PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 205 - Health & Benefits Leadership Conference Preview

HR Happy Hour 205 - The Health & Benefits Leadership Conference Preview

Recorded Thursday March 5, 2015

Hosts: Trish McFarlane, Steve Boese

Guest: Jennifer Benz

Listen to the show HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Trish and Steve were joined by Jennifer Benz, Founder and CEO of Benz Communications, and Program Chair for Human Resource Executive's Health & Benefits Leadership Conference, to be held April 8 - 10, 2015 at the Aria in Las Vegas.

On the show, Jennifer shared some of the most important themes and challenges facing Benefits and HR leaders today - health care plan design and reform, employee wellness, (particularly financial wellness), and the importance of educating and effectively communicating with employees on important benefits, wellness, and welfare issues.

The upcoming Health & Benefits Leadership Conference will help HR and Benefits leaders understand these challenges and trends, as well as provide insight and actionable ideas to take back to their organizations immediately. And in what has become a highlight in the young history of the Health & Benefits Leadership Conference, once again an exciting, 'Ignite' style Ideas and Innovators session will showcase the best, most leading edge, and provocative thinking on health, wellness, and benefits.

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Benefits and related spending can be as much as 30% of compensation budget for many organizations. Understanding how, where, and for what goals you are investing such a considerable amount of budget is one of the top priorities for HR and Benefits leaders today. On the show, Jen shared a preview of how the Conference can and will help you as a leader in making these critically important organizational decisions - ones that impact employee engagement, reputation, and retention.

We also lamented again (well, mostly Steve), about the terrible winter weather, Steve shared a slightly disturbing tale of a former neighbor and his snowblower, and Trish offered to talk about Benefits plan design with anyone at any time. We also talked about how cool the word 'formulary' is. 

You can listen to the show here, or using the widget player below, (Email and RSS subscribers will need to click through, or go to the show direct link)

Check Out Business Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Steve Boese Trish McFarlane on BlogTalkRadio

Also, listeners of the show who attend the Health & Benefits Leadership Conference can use the registration discount code BOESE15 (all caps), to receive $75 off the current registration rate.

As always, you can listen to the current and all the past shows from the archive on the show page here, on our HR Happy Hour website, and by subscribing to the show in podcast form on iTunes, or for Android devices using Stitcher Radio (or your favorite podcast app). Just search the iTunes store or your podcast app for 'HR Happy Hour' to add the show to your subscriptions.

This was a great show, and many thanks to Jennifer for being a part of the fun. 

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 202 - Zenefits and Disrupting HR Tech

HR Happy Hour 202 - Zenefits and Disrupting HR Tech

Recorded Tuesday February 17, 2015

Hosts: Steve Boese , Trish McFarlane

Guests: Parker Conrad,  Co-founder and CEO, Zenefits

Listen to the show HERE

In the latest HR Happy Hour Show, we were joined by Parker Conrad, Co-founder and CEO of emerging HR technology solution provider Zenefits. Zenefits has a innovative and unique approach to how it provides technology solutions to their customers - the HR and Benefits administration software is completely free for companies to use, Zenefits earns its revenue from commissions from insurance providers when customers elect to use Zenefits as their broker. It is a disruptive model on many levels.

But beyond that model, Parker shared Zenefits approach to building, supporting, and helping customers succeed with HR technology. One interesting concept Parker shared was the idea of how solutions should only gradually expose complexity to customers, i.e., the most common and generally simplest approaches should be on the surface, and only when more complex options are absolutely needed they should be revealed. This was a fascinating conversation with the CEO of one of the fastest growing enterprise technology companies in any domain - not just HR.

Additionally, Steve described the giant icicle hanging in front of his office window, we were reminded (again), that the show is much, much better with Trish in the house, software releases that are 'numbered' might mean complexity and trouble, and finally we learned that Steve once configured an ATS job requisition approval process that was 13 layers deep. Which was stupid.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, and using the widget player below, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through). 

Check Out Business Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Steve Boese Trish McFarlane on BlogTalkRadio

 

As always, you can listen to the current and all the past shows from the archive on the show page here, on our HR Happy Hour website, and by subscribing to the show in podcast form on iTunes, or for Android devices using Stitcher Radio (or your favorite podcast app). Just search the iTunes store or your podcast app for 'HR Happy Hour' to add the show to your subscriptions.

This was a really fun show, many thanks to Parker and Zenefits for joining us!

CHART OF THE DAY: The U.S. Uninsured Rate

With all the news and talk and debate about the ever evolving and complex set of requirements on organizations (and individuals) from the Affordable Care Act, it seems to me that one (fairly important) macro statistic often goes underreported, namely the percentage of people in the U.S. who still lack medical insurance.

If you had to guess, (don't peek at the chart below), what would you guess the percentage of U.S. adults uninsured to be?

It feels like it should be kind of high, right? Maybe 25% or 30%? 

But you'd also guess that with the opening of the ACA exchanges late in 2013 and with all the news and attention surrounding getting folks to navigate the buggy Healthcare.gov website and actually getting them enrolled in Medical coverage, that the uninsured rate should be dropping I would bet.

So what's the actual/estimated rate of uninsured adults in the U.S.? Check out the below chart from Gallup from their survey of 14,700 people in April 2014:

So according to the Gallup survey, the uninsured rate among U.S. adults sits at 13.4% and does show a gradual decline since the launch of the ACA exchanges. When I first saw the chart and the 13.4% figure, I felt it was kind of low, I am not sure why. It just 'felt' like there would be more uninsured folks than that.

The Gallup survey also breaks down this data into age/income groups, (click here for those details), but essentially they reflect what you'd expect - older, wealthier people are much less likely to be uninsured than younger and poorer people. But the trends in getting more people insured are improving across all age cohorts, which seems like a good thing.

I suppose I don't have any big lesson/takeaway from all this, just thought it was interesting.

Happy Thursday.

Big Ideas from the Health & Benefits Leadership Conference

I'm just back from the 2nd Annual Human Resource Executive Magazine's Health & Benefits Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, which was a fantastic three days of content and sharing of ideas on the most pressing and important topics in the areas of employer benefits, healthcare, and maybe the most important one - how healthier employees create better business results.

To me, while the deep coverage and the analytical review of the various strategic decisions and then tactical execution challenges that most USA organizations are facing from the new Affordable Care Act rules and requirements, mostly due to (for an outsider like me), the almost impenetrable nature of what these new requirements actually are, were critically important to many attendees, it was the 'bigger' ideas that were presented at the event that will remain on my mind going forward.

I was fortunate enough to help host and moderate the Conference's 'Ideas and Innovators' session, a fast-paced forum for leading thinkers in the benefits, healthcare, wellness, and modern workplace space to present (in rapid 5-minute 'Ignite' style talks), their own disruptive and new ideas that will be impacting how organizations address the crucial challenges in benefits and employee healthcare going forward.

While all six talks presented in the 'Ideas' session were fantastic, (really you should have been there), I wanted to call attention to three of the most interesting or challenging 'Big Ideas' presented in the session, and share some links to additional resources for folks who might want to learn more and explore these ideas in greater depth.

Dr. Zubin Damania - Dr. Damania presented a fantastic talk about his company Turntable Health, who are creating a health and wellness ecosystem focused on primary and well care. The big idea is really kind of simple - by doubling down on the investment and time spent on prevention and keeping healthy before you get sick, people and organizations will see dramatic improvements in things like hospitalizations, ER visits, and more. While the idea is simple, the execution is very novel, with Turntable being at the forefront of trying to change how we think about and deliver care in a broader sense. 

Lindsey Pollak - Bestselling author of Getting From College to Career, and the forthcoming Becoming the Boss, Lindsey presented a compelling and actionable series of ideas on just how organizations can better engage the next generation of their workforces in health and wellness programs and activities. Drawing on research collaboration with The Hartford titled 'Gen Y Speaks', Lindsey proposed that organizations should more fully embrace the characteristics of younger workers (desire for personalization, preference for modern technology, and relatively longer 'time to financial maturity', etc.), as they design and implement benefits packages, wellness programs, and overall workplace design. As it turns out, not just Gen Y values many of these things as well!

Brian Poger - Brian is the CEO of Benefitter, a company that focuses on helping organizations understand and and leverage the trillion (yes, that is trillion with a 'T') dollar pool of healthcare subsidies that are available. Brian's 'Big Idea' was truly challenging and provocative - that for many organizations and employees, that dropping employer-sponsored healthcare coverage altogether might be a win-win for both parties. Brian can help you do the math, but it just might turn out that for many employees at or lower than the median US income level, that dropping the coverage that you as an employer provide might be the next tool you can use to actually increase total compensation and improve access. Get in touch with Brian to learn more.

I'd encourage you to check out the interesting work being done by Dr. Zubin, Lindsay, and Brian, as well as the other superb presenters at the Ideas and Innovators session.

It was a really interesting and fun session with these and the other great presenters at the conference and if your job as an HR pro or leader touches how your organization delivers benefits or deploys programs meant to improve workforce health and well-being then you really should make plans to attend next year's Conference to be held in April 2015.

Thanks to program chair Jennifer Benz and Human Resource Executive for putting on such a great event and for allowing me to play a small part. 

EVENT: The Health & Benefits Leadership Conference

One of the cool parts of my job as Co-Chair of Human Resource Executive's HR Technology Conference, (set for this October 7 - 10, 2014, more information here), is the opportunity to get involved with some of the other initiatives and events under the Human Resource Executive banner, including the upcoming Health & Benefits Leadership Conference, to be held in my second favorite city in the world, Las Vegas, from March 17 - 19.

The Health & Benefits Leadership Conference is the nation's newest and most innovative Benefits event for HR and Benefits Professionals. Attendees will gain immediately useful solutions and ideas to help craft a solid benefits program that will attract new employees, retain top talent, improve employee dedication, enhance productivity and more. More than 50+ thought leaders will be on hand and will share how they are implementing innovative ideas and trends into their organizations, and getting results.

And like the HR Technology Conference, the Health & Benefits Leadership Conference focuses on showcasing what the leading companies and executive innovators are doing today in their strategic approach to health, benefits, wellness, and rewards to help their organizations meet their most important talent and business objectives. You will hear from leaders at great companies like Adobe, Walgreens, The Home Depot, Marriott, Cargill, Twitter and many more. Conference Program Chair Jennifer Benz has assembled a fantastic line up of speakers and sessions.

And, even your humble blogger (me), will be on hand, to moderate an Ideas & Innovators general session, where you will see six thought leaders each present a new, challenging, and cutting edge concept in a fast-paced 'Ignite-style' format, that will be sure to provoke you into thinking about a business challenge in a brand new way.

You can see the full program at www.BenefitsConf.com and if you can (and you should) join me and over 50 Benefits thought leaders in Las Vegas next month, you can register using Promo Code BOESE14 to save an additional $75.00 off the going rate.

Hope to see you there!