Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / The Healthcare Switch That Almost Backfired: What BVI Medical's CPO Learned About Chasing Cost Savings at the Expense of Employees
Transcript
- Kelsey Willock (00:42) Welcome Andy Dawson, CPO at BVI Medical. We are beyond excited to have you this February morning. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a bit more with our audience about your career and background, where you're calling in from, and your current role today. Andy Dawson (00:55) Thanks, Kelsey. So hi, everybody. My name's Andy Dawson. I'm the Chief People Officer and Head of Corporate Affairs here at BVI Medical. Based just outside of Boston, and right now it is just freezing. That's about the best way I can describe it. I was talking to someone this morning, and we were kind of reminiscing about days back in the UK where at least it isn't pouring with rain. And honestly, right now, I'm not entirely sure which one is better or worse. But a little bit about my background, my career. Originally, I'm from the UK. Started out in various different roles in HR and industry there. Moved over to Switzerland in my formative years with Novartis and spent a number of years with them in Europe. Then moved to the US what feels like an absolute lifetime ago now. And it is coming up close on 20 years. Moved to the East Coast first, a couple of years after Novartis had bought a vaccine and diagnostic business. Took on a big HR role with them. then had a chance to go and do something even more crazy and move out to California, where thought was going to be that was it, no more moves. And then about six, seven years later, we came back to the East Coast and have been back ever since. Fun fact, we moved back from California to the year that was the record winter snowstorm in Boston. ⁓ I get reminded of that very often. And I've been with BVI now for coming up on six years. Kelsey Willock (02:28) Well, I already have a million follow-up questions I want to ask you. I'm super interested to learn more about the differences between the European background versus coming to the United States. But before I get to all of those questions, I want to learn a little bit more about you. So if you'll indulge me, can you share with us your earliest memory of money? Andy Dawson (02:49) My earliest memory of money ⁓ goes to my first ever job that I had was I worked in one of the first McDonald's that was existing in the UK. That's my claim to fame. And what's really important about that is ⁓ I paid far too much attention to ⁓ what station I was going to be on. And it was a big thing that everyone wanted to get onto the burgers. But you had to start on fries. And it's amazing how much I can still remember this. But working behind the counter there was what it gave me a very different appreciation was was taking money from people to buy something and then realizing that if they didn't get what they wanted, they would not be very happy. But yeah, that's my first experience of like receiving money and actually working behind the counter and actually taking other people's money in return for something else. Kelsey Willock (03:43) Do you remember what you did with your first paycheck? Andy Dawson (03:47) Ooh, I'm going to say it was definitely public comment book related. Kelsey Willock (03:52) I love that in any comic book that you quite remember. Andy Dawson (03:55) god, so for anyone who's watching from the UK, you'll remember the Dandy and the Beano comics, the paper comics. had literally stacks of hundreds of these things. And remarkably, my grandparents threw them out. And then a few years later, I'm like, those would have been worth a fortune if I kept them. So I spent my money on the fun things then for sure, but I definitely could have made some money if I'd thought about keeping them a bit longer. Kelsey Willock (04:22) Yeah, you know, it's tough to have that kind of foresight though, as you said. Right, right. You know, you've got your first paycheck and you feel gratified and now you have this freedom to spend it on what you wish. Andy Dawson (04:25) Especially when you're a teenager, that's for sure. Yeah. Kelsey Willock (04:37) ⁓ So that kind of leads me to the next part of conversation, which is, you know, how do think that money story, whether it was working at McDonald's or making your first purchase, has really influenced how you think about pay and benefits on behalf of your employees. Andy Dawson (04:53) It's a really good question. think the way I personally think about paying benefits has really evolved. ⁓ Certainly as I've got later on in my career and had different experiences, having gone from being concerned about a single person wage earner to them being part of a couple, to them being part of a family. It means a lot more as I've gone through those life stages and life transitions as well. ⁓ You can be incredibly fortunate to land a great job straight out of school. You can be really lucky to land a great job late on in your career. But one of the things that really is different, and you mentioned this, one of the things that I've noticed that is really important is wherever you are in the world, it means something different. So having a good living wage means something very different whether you're sitting in the East Coast US, West Coast US. Northern England, sitting in mainland Europe, everything is different. There is no one size fits all. And from when you're designing pay and benefits and programs that go and support those, you have to remember your employee base is not one size fits all as well. Even if you are only in a company that's in one location, say in downtown New York, you are appealing to that demographic in that area. But if you're dealing with a company that's spread across the globe, you have to realize that, what are your basic tenants? What are the basic foundations you want your remuneration, your compensation programs to have? And then how do you deploy them? Because there is no right or wrong way or right timing. It's based on what is your company and what's your company philosophy and where's the evolution of your company at that time. I think a lot of times we struggle in industry that everybody wants to do the best. And everybody wants to have something innovative and creative and that's wonderful, but not everyone can be the same size as an IBM, a Google, ⁓ McKinsey, pick any big name company, every one of them is different. And I think it's kind of racing to the top is always a bit of a dangerous game to go get. Kelsey Willock (07:06) I want to dig a little bit deeper into this context of offering benefits for global employee population. One of the things I'm increasingly hearing from folks as I interview them is there's this challenge. How do we bring benefits globally when maybe a vendor is only available in the United States or whatnot? What I'm also hearing from you is that thinking about something as one size fits all for a global population isn't necessarily the right way to think about Andy Dawson (07:27) Hmm. Kelsey Willock (07:36) it because each of these populations have different needs, know, have different cultural contexts. How are you dealing with that? And especially when you think about coming from a background where you've worked in so many different environments. Andy Dawson (07:50) Yeah, mean, definitely it's adapted over the years, to be honest with you. ⁓ Very early on, I was trying to find that unicorn, that single point of contact, that single vendor that could do all of this for the company, could take a lot of pain away from my organization and my team, who have to think on this daily. ⁓ And there really are only a handful of people that can, I would say, effectively do it. But the challenge is you still have to tailor it to a local market. What we offer in the US cannot be replicated in Canada, cannot be replicated in the UK. But our employee populations are also very different. The demographics are also very different. The costs are very different as well. Some parts of our organization, terms of what we've been doing at BVI, have come through acquisition. Some of those acquisitions didn't have embedded benefit programs or holistic pay practices. And that's not a bad thing. So when you have to then evaluate as part of the ongoing integration cost and how do you bring those people into the BBI fabric, it has to be something you have to kind of plan for. But you also just can't snap your fingers and put it into place overnight. Because whatever you do, you're setting them precedent. And it might be, you have to listen to the employee voice first and foremost. Like, what is the employee actually asking for? There is no point throwing a lot of benefits out there. if their employees aren't going to use them. That's one of the biggest learnings that we have. But also, you've got to meet your employee base with where they are at that point in time. If you've got a younger demographic orientation, then you may have to think about the types of benefits you're offering there to tailor to those needs of that population right there and then. So that's why we've gone down the path of actually more individual focus on maybe smaller cluster countries, individual countries, rather than trying to find a big global provider that actually probably isn't right for us now. Kelsey Willock (09:53) I love that perspective because I am hearing this almost frustration of where is the unicorn? And, you know, especially when you get into healthcare, you get into finance, et cetera, it also becomes so regionally regulated. Andy Dawson (10:00) Hmm. Kelsey Willock (10:10) And so I think coming to a point of acceptance that we do need to really create these customized packages is a really great position to be in. If you've accepted that it's not to check the box, everything is gonna work for everyone. I'm also curious, how are you gathering information on what your employees want and need? Is it qualitative, is it quantitative? Have you found a way to get them to be more transparent with you? Andy Dawson (10:37) So I have to give a lot of credit to the country teams here. We know we a heavily kind of centralized function within BVI that kind of we are one operation as part of HR and communications and corporate affairs in general. But what that does rely on is a lot of talent and information that we disperse out to the country and the regions. But where it starts from, to be honest, is We take a lot of feedback from our organization on a regular basis through our pulse surveys, quick check-ins. We do it regularly through our onboarding surveys. We recently reinvented, I would say, the way we do onboarding, which is right from the way we think about from talent acquisition from that first contact. And actually a lot of the data that we get from our TA sources and our TA team, and then as people are coming onboard, You know, we look at, what was it that really attracted you to us? What was it that really got you excited enough to say yes? And then how have we met those expectations as we're going through? we then use that data as a way of benchmarking internally for ourselves of, okay, well, have we got it right? Have we got it wrong? And what do we need to adapt and adjust? And then we just generally just ask people a lot. We like to kind of say, tell us what's working, what's not working. And then we make some decisions based on that. We make some decisions whether we want to adjust our pension providers. We take our adjustments if we want to think about which health care provider can we have. But again, you have to look at it from where is your current employee population at demographically because they are looking for different things. Where we have a population that is heavily biased towards our production staff, if you like. ⁓ They're very killier about, want to make sure I can be protected from any life incidents that happen. want to make sure I've got a good salary. But talking to them about full long-term investment strategies for their 401k plan doesn't quite mean as much. ⁓ So you have to be able to tailor those. Now, takes a little bit of extra, to be clear, it takes a lot of extra work to do that individualization. But I think what we end up with for our people is much more. appropriate for the size and stature of where we're at. Do I think we've got it perfect? No. Would I definitely like to be able to do more for some of the programs and actually offset a little bit more of the cost? Yes, but you have to then also balance that with the cost of the company and other investments that we need to make. Kelsey Willock (13:14) Thanks for sharing that. think that it's also something that in a cost conscious environment, something that our audience can really take away in the sense of, know, distill down the data that you're getting from your employees, starting with who are those folks? Where are they coming from? And of course, we can think about all the incredible new tools coming out, how to synthesize that data even more effectively. But I think it's a really good starting point. Andy Dawson (13:42) One of the things I will add that is super important for us on the US side, we are now on our third ⁓ different health care provider for our US benefits. A lot of it has been driven by coverage we could gain, the partnership we would get with the health care provider itself and what people's own experiences have been. And we had a number of different choices open to us this year. And we had a... ⁓ provision and an offer come to us as part of our renewal, which on paper looked phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. But then when we had to dive into the detail, we went through the extra efforts of doing a triple check of, if you're currently on this coverage and this is your provider, what's the disruption going to be? Because if we, and we actually had a choice to make at one point between vendor A, vendor B, where whether we said, This would be great for us as a company, but from an individual perspective, could be incredibly disruptive and quite painful. And we made a choice to do the right thing by the people side, where we actually double checked with one of our larger employee populations. We actually double checked and said, OK, if we switch from this insurance to this, are these guys going to be able to come and get coverage, like still tomorrow? And they were like, yes, you can. That was something that I think sometimes you can be lulled into a I want to do the right thing by the company. I'm going to save a ton of money, and it's going to make the function look good, and the ROI is wonderful. But then you forget to ask the question at the end is, actually, hang on a minute. Is this going to actually have a negative impact for our employee base? We could have made a really bad decision if we'd have just followed the first part of that and not done the follow-up homework. Kelsey Willock (15:28) it's so important to remind yourself, you what's the trickle down effect? Cost savings in healthcare could equal ⁓ retention problems. It can actually equal longer term healthcare cost problems, delayed care, et cetera. So it's a really important reminder not to be too excited about chasing the shiny object. Ask yourself, what's the follow through with the impact? Andy Dawson (15:32) for sure. Yeah. Kelsey Willock (15:53) I think it's a really good segue into the next question for you, is a little bit about what's going on in today's challenges. Where do you think compensation and benefits are breaking down most often today? Andy Dawson (16:06) Well, everyone's going to say they want to get paid more. It's human nature. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, everybody would like to get paid more. And I think trying to appease an employee population just by giving more money, it has a short-term impact. Any of our employees sitting here listening to this right now will know that it's a challenge for us. It's a challenge based on performance, based on results that we've had. Can't always go as far as we would like to go. What we try and do though is to try and make sure that it's the whole offering, not just the financial side of what keeps people engaged and motivated. It's beyond just the dollars and cents or pounds and pennies wherever you are in the world. It's gotta be about the environment you create. Can you come to work and give the best of yourself? Can you do the best work? Are you going to be treated in a constructive, in a... in a fashion that's recognizing what you do. But I think most people are very clear that you can chase the dollar. That's what you want to do. You can move around very often. You can chase it. You can go find different opportunities. But at a certain point, it stops because that merry-go-round that you can jump on, other companies are going to be like, well, what are you getting out of me here? There are times you make a strategic choice that you might want to make a decision where you maybe overpay for a role. or overpay in a particular part of the country or part of the world, just because you need to get something different and you need to basically maybe break a paradigm that you have, but you have to balance the business cost first. And I think that's what sometimes gets lost. I think the pay equity plans and the openness and transparency that's coming in the world right now around being very open around, what are these jobs going to pay? I think it's huge. I think it's a great opportunity. It's great when people use it for good. It's not so great when people look at it and go, well, I saw this job posted, but mine's X. And then you have to have the managerial courage to talk about, why are we not the same as that company over there? I don't know what companies X is doing down the road, but I can only talk about what we are doing here and why this is the constraints that we have or how we look at market data to pressure test what we decide to comp on a various role. But we always start with that can only be one portion of it. When we look at it again, I type back to the data and the source data that we get. A lot of the people that we attract and hire, they come for more than just the paycheck. They want to add value. They want to do something innovative. They want to be part of an exciting team. They maybe have heard about the way we work being a little bit different than maybe where they're coming from. I am trying to remember a number off the top of my head, but I think no one in so far this year has rejected an offer that we've made anywhere in the world based on compensation. So I feel pretty good that we are, I'm not saying we're perfect and we definitely don't get it right all the time, but I would say compensation for us is one of a significant number of things that we talk about, about why is the world of work so important? Why is what you do and who you do it with as important as Kelsey Willock (19:07) Wow. Andy Dawson (19:27) the conditions you go after. You could be paid an amazing salary, but if you're working with people that you don't like, if the work isn't really appealing, if it's not exciting, that may be different things to different people, but for us, it's probably not a great fit. And that's where we kind of screen a bit out from that. But we want to make sure that people are fairly compensated for the work that they do. and trying to keep an eye on that, but also keep an eye on, know, it has to, the company has to be performing at the same point to match some of those expectations. ⁓ It's not always the easiest trade off to make. Kelsey Willock (20:03) Pay equity is so huge right now. What guardrails and mindset shifts do you have first, particularly leaders right now, sure they're pay fair and empowering, because it sounds like you're really hitting that stride. I have never heard of anyone in that realm where they're offering folks salaries and that's never the reason to say no. So what do you think that you've instilled culturally at the company that has allowed for that to happen? Andy Dawson (20:36) It's great question. actually honestly don't think it's anything we've really just instilled as a specific program, Kelsey. I think it's actually just the way we operate. You know, we trust our managers, we trust our leaders to make the right decision. If we feel that we are hugely off to the market based on feedback we're getting, then we don't instantly say, well, okay, hey, well, look, the data says X. We'll take a pretty individual view on it. But we also then look at, okay, well, I'm not gonna just do something that's then gonna damage internal pay equity and benchmarking just for the sake of one person. I'm not gonna break an entire organization or an entire team for one role. It will always find a way to get out. ⁓ And it's never fun when it does. I've seen that happen in my past and it just creates a level, even if the person doesn't leave or a team doesn't say anything, it does create a different feeling. So for us, one, we'll always comply with the law, we comply with the legislation that's out there, but we always look at it with, what's the person doing? I've never liked the prescription of, we can put in a job role. We would like ideally three to five years experience. Okay, well, what if someone comes in with seven? What if someone comes in with 12 and they're the right person? We'll do the right thing. Similarly on the other side, if someone, we're never gonna look at a role for somebody and go, you don't have enough years of experience. I think that's just such a, frankly, a cop out. ⁓ It means for me, you're not taking it seriously because if you've really looked at the role, you've looked at the person, someone could come in with a tremendous amount of potential, but just because they don't have a prescribed number of years, does that make them the wrong fit or the wrong candidate? Probably not. But it's an easy way to kind of just get past, well, sorry, you didn't get through the screening. I give our teams, our hiring managers, HR teams, our TA teams, a lot of credit for not falling into that trap. And I think that is part of the culture we instill. We get the right person for the job at the time. And if we have to make adjustments, we make adjustments. Kelsey Willock (22:48) It's very clear to me that you and the company takes a very holistic approach to decision making. Whether it's making a call on a new healthcare provider or how you're attracting talent, it's really thinking about how does this decision impact beyond the decision itself. It's cool to see. Another question I have for you is particularly about a change that you've instilled at the company that you're particularly proud of. So if you can think of a point in time, a solution that you introduced, a decision that you made that you're particularly proud of, I'd love for you to share that. Andy Dawson (23:27) Ooh. You know, I think what we've done over the years with just in terms of how we've looked at benefits holistically, I don't think there's one thing in particular, Kelsey, I'd say that we've done, you that I'm incredibly proud of because I'm incredibly proud of all the work that the team has put together over the years. I think if anything, though, it's the way we talk about it and the way we help educate people. One of the biggest challenges I find with any company and, My wife works for an incredibly large company and she probably knows less about her benefits than I do. And now I get to look at them because I give an opinion. I'm like, okay, that's great. Let's sign up for this, this and this. But just because you've got a huge benefits, a huge organization doesn't necessarily mean that people understand what you can get out of them. A couple of years ago on the U S side, we had one of our team took the initiative and created what we call the B well newsletter. And this was all about an organic. piece of work, which was once a quarter, sharing to the population, did you realize you can get this as part of your benefits package? Did you realize that this is available to you? How have you utilized this? ⁓ Now, it's a really simple and a really minor thing, but if you know then you are getting the most out of your benefit offering, and this applies anywhere in the world, then that's our job done. I can't force feed, did you realize this is a great set of benefits, and why don't you like it? Because again, you've got to utilize it and use it to make sense. Otherwise it's a backstop. You hope that people never get sick. You really do. You hope that people never ever get sick. ⁓ But when it happens, you've got to know that the company and the insurance and the support that you need is right there. So I think the newsletter approach is one thing, but I will share that we've had, you know, we've had, unfortunately, during the course of my time at BVI, we've had people who have gotten incredibly sick. ⁓ And it's happened very suddenly. I think we're, without talking about those people in particular, but I would just say what I'm incredibly proud of is the way that the company has approached them when they've happened. ⁓ We've been supportive. ⁓ We have literally jumped in with our vendors even over holiday periods to say we need to help this person right now, irrespective of their level in the company. ⁓ And I think just by showing up and doing the right thing when it was needed is what I'm most proud about. And that's less about the type of benefits we provide, but I think more about who we are as a company. Kelsey Willock (26:08) And again, just going back to this theme of how does it impact the individual? Each individual has such a unique experience. I also love that concept of a newsletter. think that in this age of AI and whatnot, there is a lot of amazing engineering going on, but in some cases, over-engineering. And just reminding us that being human, sharing a little bit about XYZ benefit allowed me to Andy Dawson (26:16) for sure. Yes. Kelsey Willock (26:38) to spend more time with my children or something that is deeply human is really what peaks people's interest. And what we're seeking is those eyeballs. People are busy. And a newsletter allows people that kind of human connection, read it, see what your colleagues are leveraging it for, and that can be really meaningful. Andy Dawson (26:47) It is. It is, and we've tried this in different countries as well. it's, you know, we take the role of, you know, we are guardians of our culture. A big part of our culture is all about how people feel. Now, I would be sitting here and lying if I said that every person in BVI feels absolutely wonderful. you know, that's the imagination. It's a great altruistic view to be able to have and maybe one day we'll get there. But I think the main thing is that people feel that we do actually care. ⁓ Kelsey Willock (27:12) Mm. Andy Dawson (27:29) And how we show it cares. Now, I think you're absolutely right. The world of AI is going to transform the way businesses and companies operate. But you can't take away from the fact of people still have got a long way to go and learn. ⁓ I'd love to say that I am an expert in all things AI. I am nowhere near close and I am just literally scratching the surface. But to me, my first question is, what does this mean for our employees? What does this mean for our people? If we put an AI solution in place, is this going to make their life meaningfully better or different. ⁓ And part of that when I come to it and think about the human connectivity is most of the time people just want an answer. They don't know. Now we can talk about the ideas of self-service, internet's wickedly fast, information's available at your fingertips. I can spend months and weeks and days searching for things, but sometimes I just wanna talk to somebody. Now if AI can give me a version of somebody to talk to, that's great. But also, I want to save time. Can you just point me in the right direction? I think that's where going a little bit, it may feel a bit old school with a newsletter, but you know what, works. People still read them. People still look for the information. And if it's like, hey, did you know? And then doing the simple things, lunch and lunch. We've got, again, look where your company is from a demographic perspective. We've got people who are preparing now for their first, second, third child going off to college. Have they prepared? Have they saved enough? Got people now thinking about retirement for the first time. If you've never had an organization that you've got to think about retiree populations, then it's going to come sneak up on you really fast. And that's things we've had to learn and adapt to as well. Making sure that people have answers like, what happens if I choose to retire in the next three, four, five years? what happens to my pension, what happens to medical coverage, and having answers for those things is going to start to become even more and more important. Kelsey Willock (29:30) Well, Andy, it's been such a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Just as a quick recap of our conversation and some of the key takeaways I took were this approach to thinking about a global population, wherever you are in the world, a good wage, you had said, means very different things. And there's really no one size fits all solution to an employee base. You have to think about starting with your basic tenants. But recognize those basic tenants can even be replicated in all different countries and finding unicorns not possible. We need to think really clearly about the cultural context of where we're offering certain things. I also loved how you had mentioned that money and changes in pay can make short term impact if we don't think about it more holistically. And how do we better understand what people are really seeking and looking for? Well, ask them questions like what did you expect? and what attracted you to the company when you first joined and how we met those expectations. It's such an easy thing to do and something that we all so often can forget. And then lastly, I just love this overarching theme of our conversation that you need to think holistically about all decisions. Whether it's introducing a new healthcare provider or thinking about how to effectively communicate pay of a new hire, there are triple down effects to those decisions and we need to think about them. before making them in a point in time. So as we tune out, I'd love for you to share with our listeners where they can connect with you beyond this conversation. Andy Dawson (31:05) No, for sure. mean, one, you can always find me on LinkedIn. Happy to connect with anybody there and share any ideas. Reach out to us at BBI. Reach out to anyone on the team. We'd always be happy to share what we're doing. Kelsey Willock (31:17) Well, thank you so much, Andy. hope you can stay warm. California weather's headed your way soon. Andy Dawson (31:20) I hope so too. Thanks Kelsey.