The way forward: Benefits brokers look ahead to 2021

In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak last spring, brokers and other industry leaders speculated about how quickly business would return to normal. That turned out to be wishful thinking. For better or worse, the pandemic has drastically changed everything from office operations to client interaction to marketing strategies.

“These current trends are the new normal,” says Steve Boddy, content director for WorldatWork in Scottsdale, Arizona. “Organizations must refocus on remote work opportunities; employee well-being programs that emphasize personal wellness, family, organizational and societal well-being; and ensure that their baseline health insurance includes telemedicine, coverage for COVID-19 testing and COVID-19 vaccinations when they become available.

“One of the most valuable lessons taught by the pandemic is that organizations have to move and shift priorities quickly in order to survive. This is essential across all industries and all parts of the world.”

Employers view benefits much differently today than they did a year ago, Boddy adds. “The importance of these programs has been elevated significantly,” he says. “With a global pandemic, comprehensive and competitive health insurance options are more critical than ever. However, it does expand beyond just this component. Physical, mental and financial well-being offerings are on the rise.”

WorldatWork and the Institute for Corporate Productivity recently documented these changes in the “COVID-19 Health Benefits Impact Study,” which found that 82% of the 1,334 organizations surveyed currently offer programs that are aimed at enhancing their employees’ well-being.

“Of the organizations providing these well-being services, the most popular offerings are in the categories of physical health, mental health and financial health,” Boddy says. “Another key benefits trend that has also emerged for companies during the pandemic is access to and utilization of telehealth programs. This trend is likely here to be here for the foreseeable future.”

Internal changes

 “Seeing coworkers in person was great for sharing ideas and working through problems; now we are almost entirely speaking over the phone, but the conversations are more concise.”

In response to the pandemic, brokers have changed both the way they operate their business internally and how they work with clients.

“The landscape has changed,” says Chris Bell, owner of Chris Bell Insurance in Independence, Missouri. “One of the biggest things that has changed is personal, face-to-face meetings with clients and hosting meetings. Since the pandemic, I have noticed clients are more willing to speak over the phone or on a Zoom meeting, when before they would just want to come by the office and see you in person.

“We have embraced Zoom and put together presentations that work with this new environment,” he adds. “We also have transitioned to doing more enrollments digitally, using a variety of enrollment tools that make e-signing documents easier.”

His team has also adjusted to the challenges of working remotely.

“COVID-19 has changed my business, because we previously focused mostly on local marketing, meeting people in person and creating relationships with business owners around the city,” Bell says. “Seeing coworkers in person was great for sharing ideas and working through problems; now we are almost entirely speaking over the phone, but the conversations are more concise.”

Dynamic Benefit Solutions in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, has made a smooth transition to remote work. “We have implemented a morning team huddle every day at 8:30 a.m.,” says Jim Blachek, CEO and managing partner. “It gets people in the right mindset that the workday has begun and that even though they are working remotely, they are working.”

L. Marta Turba, vice president of content strategy at WorldatWork, shares the company’s three-part internal approach to manage the pandemic:

• Connection. “Personal and authentic human connection with employees became the business during the first six months of the pandemic, and this focus continues,” she says. “Our strong executive team prioritized daily workforce updates on well-being, family, and stress management over that of business deliverables. Ongoing care packages were sent to a fully remote workforce, and we had daily online engagement on the strategic direction and business climate.”
• Transparency. “More financial transparency has helped employees deal with the stress by building trust and engagement during an uncertain time,” Turba says. “We found that an added benefit of this transparency was sparking collaborative problem-solving and innovation across teams.”
• Innovation. “Our customers had new and immediate needs during COVID, and our internal teams manifested creative ways to meet those needs swiftly,” she says. “While the business needs were challenging, the permission to reduce standard bureaucracy around the typical way we do things and deliver agile solutions was empowering to our creative teams and enabled us to deliver greater value to our customers and members.“

External engagement

“Our talented teams quickly migrated from in-person to virtual events, shifted more education from in-person to existing virtual and eLearning platforms, and created more ways for members to connect via roundtables, forums and more.”

For many benefits advisors and their practices, the how of working with clients and prospects has also changed significantly.

“Clients and prospects are more open to speaking over the phone now,” Bell says. “There is more openness when speaking to clients. I feel that clients are more willing to express what they are looking for in their health care. With the concerns of COVID-19 in the back of everyone’s mind, clients are wanting to make sure they are covered in case a sickness happens and to better understand how their policy will cover it.“

Turba has seen the same thing.

“Our organization experienced an increase in customer needs, particularly from professionals and organizations seeking guidance for the compensation, remote work, benefits and well-being challenges that accompanied COVID-19,” she says. “In order to meet this demand, we needed to transform the way we delivered solutions. Our talented teams quickly migrated from in-person to virtual events, shifted more education from in-person to existing virtual and eLearning platforms, and created more ways for members to connect via roundtables, forums and more.

“Not only did we enhance the partnership with our members and customers, we helped boost connections between the HR/total rewards professional communities as well, with an observed increase in sharing next practices, solutions and collaborative problem-solving. It’s been an amazing display of the leadership, creativity and compassion that our strategic HR partners are bringing in, and to, their organizations.”

Ben Conner, CEO of Conner Insurance in Indianapolis, believes the key word for 2020 is “communication.”

“I think employers are more ready to dig into the idea of effective communication versus communication that ‘checks the boxes’,” he says. “This really sums up what we have learned in 2020. We need to communicate in effective ways, via meaningful media, but we also need to consider the employee experience as it relates to benefits. What are they feeling from a user’s standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint?

“These both matter so much. I believe this has also translated to our business operations and how we manage our employee experience. The pandemic has forced us to become better leaders and teammates. Because we don’t have the ability to gather with our team, we have had to learn to effectively communicate with each other, address problems and celebrate successes in a different way. We have learned to be more creative.”

One practical way he is addressing problems is by helping clients reduce health care costs so they can free up more money for employee compensation.

“For too long, health insurance has robbed from employee wages, and I have seen employers wanting to reverse this,” Conner says. “They want to enhance wages, and they’re addressing their health plan to free up those dollars. There are several different ways that an employer can go about doing that, so it has been exciting to partner with employers in that pursuit.”

Most of Blachek’s clients have adjusted well to the new reality, although several are reluctant to make significant changes in an uncertain environment.

“The biggest change has been employer acceptance of remote meetings and the additional challenges of enrollment meetings,” he says. “Employers have had ‘COVID paralysis.’ They are so concerned about the many changes that have already occurred that they are not making many decisions that would change their current plans. They have been kicking the can down the road.”

Successful brokers understand that the events of this year present chances to improve, as well as challenges.

“Our team recognized quickly that what happened in 2020 was going to present tremendous opportunity,” Conner said. “We focused on the service approach and looked to reimagine the employee experience in regard to health care and health insurance. We identified areas of frustration and brainstormed how we could solve those problems. Because of this, a new division in our company was born, and we are piloting a customer service model that is one of a kind. We have been able to communicate that story to our customers and prospective customers which excites them about what the future can hold as we support them in managing their programs.”

Looking ahead

“2020 has reinforced and encouraged implementation of strategies and ideas as it relates to employee benefits that we knew we should be addressing before but possibly had hesitancy in executing.” 

As much as brokers are ready to put 2020 behind them, they also realize no one is going to wave a magic wand on January 1. They expect the hard lessons of 2020, along with the agility required to react to unprecedented change, will serve them well in the coming year.

“One of the most important things I learned is no matter how successful your marketing is, the need to diversify is important,” Bell says. “I spent a lot of time as a part of local groups and conducting seminars. We are developing an online presence now to help offset some of the in-person marketing I used to do.

“I think the new normal is that companies are going to be developing new technologies to ease the transition to a more digital world,” he adds. “The expansion in telehealth this year was great. As companies work to make apps that can be helpful to prospects, clients and agents, the market will continue to expand.”

For many firms like Dynamic Benefit Solutions, facing the pandemic accelerated changes that were already being considered.

“Remote meetings are here to stay; they will not go away,” Blachek says. “I am much more efficient in a remote meeting with the technology I have at hand and screen-sharing the correct document and controlling the meeting. Additionally, I had contemplated working remotely in the near future at the end of 2019, but 2020 accelerated that process.

“I have evolved in that direction fully and will not be returning to my physical office location except for a day or two, as needed. Also, remote enrollments are very possible and actually a much more efficient use of employer and employee time. They allow the employee to involve loved ones in the process and to view the enrollments at their convenience.”

Conner agrees. “I believe 2020 has reinforced and encouraged implementation of strategies and ideas as it relates to employee benefits that we knew we should be addressing before but possibly had hesitancy in executing,” he says.

One valuable lesson is that brokers offer a far more important service than many may have realized. “Recognize that the unique insights and advisory services you deliver have a meaningful impact beyond a positive renewal,” Turba says. “The work you do helps organizations move forward culturally and financially, and impacts the health of the workforce and the experiences that workers have each day. You are appreciated and needed by those you serve, customers and partners alike.”

It’s up to brokers to demonstrate this value to clients, Conner says.

“I think the broker industry has committed to rebranding ourselves as ‘advisors/consultants,’ but the employer community has historically rejected this by continuing to call us ‘brokers,’” he says. “This year was the opportunity to show that we are truly advisors in how to navigate as a business in 2020, as well as in our strategic plan for the delivery of health insurance in the health care landscape.”

Bell believes the industry will come out stronger on the other side. “I have spoken to agents with decades of experience,” he says. “One of the things you need is an ability to adapt to the ever-changing industry trends. Keep a positive attitude, keep going, and you will be looking back at COVID as a major milestone that you were able to overcome in your career.“

The best approach for 2021 may be combining tried-and-true practices with the valuable lessons learned during the pandemic.

“I believe the new normal will be a blend of what we learned from the pandemic combined with the most effective things we were doing before the pandemic,” Conner says. “I think it would be foolish for us to discount the value of being together face-to-face, but I also think there are things we have learned to do virtually that will allow us all to do business and relationships in a more valuable way.”

For example, he is planning for his office space to be designed much differently than before, without eliminating the need for an office by having everyone work remotely.

“I would challenge every advisor/consultant/broker to continue to be creative and challenge that status quo,” he says. “We have always talked about how difficult employee communication is and how to solve that. We need to be better. Hopefully, COVID has forced you to be better. We, as an industry, need to solve this problem, because it is the lifeblood for user experience and financial success.

“Our organization isn’t perfect at it, but we are committing to trying to be,” Conner adds. “You should, too.”