How brokers can help clients win the benefits budget battle

Companies have already proven they have recession on the mind, turning to their budgets to see where they can make cuts. Employee benefits are often first to go.

With open enrollment season underway and HR and finance teams already looking toward budget renewals in January, the tug-of-war between “keep” and “cut” can be challenging. But there’s a way everyone can win – people operations teams can keep the perks that drive recruiting and retention efforts without breaking the budget – with the help of a savvy broker.

Here’s how you can be the benefits hero this year with advice from industry experts.

For a broker, both parties (human resources and finance) are key decision makers in this process, so it’s important to take a team approach. Brokers must manage decision-makers, cascading to a team. Today, HR has a seat at the table and a louder voice than before; they’re able to influence decisions around benefits, hiring, and retention – things brokers are also concerned with. On the other side of the table, finance is focused on cost, scalability, and market conditions. By nature, these items are at odds and brokers can get caught in the middle. So what can you do?

“We can’t just pivot and think that we’ve done enough,” says Erika Geyer, Senior Vice President at Newfront. She says if the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that simply assuming what has worked before will work again is not going to cut it. “Each year we’ve grown and done something different.”

To keep up with the benefits Joneses in this ever-changing landscape, Kerry Hands, Senior Vice President at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., recommends companies find a great broker.

Brokers, she says, act as trusted advisors who can help smooth everything out. They know the steps to take so both HR and finance can walk out of the boardroom with a win and employees are put in the best position possible.

“You have the pieces to the puzzle,” Hands says. “You just need to get creative to make them fit.”

A knack for solving the jigsaw that is affordable and meaningful benefits is just as important as understanding how HR teams are bound by a budget. Neither brokers nor companies control health insurance, which is second to payroll in overall spend. It’s impossible to forecast what your renewal cost will be, but it still needs to fit into the budget. It’s a terrible position for HR leaders to be in; they can’t not offer health insurance, but they also can’t give everyone a 10% raise to offset the annual 10% increase (or more) in insurance premiums.

“As a partner, we need to be talking about budgets,” says Hands. “It’s all about the total spend, the bucket you have for benefits, perks, all of it. Managing to the budget, we’ve seen 10% is the current trend, and we’ve been talking to our clients about it as they come into open enrollment season.”

This is where help from brokers is crucial. You hold the map to navigating the most pressing issues across a team like distributed and disengaged employees, retention problems, etc., in the most effective way possible – with data.

Data is the way brokers can effectively reach finance teams, which, in addition to planning for annual health care costs, are focused on the following questions: what type of growth is the company anticipating? Where is the market going? What does the annual hiring plan look like? The answers to these questions are all data-based.

On the other hand, brokers can support HR leaders with the numbers they need to secure budget, so they’re not trying to poll in a vacuum and run blind analysis. Ultimately, this makes it significantly easier for HR to go to the finance team with cost versus savings. Showing the return on investment (ROI) is key, as well as the risk of not spending to implement a retention strategy. It’s no secret HR teams have to spend to retain, but it’s more helpful to frame it as the cost of losing 20% of the company’s employees versus spending a percentage of someone’s salary to save them – the latter is ultimately far less expensive.

Hands says to be truly effective, however, these conversations between brokers and clients need to happen year-round. Brokers need to become more than just an advisor and think of themselves as extensions of both finance and HR. They also need to bridge the gap.

It’s no secret that finance and HR have misconceptions about one another. Finance thinks HR wants to give everyone everything and the inverse is also claimed; HR thinks finance is quick to veto anything that costs money. As a broker, recognizing that both are human and working from imperfect data sets will help you speak everyone’s language. But the gap is closing and the language barrier is disappearing. New school finance is more operational than it has ever been and people ops are more data-driven, making them more collaborative than before.

“It has been the wild west out there,” Hands says. “What has been the status quo before is no longer in play.”

That goes for team dynamics and benefits packages.

Hands adds that simply looking at total spend is no longer the status quo and the best brokers need to disrupt everything to make in impact, including ditching the traditional way of doing things. (Hint: you’re not just reviewing health insurance packages anymore.) The huge shift in the world of work as a result of the pandemic and now inflation still has employees driving the bus. Attracting and retaining talent remains the number one priority across industries, but things are changing in the workplace power dynamic, and brokers need to stay on their toes.

“I think the relationship between employee and employer is different in that communication is more open,” says Geyer. “People are saying what they need and employers are being more understanding of those needs.”

Broker recommendations are evolving to meet a more personalized and customized environment. Hands explained the team at Gallagher has been recommending to clients meeting employees where they’re at, keeping in mind that with the shift to remote work has also come a dramatic culture shift.

“What used to be important for core benefits has shifted. The more employers adapt to this new way of thinking, the better off they’re going to be,” says Hands.

Above all else, personalization is key.

“In startups, you can have 20 employees with 20 very different needs,” says Geyer. She explains that where one person may have recently started a new family and would benefit from a child care stipend, another may be a recent graduate who would rather have a student loan repayment option. That in mind, Newfront recommends a personal approach to benefits, like a lifestyle spending account.

Broker clients want the latest benchmarking data to support recommendations, and recent studies show things like wellbeing (physical, emotional, and financial) plus streamlined, efficient technology to deploy benefits and perks are top of mind.

For startups in particular, Geyer recommends connecting with your specific network in addition to reviewing benchmarking data. “Look at companies your size and companies you want to mirror or imitate,” she says. “There are also a lot of smaller forums that connect benchmarking data. We’ve found for our clients that networking groups are much more reliable than sources with big, broad information.”

At Gallagher, Hands shared that pulse surveys by industry type within regions provide key insight for clients. When combined with employee feedback, national and local benchmarking, and highlighting best-in-class trends, data truly becomes king in winning the benefits budget.

The result is a benefits package that is more creatively constructed than ever before. Hands says broker clients that are doing the best job in this regard are ones who are looking at total compensation with a new lens. She agreed that lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs) in which companies can distribute a stipend covering whatever is important to them are a hit. LSAs are making waves in employee engagement without breaking the bank.

As we approach the end of the year, many companies are implementing a spending freeze, fearful of the down market and clouded visibility. The truth is, times could be lean and nobody wants to spend casually. But we all need to retain awesome talent.

Brokers who help companies walk the line between competitive and frivolous, while being very efficient, will be the most successful. Seeking out tools that can do double duty – like a singular platform to manage employee perks and expense management – and leveraging them across multiple teams will help save on spend and leave room for better benefits.

A practical example is a company that is spending money on a cell phone reimbursement program because its team is distributed. While this perk could easily end up on the finance team’s chopping block, HR can use the same budget allotted for cell phone reimbursement on an all-inclusive stipend program. Doing so uses the same budget with more flexibility for the team, thus increasing employee engagement without spending more money. A recommendation like this one from a trusted advisor (the company’s broker), backed by data is a win for finance, HR, and employees.

The broker and consulting business has always been about relationships and building trust. To stand out, Hands offered these final words of advice:

1. Be proactive. If you’re out in front with new trends and information on what you’re seeing in the market, you’ll be successful.
2. Use data to drive strategy and decisions. Mine data all the time. Figure out a way to get benchmark data that aligns with your client’s business priorities. Know what is important to them, what their workforce looks like, and what growth they anticipate.
3. Make sure you’re not just focused on health or dental. Personalized benefits like employee perks make for better engagement, are not a heavy lift, and support an inclusive business strategy.
4. Broaden your relationships. This industry is no longer just about business. It’s about HR. It’s about technology. Broker relationships are broader than they have ever been, and rightfully so. You’re not just selling to one decision-maker; you need to keep the whole team in mind.

Related: Reference-based pricing can keep your benefit costs down

“We’re all feeling the pain of this massive shift in the workforce. People are changing roles and companies. Everyone is short on staff and resources. We need to have patience as we go into this fourth quarter with vendors and clients,” Hands says. “People are burnt out. It’s been a tricky couple of years and we need to be mindful of the marketplace we’re in.”

Above all else, she says, we need to have greater empathy for one another, department aside.