Joe Milano, area vice president of Gallagher Benefit Services in Itasca, Ill., spends much of his time creating health management solutions with his clients. As medical care costs continue to climb, many of Milano's clients are looking for ways to better manage their health care plans and encourage a climate of employee engagement.
Creating this type of environment includes many hours of financial modeling, working on plan designs and drawing from analytics, but it goes beyond the technical side.
Effective communication is especially important as a broker when it comes to employee engagement, Milano says. Employees are often hesitant to buy into their employers' benefits strategies, and brokers have to be ready to help those employees better understand their plans in order to find a sustainable solution.
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"There's an inherent distrust in the employee-to-employer relationship," Milano says. "We try to impress upon our clients that if you develop a trust with your employees and share in both the good and bad times, you're going to have a more engaged work force, which will help grow your business."
When creating a communication strategy, Milano includes multiple methods, he says. Email is great for some people, but others may learn better through face-to-face meetings. Learning styles range from individual to individual, and it takes more than one communication strategy to reach an entire employee population.
"You have to attack communication in every way you can," Milano says. "Everyone learns differently and takes in information differently. There's no one way that works for everybody."
To get employees engaged in their own health, Milano finds premium differentials seem to work best for his clients, he says. Rather than continuing to follow poor health habits, premium differentials incentivize good behavior with monetary rewards, which can be especially appealing in today's economy.
"Just changing plan designs doesn't work," Milano says. "It might shift the cost, but it doesn't shift the cost of care because the employees are still getting sick and not taking care of themselves, so we're trying to effect behavior."
When creating plan designs, it is important that brokers help their clients see what the environment could look like in the near future, Milano says. Questions may still loom, but it is the broker's job to help clients determine the best path to sustainability.
"If you don't have a plan in place and make your plan agile enough that you can move it as things change in your business, you're not going to succeed," Milano says. "I try to really paint the picture for what the future could look like for my clients–with and without changes. You have to have the dialogue that looks at the bigger picture several years down the road."
Photo by Colin Lenton
Find out who the other Broker of the Year finalists are as we announce them April 23 – April 27 on BenefitsPro.com.
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