I get a lot about texting and best practices, and I don’t really know the good answer to that.

Pam Little (14:35)

So we are doing texting to employees, and that’s another way to get to the non-harmonized group, is what we call them, but your union folks and your CBAs. However, opt-in rates are historically very low, and you’re gonna hear that consistent across the board from pretty much everyone. If you get 30% of your population, you’ve knocked it out of the park.

30% is really quite high. So I think it’s one of those ideas that’s a little bit ahead of its time, where texting isn’t ahead of its time. Of course, that idea has been around forever.

I think this concept of texting employees still needs to pick up steam, and there’s a little bit of concern around privacy issues and texting them on their smartphones, which I don’t necessarily understand, because you’re emailing them on their smartphones anyway, but it still needs to come a little further along before it becomes a really effective tool.

Marcas Miles (15:26)

Okay.

Bernie Knobbe (15:27)

And I smiled when you said, I guess I looked at my smartphone.

I have four text messages from the company in the last six weeks from benefits. So we actually started this process here last year, but I actually did it several years ago at Yahoo as well. So it’s possible, but you need to be smart about it and use it, not sparingly, but when it’s most appropriate.

So either activity-based or a reminder about a deadline, but don’t just reach out to people on an ongoing basis, because they’ll start to lose the paying attention aspect of what you’re really trying to get to.

Marcas Miles (15:54)

Gotcha.

Bernie Knobbe (15:55)

Hope that helps.

Marcas Miles (15:56)

Yep. So I saw something on your agenda or your outline of your presentation about 540-degree engagement. Can you tease that without telling us exactly what it is? Because that’s what you’ll be talking about.

Pam Little (16:06)

So obviously it’s more than full circle engagement.

Marcas Miles (16:08)

Right.

Pam Little (16:09)

And basically, I think this whole discussion is around engagement, which is kind of what Bernie just said.

And it’s basically how you as the employer can reach out to the employees but have them come back to you as well. And how you can continue that conversation back and forth between you as the employer and your employee base.

Marcas Miles (16:27)

Yeah.

And so I guess one last question, and this is for you, Bernie. How has it been received at your company? Are employees really engaging on the social channels? What are you hearing just even from their mouths about it?

Bernie Knobbe (16:39)

Sure. Well, I think for us, we’ve tried to set expectations upfront.

We have metrics and analytics around what we anticipate the employee engagement will be. And fortunately, thanks to Pam and her team, we’ve actually exceeded those on all fronts. So whether it’s what we thought would be the number of people that participated and or those that actually took advantage of what’s available to them, we’re higher in all aspects than what we anticipated.

So I think that does mean there is a demand out there. So we have to provide the supply. And as Pam said, the 540 to us is that you can deliver a message, but you can’t guarantee it’s going to be received unless you do so in a way that employees really feel as if it matters to them.

I used to work in high tech, and we said, get them when they’re in line for that cappuccino or espresso, because then you have 20 seconds. The rest of the day, you don’t. So just figure out a way to get them when they’re available and be open to new ideas.

And I think that’s where Blue Communications has really helped us to go. How about, do we want to try, does this make sense? And in every instance, the answer turned out to be yes. And so I think that’s helped us a lot because it’s very creative, but also realistic.

We know that there’s different populations of employees and we have-

Marcas Miles (17:51)

You spoke to the four generations, so you really have to be thinking a lot more broadly than maybe in the past. So we’re excited to have you. We actually poached you off of this agenda to come to Canton in May.

So I know I’ll be in your session in Canton for sure. Maybe I’ll catch it here, but thanks again for taking a quick minute with us.

Bernie Knobbe (18:07)

Great.

Pam Little (18:08)

Thanks, Marcus. Have a good day.

Marcas Miles (18:11)

It was great to be able to chat with these folks and also to provide a bit of insight into what to expect when attending our event.

Additional speakers and topics for the Innovations in Benefits Conference include Washington DC Outlook on Healthcare, Politics, Process, and Policy. This will be presented by Jim Kline, who many of you know and have likely heard before. He’s president of the American Benefits Council.

So certainly an expert that will be able to be right here in Canton, Ohio and share with us what he’s seeing, hearing, and experiencing firsthand for the future of healthcare. We’ll also have Delta Airlines and hear a best practice for integrating EAP, or Employee Assistance Program, behavioral and clinical programs. We’ll hear from the Director of Health Strategy and Resources at Delta, Vicky Strickland.

We’ll have a presentation about Ashley Furniture and North American Specialty Hospital. It’ll be a case study in international travel for treatment. And we have a couple of great speakers, one from Ashley and one from North American Specialty Hospital presenting that topic.

And then just one other, there are a few others, but one other to mention is the EEOC Wellness Rule, Status and Future. And Karen Adenolfi, who we’ve had at some of our conferences before, is a partner with Retzel and Andress, very credible, and she’ll be presenting that outlook for us. The conference has been approved, I’m happy to say, for six continuing education credits through the Ohio Department of Insurance, as well as six credits through HRCI for human resource professionals.

So we hope that those are a draw for you, and we are happy to be able to provide those as part of the registration.

You can register for that conference. It’s our 19th annual, believe it or not, Innovations and Benefits Conference at employershealthco.com, and simply look for the Programs and Events tab.

I think you can also get there by backslash events, so employershealthco.com/events. Also, one other thing to mention as it relates to an upcoming education opportunity, networking, learning opportunity, is our third annual Health and Wealth Workshop. Now this has become quite popular just in two short years and takes into account a lot of the kind of monotonous things that you’re responsible for related to compliance and such, but it really is done in a really great way.

We have some great experts on the topic that really provides for a day of great learning, insight, and the opportunity for you to ask questions in a very objective setting. So we hope that you’ll put that on the calendar. It will be August 21st and be held once again in Columbus, Ohio.

As always, you can register for any events that we talk about or find out more of what’s on the horizon, what’s coming up at our website, employershealthco.com but also don’t forget to follow us on our social channels, LinkedIn and Twitter. We also have a Facebook page, but we post pretty frequently there, so you’ll be able to find out what’s coming at Employers Health and maybe catch some things that otherwise you might have overlooked.

Another thing I’d like to tell you about is Mental Health Awareness Month, and we are right in the middle of that month or at the beginning of that month, as the month is May.

May is traditionally Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s been observed in the United States since 1949 and reaches millions of people through media, local events, and screening. Through our Right Direction initiative, we’ll be offering a special toolkit to infuse your efforts around depression and mental health or provide you a starting point.

I fully recognize that some of you have been doing some really fantastic things when it comes to mental health and depression specifically, but there are some of you who have been wanting to, have been planning to, and this would be a really great time for you to do something and anchor to this whole month-long opportunity for awareness. We put together a really cool toolkit. It can be found at rightdirectionforme.com/May that has a really neat calendar with 31 tips for 31 days to combat depression at the workplace.

You can share that as a calendar for the month. You can share it daily with tips; weekly however you see fit. We’ve also put out there a ready-to-use article that can be dropped into an e-blast into your newsletter to push out to employees.

You don’t have to do any of the work on that. There’s a quick guide on how to talk to someone that might be struggling with depression and an infographic that can also be posted around the workplace. We also encourage you to have your employees use the poster and different graphics that are there to post on social media using the hashtag #RDBearAware.

Those resources again can be found at rightdirectionforme.com/May. And you also see a variety of social media graphics. So if you’re big into social media, if you use social channels to communicate with your employees, we provided some really good stuff there that you can just use right away.

It’s already there. Not a lot of lift at all. So I hope that you’ll take advantage of that.

If at any time you have questions about Right Direction or even this specific toolkit, certainly reach out to me, Marcus, [email protected] with any questions or just give us a call and track me down and I’ll be happy to help you with that. So as always, I encourage you to submit questions regarding HR, benefits, and even the value of membership in an employer-led coalition that will help direct further future content. You can do so by completing the field on the landing page of the podcast or by clicking the link titled submit your questions here.

Easy as that. Also, if you’d like to be considered for the $50 visa gift card, the code word is May. Very simple.

It is May. Please submit that along with your name and email address using the link on the landing page. So that will conclude this month’s episode.

Thanks again for taking the time to listen, but more importantly, thanks for your continued membership and interest in us here at Employers Health. And don’t forget, submit those questions so that we can answer them in an upcoming edition of this HR Benecast.