More empathy and grace: A Q&A with Ed Ligonde
Ed Ligonde of Nielsen Benefits Group shares his thoughts on what it takes to successfully drive change in today's benefits space.
Paul Wilson: How did you get your start in the benefits industry?
I started off in an internship program at Northwestern Mutual to be a financial representative. I did pretty well, so I decided to check it out as a full-time gig once I graduated from UCLA. Within the first year, I realized it wasn’t for me. While I did fairly well, I was finding it really hard to ask for referrals; it always felt like I was hounding people.
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I considered medical device sales because I had titanium rods placed into my tibias due to a Vitamin D deficiency. But to get into that field, you needed two years of B2B sales, and my experience was in business-to-consumer. I told a friend I planned to sell payroll for a few years to get the B2B experience, and he said, “Since you already have an insurance license, why don’t you just come over to our firm and do some benefits consulting?”
PW: How has your background so far shaped your mindset and the way you do your job today?
I’ve had a unique experience because I started as a salesperson and then went into account management. Because I started in that hybrid role, I learned the lifecycle of a client and then transitioned into a leadership role. As the years went by, I learned about technology and became more of a solutions leader. I felt like I was touching every single aspect that a client needed from an advisor. In late 2017, I transitioned to my new firm, and our CEO, Craig Nielsen, asked, “What do you want to do?” Because of those different experiences, I realized that I wanted to be a consultant and build a team to help with analysis, with wellness, with technology.
PW: What skills and other factors do you look for when building a team?
You need to figure out where there are gaps in workflow or people who are feeling overwhelmed. When looking for new talent, I don’t want a Band-Aid solution. I want someone who thinks of it as a career and not a job. If we can find people who love what they do that fit well with the business, it’s the perfect marriage.
PW: How are you adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic? How has it affected your business and your life?
We actually had a bit of a dress rehearsal for the pandemic. We were remodeling our office and had sent everyone home to work, so we were used to virtual meetings. When the pandemic happened, we just kept doing what we were doing. We have a client success manager who was able to help research different virtual technology platforms and put together a recommendation sheet for clients. How can we still deliver all these things virtually so employers can find ways to engage their employees?
In the beginning, I was thinking, “This is great! I’ll be able to meet with way more clients virtually.” But after a while, I became exhausted. If I’m feeling that way, I imagine my team and clients are, too.
We’ve challenged ourselves to try to analyze how our clients are feeling and then research ways to find unique solutions, bits and pieces that might be missed by others to show empathy and connect with our clients in a different way.
PW: How will it change the way you plan and communicate with clients?
This pandemic has forced people to embrace a couple of things: remote work and technology. We’ve been forced to connect in a different way.
Many parents now have to teach their kids and juggle responsibilities. I believe employers are going to have to make sure their policies reflect that. People will need more empathy and grace. We’ve already had a couple of clients transitioning to a 100% remote environment and cancel their leases. I think we’ll see more doing that.
PW: Do you think this will impact the benefits and products people prioritize?
If I’d been asked that at the beginning of the pandemic, I would have said that I thought most people wanted to keep things status quo. But as this stretches out, that’s no longer true. We get to be a lot more creative and will see more adoption of consumer-driven plans like HRAs and HSAs, or bringing in solutions like accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity and marrying them to the medical plan.
I also see employees taking more time to understand what they have. We’ve been doing a lot more mid-year educational seminars than before. Taking that extra step now is going to alleviate questions six months down the line when they get a big bill and they’re wondering what happened.
PW: What are the hardest/most rewarding parts of being an innovator?
Human nature is often resistant to change, even on something as simple as effectively connecting with your employee population. One of the ways we’ve done that is through text message technology, but we’ve had employers push back and say they thought it was prying too much into employees’ personal lives. Some resistance to change is understandable, but it slows down progress.
Another challenge is learning how to help people better understand what you’re trying to accomplish. If I’m explaining the same concept to two different employers, I need to think about how to approach it in a way that makes sense to them.
The triumphs are when it works. We had an employer who offered average benefits. We surveyed the employees and they gave the plan a 2 out of 5. We focused on giving one-on-one attention to every employee, created a custom website, made education more consistent throughout the year and then surveyed them six months later. The employees rated the benefits 4.5 out of 5. There was no change to the benefits, but employees now knew how to access them and had some cost-saving tips.
PW: How can you help clients who are slow to change?
The first step is knowing your audience. If they’re resistant to change, take more of a long-term approach to educate them on how it’s going to benefit them and their organization. They’ll often adopt it eventually. It may not be the exact plan you had in mind, but a variation of it.
PW: How do you keep up with all the change in our industry and determine what you need to focus on?
There’s often a race to see who can be the first to market with a new idea. But I think there can be a lot of value in being second to market as well, because then you can see how other people have adopted it and you have more time to research the solution to ensure it makes sense. It needs to fit into what you’re doing as an organization.
PW: Our health care system is in bad shape. How do you stay motivated to fix things?
My wife is a major factor when it comes to both motivation and inspiration. She’s basically my onsite EAP program. She’s been so pivotal in any success I’ve had. Leaning on family is huge; that’s become very important to me. If you have family close by, lean on them as much as you can.
Leadership in an organization is also key. Our CEO is just as invested in our individual success as he is in our company, and that sort of empathy and belief keeps me going.
As far as staying motivated, that’s something I’ve always challenged myself with, whether from a business perspective or just at home. It’s just realizing that it’s key to stay both hungry and humble. I’m willing to believe that everything I know now is not enough. I need to surround myself with people who are smarter than me.
PW: How can the industry do a better job of innovating, adapting and bringing in younger and more diverse candidates?
I think in order for the system to change, we have to proactively make that change. When a resume comes across your desk, or you’re interviewing someone, give them the credit you don’t think they’d get somewhere else.
There needs to be more purposeful actions around putting more diverse people into decision-making roles. It’s a ripple effect and will create more opportunities in the future. And then it will just become normal. But we have to train ourselves to do it.
Also, people from other industries can bring many different skill sets that our industry might not have right now. That’s another way to create change—look outside of what you’ve done in the past.
PW: Finish this sentence: The key to success in this industry going forward is…
To stay hungry, stay humble and be empathetic.
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