Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / The Employee Benefits Paradox: Great Programs No One Uses
Transcript
- Kelsey Willock (00:42) Welcome Melissa Zaino, Director of Global Benefits at the Zayo Group. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. We're so beyond excited to have you. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit more about your current role, your background, and where you're calling in from today. Melissa Zaino (00:50) Thanks for having Sure. So I'm calling in from Boston, Massachusetts. I have been in my role since February of 2023. My prior history leading up to this was ⁓ mainly benefits and systems implementations, but I decided in coming into this role that I just wanted specifically benefits administration at the strategic level to be able to... add value in a very crucial time for Zayo’s growth trajectory. Kelsey Willock (01:23) and tell me a little bit about the Zayo group and the breakdown of the employee base. Melissa Zaino (01:28) Sure. They are a fiber company. So we compete with the Google and the Verizon of the world. The employee base right now, we have about 2600 people. That'll change shortly, but I won't go into that here. And we have, I'd say the largest group we have is networks and technology. So we call ourselves Telecom and tech as, you know, together, Tech Telecom. And I'd say about half of our base maybe is field technicians. But then other than that, we have, you know, sales and marketing and your regular administrative ⁓ functions. So, you know, pretty standard as far as that side of the house, the administrative side of the house. Kelsey Willock (02:11) Sounds like a pretty diverse workforce that you've been in. So before we get into all the amazing work that you're doing at the Zayo group, as well as the current landscape, I'd love to get to know you better a little bit more personally. So tell me a little bit about your earliest memory of money. Melissa Zaino (02:13) It's very diverse, yeah. My earliest memory of money. I would think it's probably getting like dollar bills in cards from grandparents and parents for birthdays or in Easter eggs, you know, getting a quarter or so here and there. That's what I think of when I think of my earliest memory. Kelsey Willock (02:46) that and given you know Easter just passed I am sitting at my desk with a bunch of cards on my desk and have still to this day received some money and cards and no matter what the amount it always makes me feel good. Melissa Zaino (02:58) That quarter when you're five or six years old, that quarter and an egg is everything you can think of. Go straight to the piggy bank. Kelsey Willock (03:02) means it. ⁓ so cute. And what was your first job? And if you recall, what did you spend your first paycheck on? Melissa Zaino (03:11) My very first job was working as a checker, cashier at Randall's Supermarkets in Houston, Texas, where I grew up. I can't remember what I spent it on. I probably spent it on, there were magazines back in, back in the eighties where you would get song lyrics for different songs because if you didn't have the album, you didn't have the words and we didn't have all the online stuff. So I used to go out and buy those magazines and then I would learn all the lyrics to all the songs. So that's probably the first one. And then the second one would be gas for my car, which was 99 cents a gallon, I think when I was driving. Kelsey Willock (03:52) Do you remember any of those songs or the art? Love. Melissa Zaino (03:54) my gosh, Rock the Casbah by The Clash. ⁓ I'm sure there was a Duran Duran song or three in there, Aerosmith. It was all genres that you could get ⁓ in one magazine. yeah. Kelsey Willock (04:09) That's so cool. I love that. And the first I've asked this question to a lot of people. That's the first time I've heard that one. So I love it. But I have heard gas and food come up quite a bit. How do you think your money story has impacted how you think about pay and benefits on behalf of your employees? Melissa Zaino (04:15) Thank Thank So my money story gets a little cloudy around probably late. Well. early teens, my father's, my father worked for a company that dealt very heavily with Libya. And when the oil embargo, when the embargo happened with Libya, we went from, you know, being a fairly comfortable middle-class family to having to watch every single thing that we, you know, spent. And this was during the oil boom. to not have was kind of an anomaly for at least my neighborhood. And then I would say the second thing that has shaped my attitude around money is getting underwater with credit cards and just taking out cash advances with abandon. And I was in some situations where I really needed to do that. And I wasn't making the money that I thought I was making in accordance with taking this money out. So I entered a consumer credit counseling program. So, and not like the ones you see today that, you know, are a dime a dozen, you can, there was one called literally Consumer Credit Counseling Corporation in Texas that I think may have been associated with the state, but they helped me get everything aligned so that I was able to start from really afresh with how I handled my bank accounts, how I handled credit cards, and those habits still are. are innate in me to this day. Kelsey Willock (05:56) Thank you so much for sharing that. know that many conversations like this are not always easy, but what I love about asking this question is helps create the sense that we are not alone. We each have such unique money stories and the people like you, I know understand that there's a lot going on with your employee workforce. Not everyone has credit card debt situations, but maybe there's other anxieties that they're dealing with. But that human angle, perhaps through coaching that you had gone through can be instrumental in changing people's Melissa Zaino (05:57) Yeah. Yes. Kelsey Willock (06:26) lives. Melissa Zaino (06:27) Yeah, I think it's knowing when to raise your hand. And I was probably a little bit late in raising my hand on that, but it still put me on a path to solvency. It took a few years, but I was able to get there. So it was patience and discipline and fear of a bad credit score probably was also in that as well. yeah. Kelsey Willock (06:51) So kind of shifting into what's going on in today's challenges, I'm actually really curious as a follow up to your answer, how important is financial well-being to the company? Melissa Zaino (07:04) It's, it is foundational to an employee's experience. I remember back in 2002 ish, I had proposed a wellness plan at a company that I was working at and I was like, there are three legs on the stool, right? There's health, there's mental and emotional and there's financial and I couldn't get anybody to buy in on the financial, which I thought was so odd, but their thought was, well, we offer a 401k, we give you benefits for free and we have an okay match. So we don't need to be training people, you know, about more with regard to financial wellness, but it just wasn't a holistic look. And so I think it touches just like mental or physical, it touches every area of your life. And if you're not implementing sound financial wellness programs or financial wellness through benefits, then you're not doing your employees any favors ⁓ and they're likely having to go out and look elsewhere for ways to make ends meet, especially in today's economy. Kelsey Willock (08:06) I love that you also bring in the retirement part of that conversation, is financial wellness can't just be seen as retirement given that's when your workforce leaves the workforce. So how do you help people think about, you know, spending their paychecks today and tomorrow while they're actually there? And you and I both know that when you have that financial anxiety, it can be really hard to show up as your full self at work. Melissa Zaino (08:31) Yes. Kelsey Willock (08:32) Where do you see benefits breaking down most often today? Whether it has to do with understanding total rewards, benefits themselves, transparency, what's been going on? Melissa Zaino (08:44) So there's been a move the last several years in the market where people are moving away from an all-in-one bundled solution for medical or medical and pharmacy together and breaking it up. it's kind of like a monopoly, like breaking up the monopoly into different things. So one of the strategies that we had was to move from a fully bundled solution to having medical and really serving as having medical serve as a the baseline benefit that you have, carving out pharmacies so that we're able to take better, have more control over the formularies and being able to make sure that we're getting the rebates or the pass-throughs or the transparency that we need. But I think the biggest thing that's been happening is all of these point solutions that are happening. So there are point solutions for cancer, fertility, surgery, weight management, steerage right to preferred doctors. So that's great and that's an element of financial wellness. think that's critical. I think people moving away from the thought about 401k and match and investments and moving kind of embracing that additional thing of medical what we call medical support programs. Ours are all either low cost or free unless you're in an HDHP plan with HSA. Sometimes you have to meet the minimum deduction. Now, what the challenge is with that is that this is not how people ingest medical or consume medical, right? They want to go to their doctor in their plan and do their thing. They don't. We just actually had a survey and what has come out is we have all these great programs, but nobody knows how they all interact. So we end up not having the take up. And I don't think we're unique. So the take up isn't there. on these benefits that would save people thousands of dollars ⁓ if they utilize them. But for all of the promotion that we do, it's still opaque to people. And so we're now in this phase of really taking a look at the messages that we need to be imparting to our employees so that they truly understand what these programs are. And one of those things is as simple as don't lead your communications with the name of the benefit, lead your communications with what the benefit does, and then follow up with the name of the benefit. That's helped us a lot. So sort of like, that's the trend that we're seeing, the challenges that we're seeing with that trend and how we are in real time trying to deal with that. Kelsey Willock (11:18) think where you're also getting is, we have to reimagine how we meet people where they are because we're all deeply inundated. And it's great on one side when you have really phenomenal point solutions because I'm a believer that not everyone can do everything perfectly. Like if you are an expert at fertility, you might not be an expert in sleep. ⁓ But we need to meet the person that needs the fertility benefit. Melissa Zaino (11:42) Right. Kelsey Willock (11:46) and meet the person that needs the sleep benefit and the other person that needs the healthcare navigation tool. And I think that we're at such an interesting time where we one have to be really secure about the PII personal information while also adapting to the world in which we're all very effectively marketed to. So what is the world in which our employer can effectively market to us? Melissa Zaino (12:07) Yes. Kelsey Willock (12:11) So you sound like you've worked with a lot of really interesting point solutions. So I kind of want to shift into what's a benefit or a point solution that you've worked with, either at your company, you don't have to name names, or prior companies, you really seem go from attracting talent to transforming the lives of your employees. Melissa Zaino (12:32) So our point solution strategy has been in place for a couple of years, so it's relatively new. I personally think that when people, when candidates look at what we have and they see the suite, what we call the medical ecosystem, when they see sort of our concierge, which is a whole other thing to talk about, but like our concierge navigator in the middle and the spokes of all of the medical support programs coming in new. to the company, makes sense. It's people who have been with us, who are having to learn this with us, that are the ones that struggle. Where I've seen a lot of great feedback and where I do think there's transformation is our leave programs and the fertility benefit that we rolled out. It's actually not just fertility, it's fertility and menopause. So interestingly enough, when we put that benefit in, I was like, I bet you that there's probably gonna be 10 times more usage of the menopause benefit than the fertility benefit. And I was almost on the nose, correct. So that doesn't happen very often. So it's showing that we're meeting people at many stages of life. And so as far as attracting people and changing lives, that's one thing, people coming in. and feeling like they have a great benefits package that they can rely on. ⁓ But I think the retaining comes in with really making sure people are feeling financially secure, regardless of what stage in life they're in. We have parental benefits, we have caregiving leave benefits, we have fertility benefits, menopause. So people are thinking, and it's not just menopause, there is also a program equivalent for men. Right? So as they have hormone changes or, you know, they have different things that they're dealing with later in life. So whether it's, whether it's early in the family planning stage or the, or later stages, we have things for employees. And I think once they understand how that works and how to get to it, that breeds, I'm not going to necessarily say loyalty to the company, but I think it's more of a feeling of being appreciated by the company and being valued by the company. So I think instead of giving loyalty to us, we are showing people that we value them and we prize them. And we're doing that. The way we try to do that is through the benefits that we offer in addition to many other things. Kelsey Willock (14:59) So you mentioned a couple things that flagged for me ROI of these programs. So what is that kind of direct metric or outcome that you're seeking when introducing these programs? Is it engagement overall? Is it employee satisfaction? And the second part of that question is how do you communicate that up and make that argument internally? This is a program worth investing in. Melissa Zaino (15:22) Yeah. So the first, so I think one of the main things that we use is employee survey feedback. We generally take that survey feedback and act on at least one initiative that's happened. These support programs came out of that because people were saying the medical was too expensive. They couldn't afford to do things. The deductible was killing them. So we were able to put in the point solutions for that. When you talk about ROI, think again, it's the employee feeling valued. I think that it's savings, right? What's the savings? Which right now our programs are still fairly new. And I feel like trying to nail down ROI as a little bit of a knife on the hand game, trying to figure that out. But we've been able to realize actual dollar savings, ⁓ especially with one of the point solutions we have called Garner Health. ⁓ So if anybody doesn't know that, I'll pivot quickly. Garner sort of as a layover on your medical plan. So what they do is they look at your in-network providers. They identify the top 20 % of top performing providers, either by complications, readmissions, overall quality of service, and then they recommend those people. If you go to those providers, then it's free up until a certain amount. So you pay and get reimbursed or you wait until you get reimbursed to pay, but it's a nice way to be able to address that gap. So that was definitely hard, hard dollar ROI for us. And, you know, we're putting, we're putting together use cases all the time for our chief people and culture officer and our CEO and CFO. They trust us. The reputation that our department has is that we're not doing anything that's frivolous. We're always looking ahead at least 12 to 18 months to make sure we're making the right decision and kicking all the tires and making sure that the dollars actually look like what they need to look like. And that's by working with our consultants, working with, you know, the people over at whichever solution that we're looking at and making sure that data is sound. And we haven't had, you know, too much of a problem with being with pushback or being told that somebody is not convinced that this is good. I do think the employee feedback is some of the most valuable though. Kelsey Willock (17:45) I think it's really helpful because I think that a lot of the teams that I speak with, that ROI part of the conversation can be a challenge, but even you saying, know, alleviating, don't only look at ROI, you know, let the program play out and build that ROI narrative. ROI narrative can be told through the employee survey. So it's really great for our listeners to hear something like that as a straightforward strategy. Melissa Zaino (18:00) Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sure. Kelsey Willock (18:11) Last question for you, and it's probably hard to answer this question without talking a little bit about AI. What benefits trends do you think are going to shape the employee experience most in the next year? Melissa Zaino (18:24) Most in the next year. I mean, you can't avoid AI. It's everywhere, right? I think there's going to be a lot of experimenting to see how it can be used, not just from an offering, like not just like a support program offering where you go into a chat and there's AI in there, right? I think it's building systems that can go deep into analytics and come up with trends and themes. that will allow us to be better informed so that we can be smarter about what we're providing to employees based on their needs. Now, it may not be anything that they're saying they need. It could be that somebody's going deep into the data and saying that cardiovascular is an issue, but what specifically about that is an issue? do we need to be engaging different sort of cardio programs or things like that, right? I think what's tricky is the PII aspect. And so ⁓ I'm actually going to the ISCEBS Symposium this year. It's in Phoenix, International Society of Certified Employee Benefits Specialists. Great program. If people don't know about it, they can ask me. I can tell them all about it. But the theme of that symposium is AI and where we're going with it. And so I really can't say today where I think we're going to go, but I do think we can do things like Taking the most simple example, somebody wants to apply for a leave, right? They don't have to identify anything about themselves. We can set up a GPT that says, you know, not name, but ⁓ state need, whatever, and it'll give them a list of everything that's available to them, right? And it's not retained. So there's nothing in there that would be identifiable to the person themselves. ⁓ But that would take anonymizing the IPs and everything as well. But that's my dream to have something where people can go and feel that benefits and leave can be demystified in plain language through a simple prompt and getting what they need the first time. Kelsey Willock (20:22) Such a good point because as we were kind of talking about before, making sure we're really customizing language, meeting people wherever they are that is in conflict with PII. And so how do we make sure we are meeting people where they are with highly personalized tools, but not infringing upon their data rights? So I'm super curious ⁓ for a follow-up to hear a little bit about your learnings post that conference. Melissa Zaino (20:24) you Yes. I'd be excited to share. think it's going to be really interesting. started looking at the lineup and the topics and I think people are going to be very attuned to what's happening there. We have no choice. Everybody's heading that way and benefits cannot be a lagger in that. It's already a challenge to be seen as a strategic arm of the table and we are and I feel very grateful about that with my company. we're going to have to technologically keep up. Kelsey Willock (21:18) Well, thank you so much, Melissa, for your time. I learned so much from this conversation and I could ask you a million more questions, but I will respect your time. Where can our listeners connect with you beyond this conversation? Melissa Zaino (21:29) They can find me on LinkedIn, Melissa Zaino, Zayo Group, so they'll be able to see me and I can't be messed with the hairs purple on my profile as well. So that's the best place to connect with me. Kelsey Willock (21:37) you hope you have a wonderful afternoon and thank you so much again for joining us. Melissa Zaino (21:45) Thank you so much, I really appreciate the opportunity.