Employees as assets, the C-suite as investors
CFOs have become more involved in the decision-making strategy in recent years, and it's changing the way companies think about benefits.
“Agility.” “Human capital.” “KPIs.” As a benefits professional, you’ve no doubt heard this kind of terminology popping up more and more in the past several years. It’s the natural result of an ongoing shift in how companies view their employees.
“Business itself continues to get complicated with respect to the cost of people,” says Perry Braun, executive director of the Benefit Advisors Network (BAN). “Whether that is recruiting, retention, who you pay, how you measure performance, how you reward, incentivize—all of this is now a function of the goals and objectives of the company. Businesses are moving into a less compartmentalized discussion structure and to a more team-based structure, aligning goals and objectives.”
That is to say, the distinction between “employees” and “capital” has become rather blurry. So much so that the SEC last fall amended its reporting requirements to focus less on the number of employees and more on the qualitative aspect of how those employees benefit the company’s bottom line. “What that means moving forward is that how a company allocates its human capital is going to be just as important as how it allocates its financial capital,” said Josh Painter, vice president of strategy and corporate development for upskilling platform Degreed, during a recent webinar about the new requirements. “The talent paradigm is shifting. People are now the primary driver of value of a company.”
And that shift is having a noticeable impact on how companies view their employee benefits. CFOs and other members of the C-suite have become more involved in the decision-making strategy in recent years, though the role of HR is in no way diminished.
“CFOs are more likely to look at the broad spectrum of benefit strategies in the market, but they still look to HR to balance financial measures versus the impact to employees,” says Tricia Collins Schmidt, managing director for health and benefits at Willis Towers Watson. “The most successful holistic benefit strategies occur when there is a partnership between the executives, finance and HR.”
An interesting thing happens when companies start thinking about employees as assets: they start to view benefits as an investment. And the more they put in, the more they get out.
Nix the “benefits” conversation
“The CEO is concerned about how much work the solutions could be for his/her people to implement. Their main goal is running a growing, profitable company.”
As companies transition to a more holistic approach to operations and strategy, it’s possible that somewhere down the line, the whole idea of “benefits” will become obsolete. “I never have a ‘benefits’ conversation with the C-suite; I talk about profit and loss and supply chain management,” says Kim Eckelbarger, founder of Tropical Benefits.
“The CFO is focused on supply chain management and liberating cash from the SGA line on the income statement. Your results should be in a spreadsheet form and tie back to the number of revenue units they would have to sell,” she explains. “They will ask you if your new plan is legal—they care about compliance. The CEO is concerned about how much work the solutions could be for his/her people to implement. Their main goal is running a growing, profitable company, so here you learn what projects they would implement with the cash generated by your solutions.”
So should advisors forget everything they know about talking to HR? Definitely not. “The broker and the broker’s team should have different disciplines,” Braun says. “Some of the team members should be aligned to help on the transaction and servicing side of the HR beat, because this is still a people business.”
(Re)building best practices
“Companies that have a more engaged C-suite tend to take a more progressive approach to managing their plans, including increased clinical support, concierge services for employees, targeted point solutions, and increased family-friendly benefits,”
The high cost of health care to employers is, to some extent, the result of the snowballing of bad cost-sharing decisions. “Here’s how it used to go down,” says Emily Taylor, CFO and CHRO at Naturally Slim. “We would be invited to the annual benefits renewal meeting. We would hear all of the claims that had taken place and the total cost. A couple of years in a row, it was 18% increases. You’re sitting there as the CFO and you’re frustrated. To be able to do these insurance benefits, I’m going to have to cut elsewhere in the company.”
However, Naturally Slim started as a carve-out from a larger company, which meant that Taylor was able to break the cycle and start from scratch. “As we were designing the benefit package, we created a cross-department team of C-suite executives,” Taylor says. “It wasn’t me picking out the benefit; it wasn’t purely HR. It was also two other areas that had a lot of employees.”
As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. “What was really a focus of mine was how to make sure we keep our population happy and healthy so we’re not seeing those increases year after year,” Taylor says. “If you start with a strong benefits package, it’s really going to pay off in the end.”
And, when employee benefits become an investment rather than a budget item, it’s easier to see how everything is connected. “Companies that have a more engaged C-suite tend to take a more progressive approach to managing their plans, including increased clinical support, concierge services for employees, targeted point solutions, and increased family-friendly benefits,” Collins Schmidt says. “During the pandemic, the C-suite has also been involved in the discussions around additional benefits to support employees’ mental health needs and support for working from home.”
A competitive advantage
“In the HR environment, they’re managing a year-to-year budget. The CFO is coming in and trying to build a bridge to that long-game investment and a series of short-term objectives.”
Recruiting and retention have always been key reasons for offering a competitive benefits package, but in this new era, benefits themselves become an aspect of a company’s competitive strategy.
“One of the foundational questions that the CFO asks is, ‘What are other companies like ours doing that I could benefit from?’” Braun says. “They’re looking at this from a financial investment standpoint. ‘If these strategies are working for another business, then could they work in my environment?’”
The business world is made up of innovators, fast-followers and laggards, Braun says, and brokers’ rosters are a reflection of those roles. While some advisors may still be working exclusively with the HR team and struggling to get the attention of the CFO, it’s only a matter of time before this shift permeates through all levels.
As more companies come to think of their employees as an asset, they’re realizing the importance of taking a long-term view. “So much of the CFO’s focus is on the investment: where to spend capital,” Braun says. “Where should I invest in order for my business to remain sustainable? That’s a key question, sustainability. In the HR environment, they’re managing a year-to-year budget. The CFO is coming in and trying to build a bridge to that long-game investment and a series of short-term objectives.”
Brokers and advisors can help drive adoption by helping employers see just how much they can get from this new way of thinking. “The C-suite and HR have been trained by brokers and insurance carriers to believe that there isn’t anything they can do to control costs and improve the value of their plans,” says Eckelbarger. “You need to get right to the point, and what you’re presenting will need to be viewed as significant. Forecast the impact over a five-year period, but make sure to bring it back to how we will start getting results in the first quarter.“
Driving the health care revolution
“We need to scale these strategies, and it is the employer checkbook that can drive it. They can save our economy, our communities, as well as their employees.”
Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of a more-involved C-suite is the impact it will have on health care transparency. “Having the CFO enter this conversation is really pushing our industry around transparency,” Braun says. “Data sharing, data organization and making it more readable and impactful. They are a very strong voice in that process.”
Because CFOs think in terms of numbers and data, they will be less inclined to make a decision without having all of the facts.
“We tend to take a data-driven approach to set the stage with the C-suite, including data analytics and robust benchmarking,” says Collins Schmidt. “We have seen an increase in the demand for analytics with predictive modeling and point solutions to inform, impact and reduce these large-claim costs. Having the C-suite involved in the benefit discussions throughout the year has been very important to moving cost containment strategies forward.”
With a more-involved C-suite, Eckelbarger not only sees an increased push for transparency, but also new health care solutions such as direct primary care, direct-contracting and medical share programs. “We need to scale these strategies, and it is the employer checkbook that can drive it,” she says. They can save our economy, our communities, as well as their employees, from the financial burden of a poorly designed health plan. And they have a fiduciary right to do so. CFOs have the purchasing power to fix our health care system.”
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