Newsletter Sign-up

Principal
Aon Hewitt, Atlanta

Attraction Without Dissension

Greater flexibility, paid parental leave, adoption reimbursement, domestic-partner benefits.

Such progressive offerings were foreign to the employees at Southern Co. But they were essential additions to the health plan, which the Atlanta-based electricity distributor wanted to have to attract young talent, said Marsha Johnson, the company's retired vice president of human resources. "Our package was good, but it wasn't as attractive as it could be to get new people," Johnson said.

The company turned to Aon Hewitt's Anne Crumlish, who redesigned the package and scaled back benefits packages that were so generous Johnson described them as "unheard of." In their place, the company offered benefits to attract young talent while not causing dissension in its older workforce. "We're moving from an entitlement culture and to a partnership," Johnson said.

While the new program is more effective at luring young talent, it also saved the company $5 million.

With such a steep transformation--there were also changes to retirement programs, service awards, executive benefits and vacation programs--Johnson said she was particularly impressed by Crumlish's ability to be sensitive to the company's cultural history.

Senior Advisor
Arison Insurance Services, Lexington, Ky.

Knowledge is Power

Whether it's medical insurance, dental coverage, healthcare reform or specific issues facing employees, John Davis of Arison Insurance Services seems to have all the answers. At least that's what his clients said.

Linda Faulconer, senior vice president of human resources at Farmers Capital Bank in Frankfort, Ky., said Davis seems to know everything about the field. "He's a very intelligent man," Faulconer said. "He is so on top of what is going on (in the field) presently and on top of what's about to happen."

Just this past year, Davis put that knowledge into action when he moved the bank to a different dental insurance carrier. The move expanded coverage to include dental implants and white cavity fillings.

"They had a more robust lineup of benefits with not one penny more in premiums," Faulconer said. "In hard times to give an increased benefit rather than a reduced benefit is terrific."

Another aspect of his knowledge is healthcare reform. Davis makes sure to explain the details of the law's gradual implementation to his clients, warning those with low participation rates in medical insurance that they could face penalties in the future. He also shows companies options like enhancing medical coverage or dropping it altogether.

Denise Wilson, human resources director at Stoll Keenon Ogden, said that Davis was instrumental in helping the Kentucky law firm change its benefit plan, conducting meetings with employees and answering their questions.

"I've worked with other agents in the past, and generally once the agent sells the product, he gives you someone else to do the customer service," Wilson said. "But I communicate with him once a week."

Category: Private-Sector Healthcare

Setting Things Straight

John Davis can dive into an employer's fully insured plan to deliver tremendous savings per employee. He's also not afraid to pick up the whistle and blow it if he senses something or someone is unethical. Davis reported an individual carrier's recent and extreme rate renewal practices to the U.S. Attorney General.

He also researched new state laws to help his agency stay in compliance in its practice of subsidizing the efficient administration of benefit plans. Davis also led an initiative within Arison that focused on educating his colleagues toward a better awareness of technology regulations.

For one nursing home client that was facing a 60 percent increase on its first renewal, Davis used his insurance expertise to reveal how the carrier had changed its method of calculation. He presented the actual claims paid to another national carrier for a lower rate and was able to negotiate a pharmacy plan that was just 9 percent over the current price. He saved the employer and the employees more than $150 per employee per month.

Davis' involvement with local charitable organizations and educational groups are legion. He is a vestry member and Eucharistic Minister in the Episcopal Church, a four-year member of his town's planning board, a precinct captain, local campaign manager and fund-raiser in local politics, and is a member on the Governor's Task Force on Healthcare Reform. Davis was recently appointed by Gov. Steve Beshear of Kentucky to study retiree health plans for the Kentucky Teachers and Retirement Systems.

Within his agency, he is a training consultant to young associates and freely offers to work on a joint basis with them to provide them with field training.

Senior Vice President, Partner
Lockton Insurance Brokers LLC, La Jolla, Calif.

Making the Complex Make Sense

For a West Coast-based equity firm, delivering health benefits is a constant challenge. As an example, last year this investment organization examined 30 businesses and purchased 12 of them.

The largest acquisition had 500 employees, and the smallest 24, a human resources executive at the equity firm said. Large or small, everybody in each of those companies needed healthcare.

Sallie Giblin not only helped enroll the newly acquired employees into the benefits program but she provided the equity firm with cost breakdowns and alternatives throughout the buying process. Her job is "probably about as complex as you get," the executive said.

At another company, a West Coast-based manufacturer facing rising healthcare costs, Giblin's innovative thinking prevailed. She made sure the company bundled dental and medical benefits, saving 8 percent over the previous year, according to an executive at the company.

This particular manufacturing organization also had some employees with high medical costs, so Giblin structured three separate insured groups--one for workers with low healthcare costs, one for those with high costs and another for executives some with high costs, some with low costs--saving the company more than $500,000 in premiums over the previous year. Then, all employees were aggregated together under the same carrier plan after the health risks of the group improved when some people in the high health cost group retired. The group received no increase at the following renewal.

Senior Vice President
Aon Hewitt, Stamford, Conn.

The Integrator of Health Plans

Getting everyone to play nice is never easy, especially if you're trying to get 15,000 employees from 58 companies integrated into the same health plan.

Dover Corp., the Downers Grove, Ill.-based producer of industrial products and systems, has decentralized companies working autonomously but recently made it mandatory that all their employees join its health plan. The company looked to Paul Harris to make it work.

To get the word out about the plan change, Harris and his team met with representatives from all 58 companies in Chicago, conducted weekly conference calls with a design team and held face-to-face meetings with employees--not to mention fielding 4,000 phone calls from the workers. In the end, the company received 100 percent employee participation in the health plan.

Calling such a move "complex'' is an understatement, especially considering that meetings were being scheduled within 120 days of launching.

"We have 54 different variations on plan design and 74 variations on rate," said Amy Katzoff, benefits manager at Dover.

She said it worked in no small part because Harris is "full of energy" and "incredibly committed" to getting to know his customer. His team "just jumped in and got their hands dirty," she said.

Vice President, Client Executive
HUB International Insurance Services, Denver

Rural Communities Find a Champion

In big cities like New York, Los Angeles or Philadelphia, there are plenty of healthcare carriers for businesses. But in rural Colorado, things are much different. That was especially true in 2010 when several large carriers exited that market. So when Roaring Fork Valley Community Health Plan faced life without Aetna, its provider since 2007, it faced 20 percent to 40 percent increases in rates, according to William Hanisch, executive director of the healthcare provider.

"That would have been devastating to our small employers," Hanisch said.

But HUB's Brad O'Neill had other plans--specifically, teaming with CoAdvantage and its professional employment organization so that Roaring Fork could take advantage of economies of scale and benefit from the negotiating clout traditionally wielded by much larger plans.

In the end O'Neill even got Aetna to continue covering Roaring Fork through a multiple state contract, although the carrier did not choose to re-enter the rural Colorado market. Not only that, he negotiated a discount from Aetna of between 20 percent and 30 percent, Hanisch said.

Another executive that works with O'Neill touts his vast network of industry contacts and his frequent visits with employees to promote wellness.

He "guides us in understanding that healthcare is more than just money out of our pockets," the executive said.

Senior Associate
Mercer, Hartford, Conn.

Good, Old-Fashioned Cost Savings

Bob's Clothing faced a dilemma all too familiar to businesses these days--a steep jump in health benefit costs. With a 30 percent to 40 percent increase seeming imminent, the retailer's healthcare benefit consultant, Mercer's Dawn O'Shaughnessy, sprang into action. She helped the company change to a consumer-directed program instead of a traditional preferred provider organization (PPO), not only saving money by shifting to a deductible system but also introducing healthcare consumerism into the consciousness of the workforce.

Best of all, she contained costs. "There was no increase, the costs stayed flat," said Allison Baldwin, human resources director at Bob's Clothing.

Through O'Shaughnessy's leadership, another client, Bob's Furniture (unrelated to the clothing company), also saw significant savings. The store went from fully insured to self- insured, saving a "double-digit" percentage in the process, said Bob Dawley, the company's human resources director.

O'Shaughnessy also immersed herself in the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in the past year. Armed with that knowledge, she conducted reviews and audits for clients across the country, and helped educate colleagues at Mercer.

Perhaps her most important skill is her ability to act not as a single consultant but as part of a team. That's especially necessary for Bob's Clothing, which retains a small group of executives and relies on good consultants.

Managing Director
Alliant/ClearPoint, Seattle
The Wellness Whiz

The challenges of creating a corporate wellness program are different for every workforce--but when the majority of participants are miners; company leaders have their work cut out for them.

That was certainly the case at Kinross Gold Corp., a 1,700-employee mining company based in Toronto.

Creating a health-and-wellness program certainly meant a shift in company culture, but Kevin Overbey of Alliant / ClearPoint helped Kinross leaders realize that healthier employee lifestyles could combat high healthcare costs.

So Overbey met with employees--sometimes at mining sites--to tout wellness, and in the first year, 2010, 90 percent of the employees signed up.

"He's a walking encyclopedia on how health and wellness plans work," said Caroline Sandel, manager of human resources and benefits at Kinross.

The wellness program already seems to be paying off. Claims of $75,000 or more were reduced year-over-year from 43 to 29 claimants, leading to a $2.8 million cost reduction in just one year.

The program has been such a hit that employees have sometimes felt compelled to write to Sandel to tell her how healthy they've become.

"Somebody on several different medications wrote to me," she said. "They're now working with a (health) counselor and taking no meds."

A human resources director at a Northwest Internet-security company who also works with Overbey on health and wellness, called him a "respected knowledge expert" in the field. In fact, working with Overbey, she said, makes her more educated.

"Whenever I engage with him," said the executive, "he tries to teach me something."

Principal, National Practice Leader, Health Law Consulting Group
Aon Hewitt, Norwalk, Conn.

Making Sense of Health Reform

Whether you're for it or against it, healthcare reform has one uniting factor: its ability to baffle people.

Over the past year, healthcare benefits consultants have often been asked to provide insight on the law, and J.D. Piro came through in fine style.

He criss-crossed the country, speaking to more than 1,000 employers about the 2,700-page law, as well as holding frequent web chats to keep clients updated.

Piro even educated fellow consultants in Aon Hewitt offices around the country.

For clients, he provided specifics about what the legislation specifically meant for their businesses. What are the costs of stopping healthcare coverage compared with continuing to offer it? When did employees need to start covering adult children up to age 26? What will this do to change healthcare costs?

For a technology holding corporation in the Northeast, Piro not only made presentations about healthcare reform to senior leadership, he helped the business craft a five-year guide to incrementally change its design plan. Going forward, the company will only be offering high-deductible health plans through health savings accounts.

"We're going to migrate more and more employees to high-deductible health plans and wean people off PPOs," the company's director of health and wellness said. "We need to do it gradually, without employee revolt."

Vice President, Health and Benefits
Aon Hewitt, Southfield, Mich.

The Rosin Rapport

With bailouts at previously impregnable companies like General Motors, there's no denying that the last few years have been hard on auto workers and retirees.

Enter Kirk Rosin, who serves as the lead healthcare consultant for United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, which provides healthcare to more than 860,000 retirees of GM, Ford and Chrysler and their dependents.

Launched on Jan. 1, 2010, it's the largest private purchaser of healthcare in the United States, and has 15 million prescriptions filled by members in every state, said Fran Parker, executive director of the trust.

Even with stakes that high, Parker called the launch "seamless."

"A 1 percent error rate will kill you. But nobody missed coverage," Parker said. "We knew that at 12:01 a.m. on Jan 1, 2010, that (close to) 900,000 people had the potential to use that card ... In the first five hours of launching, 5,000 prescriptions were filled."

During the process, Rosin made sure to speak to thousands of plan members and he continues to work with carriers to manage plan administration.

Jill Stress, director of compensation and benefits at TriMas Corporation, said Rosin has a rapport with the players in the industry and plenty of knowledge. "He is by far the greatest client advocate I've worked with. He's truthful and honest," Stress said.

"The money we spent on him," Stress said, "we saved tenfold." She said using him in meetings increases her department's credibility.

Senior Account Executive/Partner
Neace Lukens, Louisville, Ky.

A Doctor is Always in the House

The days of driving from work to a doctor's office and languishing in a waiting room before finally seeing a doctor are long gone--at least for employees at Logan Aluminum in Logan County, Ky.

That's because Jon Taylor, the company's health benefits consultant from Neace Lukens, set up an onsite health clinic for Logan's 1,000 employees. Now, those workers can see a physician, nurse practitioner or nurses during their regular work hours, rather than going offsite.

Since implementing the onsite clinic, employee satisfaction is soaring, said Johnny White, director of wellness. "Our employees don't have to be gone for half the day and they get treated in a timely manner," said White.

Another benefit of working with Taylor is his thorough planning and strategizing throughout the year--he holds quarterly, and sometimes monthly, meetings with clients to develop a written timeline outlining the financial, compliance, communication and wellness initiatives.

That's certainly been helpful for Jane Freeman, corporate counsel, human resources, at Whayne Supply Co., a Louisville-based provider of construction equipment.

Taylor and his team "have, basically, a year-long plan of what they are going to do with you," said Freeman, "It helps me because I know what my expectations are."

Although Taylor has just reached his 30th birthday, he's made an impression on his clients that far exceeds his years. "For someone his age," said White, "it blows me away the depth of knowledge he has."

Category: Private-Sector Healthcare

Giving Where it Counts

Jon Taylor is sharp enough to show underwriters where they have erred in their calculations and he is also a very giving professional. Taylor and his team have established a process to hold carriers accountable as healthcare reform unfolds. For a client's recent renewal, it was working with a large national carrier which reports claims on an incurred basis. Taylor pulled claims data which resulted in figures that were 22 percent less than the carrier's incurred claims calculations. Taylor underwrote the case based on the paid claims using the carrier's formula and was able to negotiate no change in rate.

Taylor has served on the advisory councils of the major carriers operating in his region. The experience has allowed him to understand the dynamics and philosophies of the carriers' offerings to clients in regards to benefits administration.

He is generous with sharing account revenues with others who have performed well on his accounts. He also supports nonprofits generously. Nonprofits such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Salvation Army, Goodwill, the American Council for the Blind, the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital have benefitted from his generosity.

In his home base of Louisville, Jon has helped many of his clients prepare and qualify for the "Mayor's Healthy Hometown Movement" which is an awards program that grades organizations on their wellness programs. Five of Jon's clients have received this award. He has also helped clients qualify for and win the Louisville Business First wellness awards. As a young industry leader, he is currently mentoring another young less-experienced colleague, with the goal of making that person a more effective Neace Lukens professional.

Principal
Mercer
New York

Principal
Mercer
Spokane, Wash.

Senior Vice President
Aon Hewitt
Miami