Latest / Beyond the Paycheck / 400 Sign-Ups in a Week: The Hidden Demand for Financial Wellness
Transcript
- Beyond the Paycheck - Ernie Florkowski === . [00:00:00] Welcome, Ernie Florkowski, director of benefits at Element Materials Technology. Thank you so much for joining us on this Friday. Thanks, Kelsey. To kick us off, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your current role, your background, and where you're calling in from today. Yeah, sure. My current role is, head of benefits and actually the colleague experience team here at Element Materials Technology, and I'm based in Cincinnati, Ohio. I've been here about a year and a half. It's been a journey, but I've been here. And i don't know if you've looked up what we do, but we're a testing inspection certification company, is what Element does. So, we test anything and everything. I'm in the Americas division, so we have labs in Canada, the US, and Mexico, and we test all kinds of stuff. So think of building products, like the windows on your home, for hurricane ratings for the door from your garage is a fire-rated door versus a door in your bedroom is different. We test medical devices. You name it, we test it. So ~it's, it's been a, it's been a great, ~great journey here. [00:01:00] And how many folks work for the company? And tell me a little bit about the population. Yeah, sure. So, in the Americas division, so Canada, US, and Mexico, we've got about 4,000 employees. We've got about 100 different locations. Just one lab in Mexico, and the rest are spread out through Canada and the US. Our largest population sits actually in California, believe it or not. We've got about over 800 employees in California. We do a lot of work for space and defense, so some of our clients are, like, Boeing, SpaceX that kind of stuff. And most of our employees work in a lab, and they test those products. Like I said, I'm in Cincinnati, and this is what we call our global business solution center, so it's all the back office stuff that happens in a company. So I'm sitting here with legal, accounts payable payroll, IT. All that back office, we all sit together here ~for, ~for the Americas, awesome. Lots of questions, uh- Yeah ... in this element. But before we get to, a little bit more about what the company does and then- Yeah ... how you think about it then today ~I, ~I wanna back up and learn a [00:02:00] little bit more about your first job. Okay. So what was your first job, and do you recall what you spent your first paycheck on? ~That's, ~that's a great question. So ~I, ~I really thought about that. So my first job, like, where I actually got paid was I was a baseball umpire- Ooh ... believe it or not. Yeah, so it's probably a different one than probably some of your other guests. But I was so early teens, so 12, 13, something like that. And, you know, ~you didn't get, ~you didn't get a lot of money then. I think I got, like, maybe five bucks a game. Um, and w- I know what I spent my first paycheck on. I bought a pair of Air Jordan shoes. Cool. Air Jordan 1s is what I bought. I blew my entire paycheck. Worked all summer to get a pair of Air Jordan 1s that year. Yeah, that was a good memory. I was like, "Oh, ~that, ~that's a great question, Kelsey." Yeah. So baseball umpire. Great use of free will. Yeah. Great use of free will. Yeah, it was. How do you think your money story even your first job or first job, post graduating, has influenced how you think about showing up for your people? Oh, that's a good question. You know, ~I, ~I really feel like what I learned through work, and [00:03:00] I've been working a long time, to start with that baseball umpire job up till today, it's been, like, 40 years of earning money. You know, I think what I learned is work is personal to people. I think people value more than just a paycheck. And, when you're I'm in the benefits role now, but when you're an umpire in baseball, you're not thinking about benefits when you're, 10, 11, 12 years old. You don't care about that. But, being in this space now, I see where it's more than a paycheck. It's the retirement. It's a pension plan. It's the benefits. And learning that throughout my HR career I think it's been very important that we as a company, and all the companies I've worked in, especially in the benefits space, is supporting those employees, your podcast here, beyond the paycheck, right? How do we help them, succeed in their life just beyond pay? So when you think about, supporting people beyond pay- Yeah ... uh, companies are doing a whole lot right now to support that whole person, whether it's in their mental health, physical health, financial health- Yeah ... payment. Can you share with me a little bit about what you're specifically doing, and where you think [00:04:00] companies are falling short? That's a good question. I think here at Element what we do is one of the things that we've done really well is keeping our plans affordable, especially on the employee-only stack of benefits. So look at the big three, right? Medical, dental, vision, what we do. We keep that very affordable. So for... It's under $800 a year, you can have medical, dental, and vision cover for employee only. You can have that at our company, and it's... And we're in 27 states in the US. So- Right ... for US benefits that's pretty good in 2026, I think. So our company, and it really comes from our CEO of the Americas, Rick. He's actually Dutch, so he's a foreign guy- Mm ... but he really believes in supporting the worker through their benefits and offsetting some of those costs. And so we as Element subsidize that employer portion of the benefits to really keep it affordable for our employees. So I think that's one way. The other way is, we offer a wide variety of benefits. So [00:05:00] it's not just medical, dental, and vision. I think people when they think benefits, that's what they think of. Those are kind of the big three, right? But we have that, and one thing we instituted, and you mentioned financial wellness, so we do that here as well. We have a partnership with New York Life and we launched... It's free to our employees. They were very responsive to that. It was... 'Cause I had some general managers in our labs reaching out like, "Hey, you know, what can we do financial education wealth-wise for our employees?" And I'm like, "Whoa, hold on. ~We got something coming. ~We got something coming." And we launched this with New York Life, and it went out to all our US employees. And I think in the first week, I think New York Life called me. Picked up the phone and called me and said, "We've had an overwhelming response." I'm like, "How many did you have?" And they said, "In the first week we had 400 people sign up for this." I was like, "Whoa." That's a lot for one week just getting it through company email. That was all. That's the only way we launched it. And so what it tells me is there's a need out there, at least in our company. It's probably true across America, just the cost of goods are going up. You know, my pay's not matching the rate of [00:06:00] inflation or the cost of eggs, the cost of groceries, that kind of stuff. So it's really about educating our workforce on, okay, so how you lived yesterday is not how you're gonna live today, and we need, we need to educate you better on how to spend your money When you think about why financial health is important to the company- Yeah why do you think that is? And that might sound like an obvious question, but, I would argue- Mm-hmm ... that a lot of benefits, it's not as obvious. It's not easy- Yeah, I agree with that ... spend $2, you know, save three. Yeah. So why, why do you think it's important to the company? So I think with financial health and wellness of our employees, if we have happy employees, we're gonna have good workers. So when they're stressed and they're worried about, "How do I pay for groceries? How do I pay for this doctor visit? How do I take care of my kids?" , If we can help educate them that with this platform and walk them through that and show them how to save money, how to take advantage of our 401k and think about your future, They're going to be better employees. An then... if they're not under stress, that means they're healthy, so they're gonna be [00:07:00] at work. They're not gonna take time off, right? So if we can help them with some of that stress at home, they're gonna be better workers when they come in. And how do you think about making that internal case for investment in something when, maybe it's not so obvious on the spreadsheet to support it? Yeah. That's a real good question. Again, going back to the healthy employees, we haven't launched it here at Element yet. At a previous role what we did, we launched a wellness program for our employees. And Kelsey, what I found is a lot of people don't like change. Mm-hmm. You know, they'd never done it before, and they're like, "Well, what is this?" So what we did is we required the employee to get... All they had to do was get a physical, and that's all you had to do, and just turn it into form that says, "Ernie got a physical. Kelsey got a physical." I'll be... I don't need to know any of your data and your PHI. I don't need to know that. I just need to know if you got a physical, yes or no. And what we did was we gave them a significant savings on their insurance. So I said, "Look, I'm gonna ask you to do this, but I'm gonna take some money off your rates." And they're like how much?" So we ended up taking $100 a month off [00:08:00] employee cost when I was... This was a company called Atos. And, that really kind of got people thinking, like, "Well, if I just go to the doctor's and get a physical, and it doesn't really cost me anything to go 'cause it's part of your plan anyways, I could save $200." And it got people thinking, so we got people doing that. And then the next year we added a spouse. So if you had a spouse on the plan, they had to get a physical. Again, I didn't need to know any PHI but they got to do the physical. And I think the thing for me with that is, again, going back to that stress at home, right? So if you have a spouse or a partner and they're not well, that creates stress on you, so then you're gonna bring that to work with you. Mm-hmm. So if we could catch things early, and that was . where I was going with this. We had... I think I had about 12 spouses, female, that reached out to me that their male husbands were kind of stubborn and didn't go to the doctor's, and didn't get their annual check. And what we found was we had 70% of our employees hadn't had a physical in three years, just based on- Wow our [00:09:00] data. Yeah. So that was really the impetus to drive that wellness deal there. And when we did that with the employees, I had, like I said, about 12 of them that reached out to me and said, "Ernie, I know you did this. My husband was resistant to do it, but we're so glad you did it. We caught cancer early. We caught a heart problem early." He had some rare genetic disease we weren't aware of, but they ran this blood test and they found it. Now we can deal with it now versus five years from now when it's- Right ... when it's worse, right? So- You know, doing that, again it's gonna cost us money, right? 'Cause we're reducing the cost of the employee spend versus the employer spend. So we, as the employer, we ate that $1,200. But we We felt like it was $1,200 investing in the employee. Mm-hmm. Again, keeping them healthy. If they're healthy, they're gonna come to work. If they don't have stress at home, they're gonna come to work. They're not gonna bring that baggage to work. They're gonna be focused on their work, do their job, and go home. So we felt like it was a really good investment in that. After that first year where no one liked it, but we had really good [00:10:00] response, and then I left there in 2019. It w- it was kind of like old hat by then. So it's like, "Oh, yeah, I gotta do my, I gotta do my physical. No problem." And then we had the people that resisted, and they had to pay more. And we said, "Look, if you're not gonna get the physical, then you know what? We're gonna charge you more." And that also piqued interest. People said, "What do I have to do?" "Just gotta get a physical." "Okay." So yeah. So I think it was a really good... it sounds simple to get a physical, 'cause I think a lot of times we take for granted most people just go get an annual physical, right? But I had plenty of people that they didn't want to, it was well worth the program. Now, now I wonder what that would look like applying to dental care. Right. That's another good one. People love avoiding the dentist. I know. They have more fear of that than any other doctor, I think so. Yep. They certainly do. And, uh, myself included- Yeah ... but I still get myself there. It- the preventative care- Every six months. Every six months, right? It's so, so important. Um- They are ... you know, and ultimately there are a lot of business implications that can happen, Correct ... if people don't, you know, such as ending up in the ER. That's a good point when it's really moments of [00:11:00] crisis. Oh, I hear that. But I love your thoughts. It's not just in the perspective of how does the company think about, you know, saving money, it's how do you make sure your people are okay. Yes. Absolutely. And, , and when your people are okay, they're gonna do better work. And when their spouses are satisfied that they're getting, you know, taken care of at work, they're probably telling their partner, "Z- I'm really happy you work there." And so- Right ... I love that you think about it, not just from the context of you know, this only numeric perspective, but you ~rec- Right ... ~recognize that there is, you know, bottom line impact when you treat people well. It is. You know, I really... That really comes here at Element from our top. So like I said, Rick is our CEO, Lynn's our CFO, and my boss is our head of HR, Mitch. And when I started here in 2025... I started February '25, and one of the things Mitch said to me that's really kinda resonated throughout the company is that, "Ernie, your most important thing in your life is your health and your family." And I was like, "Ooh." I've never had a boss say that I've been in HR for 22 years, Kelsey. Not one [00:12:00] boss has ever said that to me until I got here. And I was like, "Okay, this place is gonna be different." And it has been. Right. It's very much focused on your health and wellbeing as a person, as an employee. Again, touching those things at home, how does it affect work? So that really was driven into me here almost week one. He said, "Those are the two most important things." I was like, "Wow, okay. It's not about what's on the spreadsheet, what's on the numbers. Did we make our sales numbers for the month?" He was like, "Your health and your family." And I was like, " Okay." I said, "I think I'm at the right company. I really do." So I have two questions to follow up on that. Yeah, sure. W- we're living in a really interesting time, specifically around AI, and it's hard to avoid. Yeah. And I think there's there's kind of this dichotomy going on where there's the companies that are highly investing in their people, it sounds like Element. Yep. A- and then there's the companies that are saying, let's actually focus on removing people. Right. And, and, you know, not that efficiency is always, connotated with removing people, but there's certainly that narrative. I think [00:13:00] we're all seeing it in the news, you know, 30% layoffs- Yeah ... et cetera. Yeah. Why do you think investing in people continues to be so important? Part of it is it's cultural, it's coming down from the top. Yes. What else does investing in people mean for the company? You know, I think, uh, as we invest in those people, I think there's only so much AI can do. Yeah. And we've learned here in, in HR, and actually we're doing some projects with AI in our department now. And I'll give you a good example just from my own team. We manage the HR ticketing portal. So kinda like IT is the help desk, we have an HR help desk- Yep ... and ticketing. Yep. So we have that as well. So we're working with We have a team here at Element that's how do we integrate AI into what we do. So we stuck our hand up first 'cause like I think ~we, ~we could use this. So we're using it to help us prioritize tickets- ... ~and, ~and to go find the data. So in HR we get a lot of questions like Kelsey might ask, like, "Well, how much PTO do I have?" So- Yep ... our AI's not gonna give you the number, 'cause we don't want that liability. [00:14:00] We're gonna give you how Kelsey can go look it up in our HR system. "Hey, Kelsey, that's a great question. Here's the form. Please log into Dayforce." You can see the number itself. Yep. Versus our AI kicking out saying, "Kelsey, you have, 75 hours of PTO, and when it comes to you it's 750." Now, you know, AI got it wrong, right? So we're really looking to how to partner with AI, especially in HR. Mm-hmm. But, you know, I think Element's view is we're viewing it as a tool- Yep ... and ~not a, ~not a threat. And ~I, I, I, ~saw some of those recent companies, larger tech companies are s- laying off 20,000 people, that sort of thing, because of AI, and, Element's sta- our stance is ~we, ~we are really trying to invest in AI as another tool. Just you know, ~your, ~your software you're using here today. It's another tool to help you do your job, and we've really taken that approach. So to invest in the AI technology, 'cause ~that's, ~that's really not cheap right now, but then we gotta train our people on how to use it. Once we get it, now how do we use it? So we're doing some of that right now with my own HR team, [00:15:00] and colleague experience and benefits, and ~how, ~how do we train the AI to better help our colleagues find the questions? So ~we're, ~we're going through that right now as an exercise, so... Following up on, you know, innovation- Yeah ... how ~are, ~are you staying current on what's actually working, what you want to invest in, what you're excited about? Are there specific conferences, you know, peer networks- Oh ... startup ecosystems that you're- Yeah ... kind of part of that-... you know, really excite you? That's a good question. So definitely networking. If I've learned anything in my... ~I said ~I've been in HR 22 years. I'm not alone in the boat is what I say. There... I feel like there's always somebody who's stumbled across a problem that I'm stumbling across now, and I'll- Mm-hmm ... reach out to them. I've got several friends who are retired CHROs, And I'm like, "Hey, did you ever have this?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, I had that." I'm like, "Tell me how did you handle that?" So I've got a, a couple friends that way. I've got some that are currently in our network here in Cincinnati. One of the guys who's out there on the nationals, a guy named Steve Brown, he's actually the CHRO for a local [00:16:00] pizza place here in town called LaRosa's, and he's kinda like, I call him, like, the HR whisperer. He knows kinda what's going on. So if you wanna know what's going on, you pick up the phone and call Steve. And be like, "Hey, Steve, did you, did you hear about this?" "Ernie, yeah, I know about that." I'm like, "What, what's your take on it?" And learning all that and reaching out to different networks, and now what I'm finding is with my own team, I'm a little bit older than them. I'm, like, twice the age of my teammates that work for me. So it's been kinda interesting now to be the called experienced person in the room with my team. So I can pass my knowledge onto them, and, it's just that networking, I think, is knowing those things. Mm-hmm. Staying up with SHRM and we cover Canada as well, so we've got some, websites that help us with that. There's something called Citation Canada that helps us. We've got a couple other sites here in the U.S. that keep us with compliance and that sort of thing, and we get alerts all the time. I, there's not a week that goes by I don't get an alert for Canada or the U.S. or both, in the same week of something that's going on w- within the [00:17:00] HR space. Sometimes it's like a, you know, it might be like a payroll rate in Colorado has changed or something. Like, okay, that really doesn't apply to us, but w- we're learning about things. Like, the big thing right now is paid family leave states. I just got a notice- Mm-hmm ... from the state of Maine of all places. It's like, okay. So we handle that from benefits and my colleague experience team, and we handle that here at Element, and we have to stay on top of that stuff. 'Cause what we don't want is someone like Kelsey, who's living in Maine now, and going, "Well, I'm gonna go out on a paid family leave. Do you know about that?" And they're like, "No, I don't." So we always wanna say, "Yes. Hey, thank you. Yes. Please enjoy your time off. We'll take care of all your paperwork for you." So being that one step ahead, I think, in the benefits and colleague experience space in HR is really helpful here. And last question for you. Yeah, go ahead. What's one shift in compensation and benefits that's coming that most HR leaders aren't ready for? That's a good one. I really think benefits and comp is... more the benefits space. It's [00:18:00] transitioning towards that personalized experience, and I'm not sure how we're gonna get there, but I'm starting to see some of that. It's almost like having that Amazon experience, right? When you shop on Amazon- Mm-hmm It kind of knows what you've been looking at and what you're thinking of. I see that kind of trending in the benefits space too. Where, even with some of the, the carriers, they know that, maybe the last time you went to the doctor and your blood pressure was a little bit high. You get a phone call the next week that says, 'Hey, uh, we saw your numbers are a little bit up. Have you thought about, talking to one of our dieticians?'" And I'm like, "Wow." I'm like, so I've had some people ask me about that. I said, "It's totally legit," because they're trying to help you do better, so I think it's that personalized space is coming, I think, in benefits. Like I said, we're starting to get a little bit of it now, but I think that's the trend that's coming that not a lot of people are talking about. It's that personalization. It's almost, it's becoming so expected in consumer culture. I know. And my Instagram ads know me so well, they don't bother me anymore. That's a good one. I'm like, "This is great. I don't have to go surfing the web of -" Right ... "the pants that I, I think I wanna buy." I would- [00:19:00] Instagram already knows, and so it makes sense that- They know, and they say, "Kelsey, what do you think of this?" I'd be like, "Oh, I know. Oh, I like that." That's perfect. "That's perfect. Buy." So I think that personalization is coming to benefits as well. I think it's coming, thank you so, so much, Ernie, for spending- Yeah ... your time with us. You're welcome. Especially on a Friday. Oh, it's okay. It was a joy speaking with you. Yeah, definitely. Um, I learned so much, and I know that we could certainly keep this conversation going for far longer. Absolutely. Where can our listeners connect with you beyond this conversation? Yeah, certainly. I'm on LinkedIn. If you see my name, I'm the only Ernie Florkowski on LinkedIn, believe it or not. So you can find me on there and reach out. More than happy to talk to anybody about benefits or the great things we're doing here at Element. It's a great company, and I, I think it's kind of, .. you know, we're kind of flying under the radar, I think, in our space. But we're growing, by leaps and bounds. We hit record profit last year in sales and stuff, so we are- Great ... I think we're trending in the right direction. I think it's the right time to be at Element. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Ernie. I hope you have a wonderful weekend, thank you for joining us. Yeah. Thanks, Kelsey. [00:20:00]