Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / Rethinking the Benefits Package Employees Actually Use
Transcript
- Beyond the Paycheck - Stephanie Elliott === Kelsey Willock Jones: [00:00:00] Welcome, Stephanie Elliott, Director of Benefits and Compensation at SGA Dental Partners. We're so excited to have you this week. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your career and background and where you're calling in from today. Stephanie Elliott: Yes. Thank you. Thank you for having me. My career and background started way back when, and I think I stumbled into it. I worked or lived in a town where there was an insurance company, and everybody was working there. So I'm like, "I wanna work with all my friends." It was an insurance company back when they actually processed claims manually, and my first job was in the mail room, and I worked my way up to processing claims to being, like, an adjustment analyst. And then it just kinda went from there. Some people came in, they were from HR, and I was like, "What is HR? HR sounds really cool." And I didn't know how to get into it. And I had moved towns, and there was a resort. They had two positions open. One was a restaurant manager, and one was an HR coordinator. And so I'm like, "I wanna try the HR coordinator." So I [00:01:00] applied, and they're like, "Yeah, this is great." I went through some interviews, and I wasn't getting a call, so I'm calling every week, "Have you made a decision? Have you made a decision?" And the vice president of HR was just like, "Why should I hire you? You don't have experience." I was like, I know, but this is what I can bring." And I guess I finally convinced her, and she hired me. And so after about eight weeks, I got promoted to benefit coordinator, and then it just went from there. I've gone from benefit coordinator to HR manager to recruiter, and I found that benefits is just my passion, and it's what I know and I'm good at just because I've been in it for so long. And so that's like, how I got to where I am now. Kelsey Willock Jones: Amazing. I'm really excited to learn a lot more about, all of the things benefits in your world and where you see the direction of the future headed. But before we get there, I'd love to learn a little bit about your first role. So can you tell me what was your first job, and do you recall what you did with your first paycheck? Stephanie Elliott: Yes. My very first job was I was 16, [00:02:00] and there was a really nice restaurant down the street from my house, served like prime rib and, which I love, and they hired me as a busser. And so that was my first job. And of course I get my first paycheck and I'm like, "There's a stereo that I really want." And so instead of buying clothes or makeup or anything, I saved up my money to get this really cool stereo, which I think at the time cost $300, which would be a lot of money now. But back then it was a lot of money. And then I just felt really awesome to be able to save my money and be able to get that. And I didn't have to worry about living expenses or anything else at the time, so that was nice. Kelsey Willock Jones: Do you remember any of the music that you were blasting on your first stereo? Any types of songs or artists that you loved following? Stephanie Elliott: Bon Jovi absolutely love him. Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, so Kelsey Willock Jones: Amazing. How do you think your relationship with money and money story has influenced how you think about showing up for people and making ultimate decisions around pay, benefits, and more? Stephanie Elliott: That is such a good question. So I think everything has [00:03:00] changed from where things were when I got into the workforce to where they are now and where they're going. And it used to be people go into a job, and they're there for 40 years, and they retire, and that's their paycheck. That's all they care about. And then there's a new generation where you realize you could start changing jobs, like every three or four years, and you can make more money. And so that was enticing. And so now employers are like trying to look how do we keep people?" Because now we know they're not gonna stay there for 40 years. They're actually looking for something more than just a paycheck. And so that's where benefits comes in. And so I find it really interesting what's gonna happen from here because millennials are coming in. They have a completely idea about everything and especially money. They wanna come in making a whole lot of money without a lot of experience. And so I think it's just, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens with the change in generations. Kelsey Willock Jones: And when you also think about the change of generations, we're also seeing a whole lot more be invested in supporting folks outside of [00:04:00] just their salary. And you spend a lot of time obviously in the benefits world. What do you think companies are doing right in terms of supporting the whole employee right now, whether it has to do with mental health, physical health, financial health? What are they getting right, and where do you think they're falling short? Stephanie Elliott: Where I see it going? Obviously the mental health. Where I see companies coming in, there's also a lot about with maternity benefits, not just parental leave, but also trying to conceive. And so there are some companies that are really coming out, and they offer some really great benefits that, help provide financial coverage for things like like IVF or adoption or servicing, things like that. I think there's gonna be a lot more focus on that as we go forward. Where I see that employers are failing is nobody seems to know what exactly to focus on. There's all these options out there, and it's, I hear associates saying, "Oh, I want this kind of benefit." But they just don't know how to put the emphasis on it, how to promote it, [00:05:00] how to get awareness out there, and they're not looking holistically. They're looking at, okay, let's focus on this aspect, and, we'll increase the EAP program, but we're not looking at how financial wellness comes into it and... or your physical and everything else and work-life balance. So it's like there's not this overall view of the holistic picture and trying to accomplishing things from that view. It's more like piecemeal. So that's where I see them falling short. Kelsey Willock Jones: Yeah. I'd love for you to say a little bit more about financial health in general. I think that this is a really interesting category, where historically companies have invested in it, but maybe it's about the retirement, once someone has left the company. Where have you seen financial, health programs fall a little bit short and what are you excited about in terms of the future there? Stephanie Elliott: So where I say it falls short is it used to be the company would say, "We have a 401(k) plan, and we will match 50 cents per dollar." And you got some buy-in, but [00:06:00] where they started seeing was that people weren't increasing their investments. They were just staying at that. And so then started talking about, "Okay, we will put you in as a new hire at 3% or 6%, and then every year we're gonna increase your percentage." And so I think that helps, but there's just not enough awareness of the retirement plans and what they can do for them. I also feel like this... historically, there's been some up and down with the market, and so people get a little bit more afraid. And also it's, if somebody is not going to be with that company for a long time, it's how much do they wanna invest? What are the... what is the matching investment? What else does the company do? I know some companies do profit sharing every quarter, which I think people have really liked that. And then just being able to invest inside into the company. But overall, there's just... people know about the 401(k), but there's just not enough knowledge about how it really benefits them and why they should do it. And just about financial wellness because there's a lot of issues with this economy right now, and people [00:07:00] don't have money. They don't have the extra money to invest. And so it's trying to work with financial wellness to figure out, how are you gonna be able to afford everything with the rising costs and your increase every year is 3%, which doesn't cover it. Kelsey Willock Jones: How do you think something like financial stress impacts the workforce? Stephanie Elliott: I think it's it impacts it severely because, when the financial, the, what you're getting from your company is what you're getting to s- support yourself. And if that isn't enough to be able to pay all of your bills, or maybe you have a situation that happens where now you have to take in an aging family member, now you have to care for them, and that's impacting your health, then it's just there's not enough out there to really be able to support people with that Kelsey Willock Jones: Can you tell me about a benefit or a policy that you introduced that you found helped specifically remove a barrier that was getting in the way of people doing their best work? Stephanie Elliott: Yes. At my last company we had an issue with people who went on a leave of [00:08:00] absence, and they would return from leave of absence, and the system could take 48 hours or more to get them access. Which obviously that doesn't work because people need to come back, they need access. They can't do anything for two days. And one of the things I did is I worked with IT and said, "What are we gonna do to fix this?" And we came up with a plan where they were able to build something to where if we return somebody in the system, it automatically kicked a ticket over to IT, and they could return within 20 minutes. And so that was huge. That was a barrier that I removed. It was just one of those barriers that everybody thought this was always how it's gonna be. And I was like, "No it isn't. We're gonna fix it." Kelsey Willock Jones: Phenomenal. And when you think about introducing programs like this, how do you actually measure impact and how do you think about building that connection between supporting folks and, the quality of their output thereafter? Stephanie Elliott: So what I find is that when you're [00:09:00] looking at the output and everything, you have to look at it holistically again, I think. Because, like for an example, when I look at this, I am looking to see what can I do for the associate? What is gonna make things better for them? And it may not necessarily be what's best for the company. A good example of this is that I implemented a leave of absence vendor, and when we had... We used to have an elimination period for your first week, so you had to use PTO or whatever. And as we changed vendors, I wanted to streamline things and automate the files and file feeds and everything, and I wasn't going to be able to do that because of the elimination period. The vendor could only go back to the start of the leave and which kinda defeated our purposes. So I suggested, "Why don't we just cover the elimination period and then we're covered?" And so I brought that to the head of the company and got his buy-in, and so that's what we ended up doing. And [00:10:00] so that's where you're not really sure, what is the return going to be. It's great for the associates. The company has to cover it, but it's still, it's one of those things where, you know it helps the associates financially because maybe they didn't have PTO. And Kelsey Willock Jones: so what you're describing is a really interesting use case where maybe a spreadsheet didn't obviously support, instilling a program like that. That can certainly be a challenge when working with senior leadership or CFOs that might want this kind of, for every dollar you spend, there's a $3 output. How did you make that case so effectively? Stephanie Elliott: That is a good question. I'm very passionate about what I do and what I can do for associates. And the way that I presented it was that, we have all of these complaints that have... We've been with this lead vendor for 15 years, and nothing has ever gotten better, and now we have the opportunity to make it better with this new vendor. And, we're trying to show that they're best in class and that this move is to help out the [00:11:00] associates and, not necessarily to help out the company, but to help them. And, overall, it's going to benefit them. It's also gonna allow us to streamline things, so it's gonna cut down on processing time, and they can get paid faster, they can return to work faster. And he said okay. So that's how I got it. Kelsey Willock Jones: Amazing. So it's really all about, what's the actual story and why should this matter even if it's not, immediately a numeric amount? Can you tell me about an experiment implementing perhaps a benefit strategy that didn't go the way you expected? Stephanie Elliott: Yes. So I would say that this was my very first job as a benefit manager, and I had gone from being like a benefit analyst type of a position to being hired as a benefit manager. And it was for a company that was moving from San Francisco to Kansas City, and they wanted me to take over the benefits. So I'm looking at them, and I'm like, "Man," I'm like, "We don't have short-term disability. We don't have long-term disability. We don't have cancer. We, we don't have all these [00:12:00] policies. We don't have a leave vendor. We're doing it all in-house." And so I presented the case to say, "This is why we need to get it for all of our associates." And I got the buy-in, but what I was not thinking of was that it was two of us doing the job and trying to implement, I think it was five different new vendors. It was just, that was not the way that you should really go about it. You probably need more people, maybe kind of space it out over time. So that was something I learned, and I made sure I never did that again. Kelsey Willock Jones: It's such a great example. How do you think about staying on top of what's current? Are there, specific conferences you attend, peer networks you're a part of, startup ecosystems? There's so much going on in the world of HR and benefits right now. It's so rapidly changing. I'm always curious, how do people keep a pulse on it? Stephanie Elliott: So there is an article. It's, I think it's through a law firm. It's called JD Supra. I don't know if you are familiar with it, but you get daily newsletters, and you can put it towards what you want. Do you [00:13:00] want international? Do you want payroll? Do you want benefits? And so I signed up for that, and I have found that has been the best source. They are so on top of everything. I will get a notification about a law changing, and I go to legal, and they hadn't even heard about it yet. And so for me, that is one of the best sources I've found. Obviously, there's SHRM and there's other networks out there, but that really has been the best one that I have found Kelsey Willock Jones: Can you say the name of it one more time? I wanna make sure that our listeners caught it. Stephanie Elliott: JD Supra. So JD Supra. Kelsey Willock Jones: Amazing. So definitely check it out and subscribe to that if you want to be completely on top of it. And then lastly, what's a shift in compensation or benefits that you see coming that most HR leaders aren't ready for? Stephanie Elliott: The millennials, because it is such a different mindset. One of the things that I think is coming, it's coming up in some countries, is the 40-hour workweek. It's shifting, and maybe it's 32 hours, or maybe it's four [00:14:00] days a week, 10-hour days. But I think there's gonna be a shift there, especially with the millennials, because they want freedom. They wanna be able to go do what they need to do, come and go, and then they want to be able to do the work and not have to worry about being there for, 40 hours a week. So I think that is a huge piece of it. I also think that when it comes to the workforce in general, it's people are getting more vocal, and there's gonna be more of a focus on some of those benefits that maybe not a whole lot of people are gonna use, but they're gonna be very beneficial for some people. One, and I'll just throw this out there, is like pet insurance. It's, not a lot of people sign up for it, but the people who use it love it. But it's gonna be little things like that. I think that I don't see anything out there really for elder care. And so I think that there's gonna be something for that, at least I hope so. And I think that there is probably going to be a shift at some point in time about compensation for especially with the [00:15:00] millennials. I think there's just gonna be a big shift. I'm not sure exactly what yet. But there's gonna need to be more of a focus on holistic everything, which is your paycheck, your benefits, your leave of absence. And so that's what I'm seeing in the future. Kelsey Willock Jones: Totally makes sense. And I love how you bring up the fact that even if something is only used by a few folks, it doesn't mean it's not immensely valuable. It just means it's immensely valuable to a subset of employees, and not all employees have the same needs. And so if there's one last thing that you'd love to leave our audience with, what would that final message be? Stephanie Elliott: I would say listen to your associates. They are the ones who are gonna be able to tell you what it is that they really want. If you're not talking to them, you're not gonna know. You're gonna implement something, and then you're like nobody's using it." You didn't ask if they really want it or not. So I think you gotta be really focused on that. I also think that there's gotta be more of a focus on mental health and people with elderly parents having to take care of them 'cause roles are shifting. So I just think as a whole, is [00:16:00] really shifting within the workforce and how things are gonna be going forward. Kelsey Willock Jones: Thank you so much, Stephanie, for your time and all of your wisdom. Where can our listeners connect with you beyond this conversation? Stephanie Elliott: Yes, absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn. My name's Stephanie Elliott. I got married over the summer, so it's changed. But Stephanie Elliott is a great place to find me, or you can actually email me. It's Stephanie Elliott and the Elliott is two Ls and two Ts @gmail.com Kelsey Willock Jones: Fabulous. Thank you again, Stephanie. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. Stephanie Elliott: All right, thanks. You too.