2021 Broker of the Year finalist: Megan Zimmerman
Megan Zimmerman’s journey into the benefits industry has given her an expansive understanding of our health care system.
The 2021 Broker of the Year will be announced at the BenefitsPRO Broker Expo, August 16-18 in San Diego. The winner will be further profiled in our September issue. |
It is perhaps symbolic that Walker Forge, a heavy industrial employer in Milwaukee, was among Megan Zimmerman’s first clients when she changed her business model. The alliances she forged at the 350-employee company opened her eyes to the reality of designing and implementing an affordable employer-sponsored health plan that provides better care at lower cost for its members.
Zimmerman, a finalist for the 2021 Broker of the Year, is vice president of Employee Health & Benefits at Marsh & McLennan’s Milwaukee office. She landed in the benefits world after a journey that took her around its edges, offering keen insight into the components of employee health care. When she joined Walker Forge’s health plan management team as a consultant, she found herself among like-minded revolutionaries ready to reinvent employee benefits.
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“When we decided we had to find someone new to redesign our benefits package, we did an extensive search,” says Willard Walker, CEO, W.T. Walker Group, owner of Walker Forge. “We got to know all the players in benefits consulting in our region, and Megan was the clear and best choice. We’re just really thrilled with the service she offers.”
Who wouldn’t be thrilled with a benefits package that offers higher quality health care for employees at a lower cost to both company and worker?
“Our total health care spend is 20% to 30% below the benchmark,” Walker says. “It’s far less today than it was two to three years ago. It’s working amazingly well and people are happy. “We are one of the few employers who aren’t scrambling for employees right now.”
Zimmerman is quick to share the credit for what’s happened at Walker Forge. She found strong allies in both Walker and CFO Mark Gelhaus. And at Walker Forge, she has the opportunity to collaborate with Sara Hames of NBS Advisors, who is well known as a disruptor in the health care arena.
“Even though we work for different firms, Sara and I both welcome the collaboration. Will and Mark are showing that undeniable faith that this is a better way to provide employee health care,” she says.
“The on-site near-site clinic experience showed me that things could be better. And the consultant really is the gateway to these benefits.”
Zimmerman took her own leap of faith–from health benefits broker to consultant–after exploring other health care careers.
She started on the delivery side, working in dietetics and nutrition for a local hospital. “Being on the delivery side wasn’t the long-term space for me,” she says. “You were seeing people after a significant health change. Helping them was difficult.”
Next stop: health care analytics with an IT company. There, she learned how to sell and “how to speak to stakeholders in layman’s terms.” And she got hooked on the numbers. “That’s where I came to understand the power of analytics,” she says.
To complete her training for her current role, she joined an independent primary care provider practice that specialized in near-site and on-site medical clinics. At the time (2012), it was an emerging concept, and she loved what she found there.
“Wisconsin was definitely very progressive in the clinic space. Experiencing that was an absolute game-changer for me,” she says. “Here I was working with self-insured employers looking to understand the impact of having a clinic on-site or near-site, totally dedicated to managing the health of an employee population.”
After a several-year stint at the clinics, Zimmerman was ready to move into the role she was born to play: health plan designer. “The on-site near-site clinic experience showed me that things could be better. And the consultant really is the gateway to these benefits.”
The pieces had all fallen into place and she was ready to make a move. “I wanted to work for a larger firm so I could make a bigger impact.” The Marsh and McLennan Agency proved to be that place.
Shortly after moving to M & M, she discovered another set of allies at the Health Rosetta. The cutting-edge health benefits organization was making huge waves in the industry, and Zimmerman jumped at the chance to be part of it. When she joined Health Rosetta in its second cohort, she tapped into like-minded professionals across the country.
“Health Rosetta is such a collaborative group. To be able to pick up the phone and talk to another advisor, people who are in this to improve the health care delivery system, it was just amazing.”
Now she had the right office and the right peers. All she needed were the right clients. And that’s when Walker Forge’s CEO and CFO asked her for a proposal.
Gelhaus had joined the company as CFO several years earlier. Walker was fed up with the existing health plan process, and immediately challenged Gelhaus to join him in the search for a better health plan, rather than another tired plan that cost more and offered fewer actual benefits. “I knew there had to be something better out there,” he says.
They interviewed “pretty much every broker and benefits consultant in the region,” Walker says. Sara Hames had already begun working with them when they reviewed Zimmerman’s proposal. Boom! They had what they were looking for.
Walker Forge became the client that benefits consultants dream about. Gelhaus and Walker were open to all new ideas, as long as they held out the promise of improving the plan and reining in the overall cost.
“Not everything we try works out perfectly,” Hames says. “But we don’t just throw something out either. We fine-tune to see how best to make it work.”
Walker Forge now self-funds its plan and encourages plan members to use a near-site clinic shared by several local employers. Employees are incentivized to use preferred providers, and as Hames and Zimmerman bring more options to the table, Gelhaus and Walker are being rewarded with better employee health and morale as well as lower cost.
For Zimmerman, the circuitous route to benefits consultant has been worth every step along the way. Each of those steps taught her valuable lessons about health plans, preparing her for the fulfilling work of building a benefits package that supports employee health instead of carving ever-bigger chunks out of their paychecks.
“When you decide to do things differently, the results do not come immediately,” she says. “It was a good six months before I earned that first good client. But it comes back to you when you do the right thing.”
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