Name: jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Sustainable_Benefit_Strategies_07092025_4959909
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T06:25:38.333Z
Duration: 56 min 52 s
Description: jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Sustainable_Benefit_Strategies_07092025_4959909

Transcript for "jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Sustainable_Benefit_Strategies_07092025_4959909": Hello, everyone, and welcome to sustainable benefit strategies for every business stage. I'm Rob Parsons, I lead the brand and content team here at Paychex, and I'll be your moderator for today's event. So before we get into the content, just want to cover a few housekeeping notes. First note that the primary audio is coming through your computer, so make sure you've got your speaker volume set so that's, working correctly. Also, if you do need to refresh or reload your browser, you can just use these key commands right here. That sometimes helps if anything is glitchy for you. So, let's take a look at some other important features. First of all, I want to note that you can download and print a copy of today's content for future reference and access additional resources. We got a files and resources window at the top right of your console available at any time during the event. We'll also be sending a follow-up email with this recording and you can access all of this content through that link. Also, if you have any questions during today's webinar, you can send them via the ask us a question window. Just write down your question and click submit. We do have people in the back who are going to help respond to your questions. We hope to get some of those into the audience Q and A towards the end of the presentation. However, if we come up against time, we do want you to know that all questions are received to help us create future resources to meet your business needs. And finally, please note this presentation does not constitute legal advice. It's for informational purposes only. So in this expert led webinar, we have a fantastic panel session lined up, and I want to quickly walk you through what we'll be covering. We're going to start by looking at how to identify the needs of your business with regards to employee benefits. First, we'll explore how to create a sustainable benefit strategy that evolves with your business, whether you're just starting out or scaling rapidly. Our panel of experts will share insights tailored to all stages of the business lifecycle. Next, we'll dive into ways to boost employee awareness and participation in your benefit offerings, because even the best plans don't make an impact if your employees aren't engaged. So now, let's get to the introductions. Our first speaker is going to be Alex Meckling. Alex is the Director of Go To Market Strategy and Carrier Relations at Paychex Insurance Agency. He's built more than twelve years of success in benefits consulting. His expertise spans benefits compliance, customer experience, and digital health solutions for startups, private firms, and public companies. Next, Janine Kain is the Director of Market Strategy at Paychex Insurance Agency, where she leads strategic initiatives to strengthen market positioning and support growth, with a focus on delivering innovative, results driven solutions. And our third panelist is Gary Daniels, Chief Growth Officer at Thatch. Gary leads growth strategy for the platform, which simplifies personalized healthcare benefits through individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement, or ICHRA. His background includes executive leadership roles at UnitedHealthcare and I just want to welcome everybody to this panel and to this event. So I know this panel is excited to share all this practical information, so I'm going to hand it off to Alex now to take us through what you should be thinking about when it comes to the benefits programs and what you should be considering. Thank you so much, Robin. Welcome, everybody. So let's start with some foundational context. When we are referencing different life cycles of a business, we're talking about startups, businesses going through growth phases or companies that are operating at a more mature or enterprise level scale. And so let's review the kinds of benefit decisions that business owners, managers, H. R. Folks, finance folks will tend to focus on in each one of those business stages as you move from the earliest days to mature growth. So let's start with a start up. So for a lean or emerging business, something like ICRA or individual health reimbursement arrangements, self insurance or other solutions can provide flexibility and cost control. And how do you think about deploying those programs as your business is starting and starting to get into those initial phases of growth? What are the ROI calculations in return on investment that you can find by offering basic benefits early on? And how does that impact your employee population? And really, how do you help yourself as a business person or the folks that you're working with understand that investment and how it ties back to not just benefit strategy and not just human capital strategy, but also your broader business strategy. As a company scales and gets into that growth phase, what are the trends that we see or emerging things happening in the benefits industry more broadly that are impacting things like the types of products and benefits solutions that are coming to market? And how does that really bridge the gap between traditional insurance offerings and something that is much more adventurous, like full self funding? And how should a business really think about evaluating how you navigate through those different solutions? And when does it make sense to move from one type of solution to another? And last but certainly not least, for a mature, scaled enterprise level client, really, as you think about being in that phase of a business, how do you think about benefits fatigue and the administrative burden that is placed on internal teams as well as employees that are engaging with the benefit program? And how do you really evolve that benefit program in a way that actually meets the needs of your broader, more diverse, evolving workforce? And really, I think the other piece of this that becomes very meaningful for a mature enterprise is what is the role of data analytics and benchmarking that makes you in the driver's seat of really understanding how to ensure your program is staying sustainable and engaging over time. And so before we dive into some of the data and the detail around today's business realities, I'd like to hand it back to Rob to get engaged on our audience. Thanks, Alison. And I appreciate that. I really do want to check-in with actually the leaders here that are at this event, understand more about the challenges you're facing. So we've got a poll question here set up. How much time are you spending on administering employee benefits each week? Just click on the option that you are working with and click submit. So are you A, five hours or less a week? Is it very little? Are you six to ten hours? Are you doing it quite a bit? Or is it more than eleven hours a week? Is it really a lot of time? And then finally, some people, quite frankly, they just don't know. They're not thinking about it. It's just something that they have to take care of. So I'm gonna let this go for a little bit. We're up to about 30% of attendees. So go ahead, please let us know where you're at. It's really interesting to see the diversity of these audiences and of leaders and how they are handling benefits and how it's working up. So we're about 50% here. Take a look at some results soon. And here we go. So people aren't spending a whole lot of time, five hours or less a week. Now I imagine if you compound that over a whole year, it does add up. I mean, that's more than a week and a half of time. But what do you think about that, Alex? How's that match up with what you've been seeing in your experience? So it's interesting. I think it speaks to, just how busy, we all are running our businesses, and managing the things that we have day to day where benefits, isn't necessarily the business that everybody's in. It's a necessary part of the business. And so they're focused on really engaging with their clients, with their employees and focusing on their business in other areas. But I think something that's really important to come back to is that we are spending across the board a very little time each week on benefits, yet benefits still represent an enormous cost burden for every employer. And I think the statistics that we see here on this screen really make that clear. So according to Mercer's latest national survey, benefit costs continue to rise, with projections showing a nearly 6% increase in 2025. So cost is always top of mind. But what many businesses also overlook is how much value employees are actually placing on their benefits when they understand them and they use them. Employees definitely will be more loyal, more engaged and more impactful in the work that they do. Multiple studies, including with Mercer, demonstrate that. So what that really brings us back to is the reality that building a sustainable benefits program ultimately means striking a balance, offering the right mix of options while staying cost effective. We know that as costs continue to go up, that benefits will continue to be the second or third largest balance sheet item for any employer regardless of size. And so really it comes back to the idea of striking this balance between benefits that are impactful to the people within your organization and also are capital efficient. With the right guidance and the right tools, it's absolutely possible for employers to make that balance. A couple of other things we should double click on here. Many businesses also report that it's difficult for them to stay compliant with benefits regulations. This is not only just a matter of complying with regulations that they're aware of, but many employers, in fact, come forward and acknowledge that there are regulations that they're not even aware of that they may in fact be out of compliance with. At the same time, many employers are also focused on increasing benefits or enhancing the benefits offerings to boost employee retention. The other piece of this, too, is that participation and execution in the benefit program, they often go hand in hand. And so we see companies that are investing in great benefits but are really struggling to stay compliant and to engage those employees or clearly communicate the value of that benefit program offering. And that's where the strategy really matters. It has to be clear messaging. There has to be technology support, particularly around open enrollment and ongoing education that really ensures that the benefit programs that are being built by you as an employer that you're investing in and that you're rolling out are as impactful as they can possibly be. A couple of other items to call out here. Administration cost is a significant factor. So while we know that our audience here today is not spending an inordinate amount of time each week on benefits, the cost of administering benefits is still quite high. On average, companies spend over $12,000 annually just to administer a benefit program. And for midsize businesses, these would be businesses that have 100 to four ninety nine employees. That number actually jumps quite substantially to more than $38,000 per year. And so these numbers really underscore why benefits strategy remains a top priority and a pain point for many employers. In paychecks within the insurance agency, we hear this constantly. Traditional benefits models are largely inflexible. They can be hard to manage. And as we see here, they are expensive. That's why we advocate for modern solutions, things like individual coverage, health reimbursement arrangements or ICHRA, which give employees choice and allow them to control, what they enroll in while also giving you as an employer financial flexibility and lowering the administrative burden that's placed on your team. So really, if put a bow on all of this, it's not just about making benefits sustainable, it's about actually making them work better for everyone. And so, Rob, I want to hand this back to you for our next piece. Fantastic. Thank you, Alex. That was great job setting the stage here. So we're going to be moving back into our panel discussion. As we get to that, I do want to get into some of the top questions and concerns employers have about benefits. So we'll be kicking off this panel discussion, but first I want to hit a quick poll just to lead into that. This one now is about challenges. What is the biggest challenge you're having when offering a sustainable benefits program? Is it cost? Is it administration? Is it participation? Is it a lack of support? Are you the person administering it and leadership isn't behind you? Or is there something else? What do you up against here when you're getting into these benefits programs? Cost, administration, participation. I feel like that might be a big one here. Lack of support or something else. And let's see how we do with results on this one. Cost, okay, and participation. Well, was a little wrong on that one, but that's fair enough. Costs, of course, we know are a serious issue when it comes to benefits. I think every leader, every employer would love to offer great benefits to attract the best people, but cost is actually and indeed an issue when it gets to that. So let's get into the panel discussion here. So I'm going to continue this theme and Gary, want to start with you. What are some practical steps I can use to assess if the benefits are right, if they're the right size for where I'm at in my business stage? How do I know I'm matching my benefits to where I'm at as a business? Yeah, first of all, I really appreciate the opportunity to come and speak to everyone today. And that's a great question. I think there's been a lot of kind of historical thought when you think about accessing your workforce, which is based on where are my employees in terms of their life stage, locations, their roles. You're also trying to figure out like your overall business need. Is my benefit package actually sustainable for multiple years? Looking at that last survey, knowing cost is so impactful and knowing it's going to continue to be very impactful, that becomes an incredible challenge. Obviously, you ask questions about like, do we have the right funding type by size as you continue to grow? I think one of the bigger questions that's not being asked enough and one of the reasons why we're on a webinar today representing Thatch is, you know, are your benefits evolving with technology? And, you know, I'll give you just one example. In roughly the last five months, what we've been able to do at Thatch is we've been able to establish APIs, so technology, with all carriers across the country so that we can facilitate open enrollment and billing and reconciliation and all the stuff that makes our model work really, really well. And I would tell you that two years ago, that technology and that capability didn't exist. So the evolution of the healthcare benefits space is moving very rapidly. And then just very simply, surveys. I know this is kind of old school. I wasn't always a huge fan of surveys for a variety of reasons, but I did work with an employer several years ago and it had, it was a one survey, kind of two part question. And essentially what it was is, would you change anything about your benefits and why? And part two of that is, if your spouse or significant other was answering this question, what would their response be? And the reason why they structured it that way is because we know so much about what happens with benefits happens around the dinner table in terms of, was it a good selection, was it a bad selection, are they meeting our families' needs? And that becomes a very powerful tool for you guys as you continue to figure out what's kind of the next way to move, your employees forward. If I can jump in here, really appreciate what Gary said there. I think when you think about practical steps, it really comes down to knowing your your employee base, knowing what's important to them. How do your employees value a benefit program? How do their loved ones value a benefit program? And then with that context, really think about how can you construct a benefit program that to go back to the balancing, commentary I made earlier, constructing a program that allows you to meet those needs while also aligning to what your overall business strategy is. I think what's really important around that is also having a keen awareness of what are your options? How many different levers do you actually have that you can pull to drive towards those results and having an advisor that helps support you along the way of understanding those options and being educated on those options so that you can make an informed decision. The other thing that we find that's meaningful is really using benchmarking and understanding from an industry perspective. How are you stacking up? What is happening for employers that are similarly situated to you with their benefit programs? And where do you stack up against that? It's really good anchoring mechanism alongside of your own employee feedback to have a full picture of where your program sits, and where some of those areas of opportunity may be. And then the last point I would make as well, and it goes back to something that Gary said as well, is really thinking about not just benefit strategy in a single year, but over a period of time And making sure that we are really focusing on flexibility and optionality and the ability to have a long term strategy over multiple years and investing in your benefit program in a way that facilitates that with an advisor that will guide you accordingly. Janine, do you have anything to add? Maybe I'll just, add on top of that. I think being honest about our own, internal capacity to support some of these plans and structures. Do we have the right tools in place? Do we have either capacity for ourselves to be able to manage these plans, as well as just you know, team members that can help do that. And so coming up with a, a partnership in that that's going to help streamline that process, I think, is, a really important part of the decision making process as well. Excellent. Alright, panel question two. How can benefits platforms help companies build sustainable programs that evolve through every stage of the business life cycle. Gary, you talked a little bit about technology and Jeanine, I know you've been interacting with technology a lot as well. So I'd like to direct this next question to you also. Yeah, so first of all, benefits should never be a limitation to your growth, either adding new locations or just growing in general. And what we do at Thatch is to really help employers modernize their benefits with a solution that really prioritizes three different things. Number one is choice, allowing your employees, I use the dinner table example, to pick their own plans that work best for their needs. I think we've all struggled with picking plans based on kind of the average need of employees. And employees are anything but average. They got incredible differences in the way they think about healthcare, what they want out of healthcare. And that decision making process is really important. The other thing for the employer is flexibility. If you're scaling or adding multiple locations or part time, full time staff, you need that flexibility. And so being able to be very nimble through an ICRA environment allows you to flex pretty much in any business environment in which you want to operate. The last one is cost control. I think cost is a big issue for everybody. You set, in an ICHRA environment, you set your own defined contribution. So you pick your own budget. There's no unexpected renewals. There's no double digit increases, just predictable spend. Maybe I'll just add to that, Garrett. I think that's great. As you think about how scalable the infrastructure of our technology solutions can be and how that really supports, whether it's an administrator or business owner that's trying to manage these benefits. Technology really enables us to do that in a very fluid way. And so whether it's simple design support and helping individuals or selecting those benefits themselves and their family, and having that all work directly with insurance carriers to make sure that's fluid, or really providing that operational agility that you can have with systems like we have internally here at Paychex, which is a platform called Flock, allowing the administrator to be able to go in and add new employees very simply to be able to open up those offerings and really kind of managing in the background some of that concern that comes with the complexity of managing compliance, tax coordination, employee support, technology really enables us to create these diverse benefit packages that are really scalable for the whole operation. Excellent, and those are some really nice building blocks there to really help you craft a benefit strategy that truly supports your business, your people. If we take a moment, I'd like to take a look at a mature company here, grew over time and hear in their own words what it's been like to have support on benefits and other business needs along the way. So if we could play the video here. It's important to understand what you believe in, where you're going, what you represent, what you care about in the world because you're going to attract those same people to join you on this journey. Carrie Strain and I, my husband decided thirty years ago when we founded Strain Consulting that we wanted to act like a big company. We realized that we needed to establish processes and protocols that a fortune 400 company would have. And we quickly became, a user of all of paycheck services as paychecks grew, the handbook services, the retirement services, and obviously the payroll services. Even though we were a very small company, Strain Dental Management now has hundreds approaching a thousand employees as a result of the acquisition of 40 dental practices in 2022. I love Paychex. I truly love the company and it has helped us in so many ways. So that's great. So let's come to the next discussion point here. What benefits decisions have you seen make the most impact? You know, we talk about benefits technology making it happen, but there's decisions around whether to have them, what kind of benefits to have. There's a lot going on there. So Alex, maybe you can kick us off on So this there's a couple of things. One thing that I'll say at the top is from my perspective, regardless of the stage that an employer is at, regardless of the makeup of their population, the return that you will get with the benefit strategy, by investing and ensuring that your employees understand the benefits that they have and they can appreciate the value and how it can be meaningful in their lives, can't be overstated. That is a singular thing that can be done. So this is around investing in making sure that the communications around open enrollment time are very thoughtful, very thorough, aligned to the audience of your employee base. And really just investing in partnerships around things like lunch and learns, you know, benefits topics throughout the course of the year. Benefits as a conversation point doesn't have to be contained to just open enrollment. It can be a years long topic for people to engage around and creating the resources around that. One of the things that is great about Paychex and our agency is by virtue of offering our FLOG platform. We have that technology infrastructure in place where employees can go and get benefits information. They can enroll, they can engage with their benefit offerings. They have a qualifying life event. It's a place where they can go and update coverages, you know, add a new child that they welcome to their family or a spouse if they've gotten married recently. So, I think starting with a foundation of really ensuring that your employee base understands the solutions that you're putting on the table for them is really meaningful. The other thing beyond that would be really just bringing financial protection into the mix. So things like life insurance disability programs to make sure that you're not only just focusing on the medical and the dental and vision, but also making sure that those financial protection programs are in there, is something that can drive a tremendous amount of loyalty and satisfaction within your workforce. Yeah, and I would just add to that. You know, when we think about it, if you look at what made large national accounts really good at things like NPS, it was because they had a lot of choice, you know, choice between HMOs and PPOs and HSAs. And the reality, especially for early stage and small midsize employers, that creates a lot of confusion and it creates a lot of work. You want to be focused on growing your business. And what ICRA and specifically us at Thatch allows you to do is to open that choice up to your employees. Now, trick in doing that is to not make it confusing in terms of how you facilitate it, make it look and feel like a group program, which is what we do very well. And another thing is we'll go back to controlling costs historically. The way that you think about controlling costs is through rate caps or some sort of guarantee from your carrier partner year over year. Those kind of are a challenge to get these days, especially with the way that costs are increases. And ultimately, within this grist space and defined contribution, again, you make those own decisions around the type of costs and the type of contributions that you will make on behalf of your employees every single year. So it allows you to, one, meet the needs of your employees and allow them to have some decision making, but also support them in this process and make them feel like you're not just kind of pushing them out to go fend for themselves. And one of the most confusing things you can do, which is to pick plan designs from carrier to carrier. Anything to add on that one, Janine? Yeah, I think at the end of the day, anything that we can do here to make sure that we're freeing up time and we're giving back more insights as to how those benefits are being utilized across those employees and getting that real time feedback loop going is really important. And so I think that at the end of the day, anything we can do to streamline the process, communicate clearly, and then be able to have a plan that's flexible enough to meet the needs of a diverse population, is going to have a very large impact on how the benefits packages offered to your employees are received. And there's a lot of great points in that. I feel like we could have a webinar just on this section alone. Alex, I love your point about making sure employees understand what's going on. And Gary, you added to that, We want to add a lot of choices to be flexible, meet a diverse workforce, but then it gets super complicated. And then Jeanine, I like how you touched on the other side of it too. I have all these plans, I've to manage them. And how do I understand what's being used, what's being utilized, what isn't? So it can be really complex. There might be another event, just on this question here. Alright, panel question four. Okay, so we're getting into making things more complex, or are we? Given personalized benefits can boost participation, how do employers customize efficiently? We know the more personalized things get, the more complicated they get, the more difficult they get, the more challenging they are to manage. So Gary, why don't you kick us off on this one? Yeah, this is so important. This is where we spend the bulk of our time here at Thatch. At the end of the day, healthcare is all about the consumer. I mean, that's what we're trying to do is promote and allow the individual consumer to purchase healthcare and health insurance the way they want it. Historically, they've never had to do it. They've relied on their employer to make that choice. And even within that, they still struggle to understand their benefits and options. And so a big part of our technology and a big part of the way that we onboard a customer is to make sure that, number one, that we can clearly identify the plan design that you have today, and can we offer that same plan design and the purchasing power for that plan design across all of your employees? And you can see that through the partnership with Paychex in terms of them being able to provide a quote and facilitate that type of environment. It's also really important that when a member comes to Thatch, so you've decided to move forward with Thatch, that we make it really easy for them to, one, know how much money that you're contributing to the plan, that if those contributions change when they add an employee or add a family member, get a spouse or a child or a full family, what changes within their plan design and their cost in real time. They need to be able to see what doctors are in network when they're searching through their plans in real time. And then when all of that fails, when the technology fails, that we have a human interaction that can pick it up and be able to walk them through the process. And that's really the magic that we've been able to do at Thatch. We've been able to do it on a national scale. We make our program feel like a group experience. There's no paying a carrier and trying to wait for reimbursement from your employer. Our experience from beginning to end feels like a group experience. Then when people fall through the cracks, because they fall through the cracks a lot if we do employee benefits for a long time, we take care of them. And that's the type of experience and that's the way that you solve some of these complexity is by very simple handholding at the end of the day. I would just say everything Gary just articulated is why Paychex is proud to be partnering with Thatch to offer these types of solutions to our customers. We think it's really meaningful and impactful. Just to expand on the point that Gary was making and to go back to something I said previously, really, it comes down to education. And I think education isn't just about the benefit options, but it's about the process. It's about what to expect when you engage with your benefits. And so I think it's really important that we educate employees around how these benefits are impactful for them and then how can they leverage them? How can they use them when they go to enroll, when they go to file a claim? What should that experience look like? What should they expect that experience to be? And making sure that you have partners in place that deliver that experience as expected every single time. And so that's something that we really endeavor to do within our agency, with our clients. And it's why we've selected partners like Thatch because they deliver on that time and time again. And I would also say that when you create a great experience, so you've told your employee this is what you should expect and then that is what happens. Engagement rises, satisfaction rises, productive use of benefits rises. And so all of those things together create stickiness from an employee perspective, and make sure that the investment that you're making as an employer in your benefit solutions goes well beyond, just paying a premium invoice every month. And I think at the end of the day, benefits are a great opportunity to attract and retain some of the best talent. And so I know that when a prospective employee is looking for an opportunity, that's one of the things that they're going to ask about. They're going to want to understand from people that work at the company. What do you think about your benefits? And did they meet your needs? And so when you have tools and education that help those individuals select plans that make sense, that meet their needs, and they're simple to use, and that there's that ongoing communication throughout the year about the value of those benefits, it really speaks volumes, I think, when you're recruiting. And having those solutions all administered through very simplified technology offerings reduces both the burden and the complexity on the end of the business owner and the administrator because benefits are complex, but technology and really great partners like we are talking about here can simplify that and create just this fantastic value proposition as you're recruiting new employees. That's great, Janine and team. Thank you. And I'd like to move to a quick poll here. You know, we've talked about things you can do to improve your benefits programs, improve your benefits strategies. So I'd love to hear from our audience. Let's think about like the next six months. So really, before we wrap up 2025, as we're starting to head into to 2026, what improvements do you anticipate making to your benefit strategy? Are you looking for really significant updates? Are you looking for an overhaul? You really wanna understand what's happening here. Are you looking for moderate updates? You've got a lot of business priorities you're trying to touch on and you want to balance that with, you know, other things you're looking at. Are benefits a low priority? If so, I suspect you wouldn't be attending this webinar, but sometimes it's just nice to know the lay of the land, know what's happening there, and maybe you're not sure, maybe you just don't know what the options are that are available to you. So once again, just click the option you think that makes the most sense or makes it fits the best for where you're at in your business. Are you really looking to upgrade here? Are you looking for moderate updates? Maybe just fine tuning what's happening. Are you do you have a lot on your plate and you know benefits are important, but you just you're not ready to tackle it yet? Or are you just unsure? You want to get a feel for the lay of land, and you're just trying to educate yourself? And we're coming up with about 40% of attendees. Alright. So, okay. This this makes sense to me. The numb the top two issues are moderate. I'm looking to tweak. I'm looking to adjust. I'm looking to improve. Or I'm not sure yet. I don't know where it's gonna go. I'm still evaluating. I think that makes a lot of sense, you know, given the state of how business challenges evolve and how things are always changing there. So let's get up to our next panel question here. This is the core part of benefits planning, funding models. Right in the beginning, we heard how cost is such an issue. So we know there's a range of issues out there, from fully insured to self funded, hybrids in between. How do you see employers deciding what's right for them? So Gary, once again, I'd like to start with you. What funding options are available for benefits programs to help employers manage these costs and get these plans funded? Yeah, so for us at Thatch, we really only offer one solution, which is to facilitate the purchase of individual fully insured health insurance all across the country with every single carrier, which is a mouthful and a massive lift to execute on that. But within defined contribution within the ICHRA space, there is something that we do that is very unique to Thatch. And if you don't understand ICHRA fully, it's a very evolving concept. But essentially what we do is you can either have a flat contribution where all of your employees get the same amount. So you've got 10 employees, you've decided to go into the ICHRA space, and all 10 employees are gonna get a $500 contribution. What that will actually do is create some inequity in purchasing power. So if you have a 26 year old, their premiums are gonna be a lot less than a 55 year old. And so what we have the ability to do is to what we do called dynamic contribution, which creates a different balance. And so instead of basing just flat dollars, what we say is, Hey, I want the purchasing power of this $1,500 deductible plan to be even across my employees. So that same 26 year old will get less contribution, but be able to buy that same deductible plan. As the 55 year old, they'll get a higher contribution so that they have the same purchasing power. And so we create equity within the ICHRA space that really doesn't exist with any other partnerships and any other vendors across the country. So it's really neat to us. It's really important, I think, for the viability and sustainability of ICHRA, and we're incredibly proud to lead in this space. Rob, something I can add to this. So Gary just explained, you know, the excitement that the industry has around what that just builds in the ICHRA space. But there, you know, there of course are other options out there, everything from group fully insured level funding, and then self insurance. And so really, as you kind of think about it from a continuum perspective, you know, fully insured, simplest way to explain is you are paying a set premium to an insurance company. They are taking on the risk. If you have greater risk that you deliver higher claims, your premium stays the same. And if you overperform, you have lower claims, you don't get any of that money back. Now, of course, at your renewal in the subsequent year, if had claims in excess of your premium, then of course, you're going to feel that in your renewal, as all of us on the insurance side of the world know. But then of course you can move into level funding, really feels like that fully insured model where you are paying a fixed cost each month, but you have some of the benefits like a self insured model opportunities for what I would describe as getting money back at the end of the year if you over perform from a risk perspective, a refund if you will. And there's also certain taxes and fees that are included from a fully insured perspective that are not included in a level funded model. Therefore, generally speaking, costs for level funded models may be a little bit less. And then of course there is full self insurance, where you are insuring the risk yourself and you put a layer of reinsurance on top. And so as employers think about funding mechanism and what makes sense for them, it's really important to go back to something that Jeanine said early on, which is you have to also look inward and say cost matters. Of course, sustainability of financing your program really matters. But you have to also look inward and assess your own risk appetite, the operational complexity that comes along with it. Fully insured is far less complex to administer than in a self insured model. And really, what are your strategic goals? If you want to be self insured, it's not a one year strategy. It's not a two year strategy. It's a many year strategy. Whereas fully insured is something that, you know, if you want to be in the fully insured space and you get a bad renewal and you want to look at other carriers, that option exists. So it's really important to understand, where you are, in ecosystem. And the answer is different for every employer. The really important thing, I think is making sure that you have advisors and partners that work with you to help you through that process, to guide you through the questions you should ask yourself, the ways you should think about it, what the partnerships that are in the market in each of those funding categories look like, what they can mean for you. And not to just have that conversation with you once, but to have that conversation on an ongoing basis so that you are constantly in a state of making sure that what you have built for your business is right for your business and for your business in the future. I think that's such a great point, Alex. The very title of this webinar, for every business stage, I mean, we're all hoping at least at some level, our business is growing or thriving or becoming more profitable. Things are happening all the time. So, definitely need to keep an eye on it. So this is our last panel question everybody. Once again, I want to reiterate how great it is to have all these experts here. So I do want to talk about ROI, the return on investment. I intrinsically know that benefits are good. It's good to offer them. I get better people. I keep my people. But how do I really measure that ROI? How do I know my benefit strategy is working beyond just cost savings? Yeah, I can kick us off. Know, I have spent twenty plus years in a group market and a group environment. I specifically came to Thatch and specifically into the ICRAS space because I truly believe that the last generation of employer sponsored healthcare will eventually happen through a defined contribution environment. It's really the only way to control cost. I think people are starving for choice. Working in a group benefits, people are always either frustrated or upset by the limitation of not making their own decision and really getting what they want from the healthcare experience based on their own individual and family needs. And as I said earlier, that sounds great, but also leads to a lot of confusion. It could lead a lot of work. It could lead to a whole host of ramifications that we still don't fully know or can fully anticipate. But I think in terms of like a core strategy and what we want is we want to empower employees. We want them to feel like the benefit that we are providing them makes them sticky and want to work for us as a business and want to grow with us as a business. And so, you know, to everyone, I don't know if this is going be a two year journey or a four year journey as people get used to kind of the construct, but at the end of the day, really in terms of how we think about ROI, it really is, are we empowering the most impactful and powerful thing in entire world, which is The U. S. Consumer to make their own health care decisions, which has never truly been unlocked? And so I think it's going to be a journey. I think we're going to learn a lot through this process, but at the end of the day, the power and what it means between the employer employee relationship could be absolutely incredible if we can continue to do things the right way. I would echo everything that Gary just said. And I would say that, you know, beyond cost, mean, obviously cost is something that is top of mind. I mean, our group today is indicating 85% of you feel that way. And we hear that as well. We're not surprised by that. But if we go beyond about it, we go to a level deeper as Gary talked about, you know, we think about healthcare as a concept, it is innately the most personal thing for every single one of us. Good, bad or otherwise, every one of us and every single person we care about will engage with the healthcare system in some way, in many instances over time. And so I think when we think about the opportunity that employers have, to create meaningful impact in the lives of their employees and in the lives of their employees' loved ones, building strategies that are meaningful to those employees and to their loved ones, that are engaging, that do create choice, that do create optionality, that can evolve over time, not only as your business evolves, but as the lives of the people that you employ evolve. The opportunity for ROI there, in some ways can't really be measured, but knowing that you are impacting, people in that meaningful way and creating something of value that is instrumental in their life, I think is quite significant. Getting down to a more tangible answer, employee engagement. We know that if your employees are feeling that you as an employer are investing in them beyond just compensation, the programs that matter to them, opportunities for things like behavioral healthcare, supplemental healthcare, financial protection products, as I mentioned earlier. That shows that you care about them as a person holistically. And those are the people that are going to show up to work every day, ready to work, ready to help you build your business, and be motivated accordingly. So, there's substantial ROI in that and, you know, that's why, again, I said it earlier, benefit strategy is not just about benefits, it's about your business strategy more holistically. I love that Alex and thank you to all of our panelists. That concludes the formal part of our panel discussion. So I just want to do a quick recap here of what we've covered and some takeaways for next steps. So first of all, you got to take the time to assess the right benefits program for your business. Every organization has different needs and a one size fit all approach rarely works. So look at your goals, your budgets, and the workforce demographics to find the right fit. Next, I don't want you to overlook compliance, especially with changing regulations. Staying ahead of requirements, what you have to do isn't just about avoiding penalties, it's about protecting your business, protecting your profits, protecting your livelihood. It's very important. Then, gotta consider the current platforms, the technology that support your growth. Right tools should scale with you. And you've heard about a couple of them today, if we do have time for q and a, I'm gonna explore that a little more. Whether you're a start up or an established enterprise, the right tools need to be ready, they need to drive efficiency across HR and benefits administration. Also, and Alex touched on this, never underestimate the power of employee engagement. Your benefits are only as valuable as your employees understanding and use of them. So, communication, education, ongoing is really key to making these benefit strategies work. And finally, be aware of your funding options. There are many more choices than most businesses realize, from fully insured to level funded and self funded models. So knowing your options can make a huge difference in cost control and plan flexibility. So I know this is super complicated. Before we shift to the audience Q and A, got one final poll. So, Paychex offers a scalable suite of solutions. They have advisors. They have experts who can help you navigate this complex environment. So, just take a moment. If you'd like to speak with a Paychex professional about improving the benefits that your business offers. And improvement may be, I wanna offer more options for my employees. That improvement may be, I've gotta get the costs under control. It's just not working right now. Or that may be, I'm spending way too much time managing this and overseeing this and is there some way we can streamline it? So there's a lot of complexities here. If you'd like to talk to a professional, just go ahead and click yes on this poll. And now I'd like to get to some audience Q and A. We do have just a few minutes here and one that came in very early on, and Alex, you talked about it. And I think Janine, you touched on it too. What is the best way to benchmark what other businesses are doing? How do I know? I mean, I know when I go to sell my house, I know I'm looking at the comps in the neighborhood. I know I'm looking at what's matching up. It's very simple. It's very straightforward. It's all public information. How do I do it when it comes to benefits to match my eight person business? Yeah, it's a great question. And so, know, Rob, you cite the example of looking up comps so you can go if you're selling your house, you can go on Zillow and you can find, you know, roughly kind of where you're at. Unfortunately, the benefits ecosystem hasn't quite gotten there yet. And so, what we take great pride in within our organization, Paychex and the agency side, is that provide this type of detail, to our clients. And so we work very diligently to make sure that we are helping our clients understand and anchor to what similarly situated employers are offering and where they stack up against that. So, we would just encourage, folks on the call, employers that, make sure your advisor is bringing this to the table for you. This is, from our perspective at least, a foundational part of the value that they should be bringing. There are public resources available. There are surveys and things online that you can find, but I think it's very important to have the context and the perspective of an advisor, who can connect you to not only understanding where you stack up, but what do you do about it? What are the areas of opportunity? What are the strategies that can be pursued, in aligning those back to your business needs? With that, I'll hand over to Janine. Umtur has thoughts on this too. Maybe just one last thing that I can add to that is there are online tools that you can look at that can give you some employee sentiment, but I would also say that just really taking the time to survey your employees and get some feedback as well, so you can take the benchmark studies that you can get from your agency. They'll give you some really specifics about how to compare to your industry or more from your geographical location, But then really getting that sentiment back in return from your employees, I think Gary touched on this earlier as well, is really helpful so you can understand where people are headed, where some of the gaps are in coverage today. And then the combination of those two will help you really sort of formulate that path forward in terms of your benefit strategy. Excellent, excellent. And I have time for one last question. A few people have asked, and it is a complex issue and we live this every day. But we've talked about flock, we've talked about thatch very casually. People are asking, what's the difference between the two? So Janine, maybe you could just tell us real quickly, why would I want FLAC? What does FLAC do for me? And then Gary, maybe you could just touch very quickly, what is Thatch and when does that come into play? What are the differences between these two and how do I use them? Sure, I'd be happy to. So, FLoC is a benefits administration and enrollment platform. What that means is in two parts. It, one, helps facilitate, as the business owner, as the, you know, HR person, you are able to see and manage the benefits for your employees. You are going to be able to help support any concerns or questions they have. You can add new employees to the system. You can see what the premiums are associated with all of your plans, you can see who's been included most recently. It really sort of helps from not only supporting employees as they transition through different parts of their employee lifecycle, whether they're new to the company or they're parting ways, But it's also going to help you understand, am I being billed correctly from the carrier? I'm going be able to compare and make sure that that's happening. But I think most importantly, it's also going to send the employee's payroll deductions directly to paychecks here fully integrated, so that as those changes occur, as enrollments occur, those are going to come through directly, making sure that those paychecks and their deductions line up correctly. I think the most exciting part for an individual employee is for open enrollment, it's a great experience for an employee to log in and to be able to see the options laid out before them. We've talked a lot about choice here and how important it is not only for that individual to make that decision, but in a family dynamic. They're going to want to talk to their partner. They're going to want to be able to consider potentially if their partner has other benefit plans. So being able to see those options directly in front of them and to be able to click on videos and links and to get more education about how some of these products operate is really important. It also really reinforces the value of the benefits that have been created. They'll be able to select their benefits directly in the platform, and then those get delivered directly to the carrier. So if I'm the administrator, this is really streamlining the open enrollment process, sending over those changes to the carrier. I don't have to worry about my payroll deductions being potentially out of sync. Everything just works seamlessly together. Yeah, and then for us on the batch side, it's really for employers that are looking to move off the group model or to scale up. We can do offerings down at one employee. We have, of our roughly 1,100 employers in our book, our fastest growing segment is 51 to 1,000. That includes fully insured, self funded. And the reason why this ICHRA model is evolving so quickly is because of the defined contribution aspect of ICRA, which is essentially you guys set a contribution, you as an employer set a contribution for each employee based on employee only, employee spouse, employee family. And then what we do is we facilitate your employees buying individual health insurance. And our foundation, we are a national company. We are integrated with every single health insurance company that offers individual health insurance across the country. And what we do better than anybody else is we make it feel like a group experience. I think the idea of just turning your employees loose to go buy their own individual health insurance is an extremely scary thought, probably with how they produce their own and use their own benefits today. We make that very seamless where they can see their doctors that are in network with each individual plan. We take care of all the billing, all the reconciliation. And at the end of the day, connectivity with you as an employer. We want that value, that contribution that you gave to your employees that's so important to them to purchase their own healthcare experience to shine. And that's what we do at Badge. Love it. Thank you very much and we're right at time. So once again, I want to thank our panelists today. That was tremendous. And I want to thank all of our audience members for joining us today for sustainable benefit strategies for every business stage. As a reminder, you can access the printable copy of the presentation deck and the files and resources. We'll be sending an email as a follow-up too so you can watch the recording, share it with people who think might find this interesting, and I encourage you to also talk to your Paychex representative if you want some more expert consultation around what can be a really complex topic. And if you can spare a few moments as we close, we welcome your feedback on a brief survey that'll pop up, and your responses just help us improve how we do these events and create future resources to support your business. Thank you again everybody and please stay happy and healthy.