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Empowering Employee Benefits: How a Small Team Drives Big Impact
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I think one of the biggest issues is communicating your benefit plan and employers' benefit plan to their employees and making sure that they understand what's available to them. Because the majority of consumers don't really, they aren't really concerned about their benefits until they need them. And then it's like you want to get in front of them and educate them before they need it, to make sure they're on the right plan, to be sure that they're a smart healthcare consumer, knowing how to shop for the best care for the best value, making sure they know where to go, how to live a healthy lifestyle. (Whitney Boyer)
(00:01-08:39)
Whitney Boyer shares insights into the challenges of communicating complex benefit plans to employees, especially in a world where understanding healthcare options is crucial but often overlooked until it's urgently needed.
Whitney explains that her marketing team is responsible for a broad range of client-facing deliverables, from financial documents and renewal information to employee-facing communications. She emphasizes the importance of continuous education throughout the year, rather than just focusing on the typical open enrollment period. Whitney's team is dedicated to making sure employees understand their benefits, can access information easily, and feel confident in their decisions—ensuring that both employers and employees are well-served.
The conversation also touches on the significant role of benefits advisors and brokers, who influence a staggering $1.2 trillion in insurance spending in the U.S. Whitney highlights the need for ongoing efforts to educate employees, addressing their questions, and helping them become smart healthcare consumers.
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Transforming Employee Benefits: A Digital Guide for All Generations
Definitely have the benefits available online and digitally for all of these employees. The first goal that we had was to make something like a benefits guide more accessible not only to the employee but also to their spouse at home who is the decision maker. So how can we do that? And that's really where we would lean on RELAYTO because there are so many different privacy levels depending on what the employer is comfortable with. But the majority of the time, the link is only available to everyone. They can send it to their families at home, they can bookmark it. A lot of employers will then put it into their HRIS system. So giving them digital access was goal number one. (Whitney Boyer)
(08:39-14:25)
LHD Benefit Advisors have developed a digital benefits guide that caters to diverse learning preferences, ensuring that all employees—and their decision-making family members—can easily access and understand their benefits.
Whitney Boyer highlights the importance of making benefits accessible online, not just for employees but also for their spouses, who often play a key role in decision-making. To achieve this, LHD created digital benefits guide websites that offer an intuitive, web-like experience. These guides are not just static PDFs, they are interactive, easy to navigate, and designed to meet the varying needs of different generations in the workplace.
To streamline the process, Whitney Boyer's team designed a PowerPoint template specifically for creating these digital guides. This approach allows their account managers, regardless of their tech-savviness or design skills, to easily produce these guides for over 200 clients. The result is a seamless, user-friendly experience for employees and a manageable workload for LHD's small marketing team.
How AI is Making Employee Benefits Easier for Everyone
We can do a lot of setup in advance. This spring we started doing a lot of it. Early summer we start doing a lot of it. But a lot of our clients—actually, the majority of our clients—won't get their renewal until October. Then maybe in early October, and then maybe in late October is their open enrollment. So we have a one-week period in which we get their numbers, we get to them, and they approve them. They come back to us, and we finalize them, confirm with the carrier, and then get them updated in the benefit guide. We have to make it live for all their employees to see. So there's a lot on the day before open enrollment starts. We're trying to get stuff done as fast as we can, and that's really like 200 custom websites in a day. (Whitney Boyer)
(14:25-22:22)
Whitney Boyer explains how her team has "democratized" marketing by empowering individuals who never saw themselves as content creators to produce high-quality, marketing-grade digital benefit guides. These guides are designed to be accessible, interactive, and tailored to the diverse needs of employees and their families.
Whitney Boyer shares how LHD uses RELAYTO to create these digital guides, which resemble websites and provide a seamless user experience. This innovative approach allows their small team to produce customized benefit guides for hundreds of clients in a short period, especially during the intense open enrollment season.
A key highlight of their strategy is the integration of AI-powered tools. Whitney discusses how AI not only enhances the user experience by allowing employees to quickly find answers to specific benefit questions but also supports HR teams. The AI-driven chat feature can search through extensive plan documents and provide instant, accurate information, relieving HR teams from the burden of sifting through thousands of pages or waiting on lengthy customer service calls.
Using AI Chat to streamline the RFP process
We feel like being transparent right from the get-go really gets them comfortable with us, and they will trust us. So we're like, “Hey, here's our entire RFP. We have it on this. Use it through here, view it through here, and use this AI Chat. All of our report examples are here. You guys have full access to that.” So they can click on different appendix items that we have also stored within RELAYTO. Then, we talk about them in the document. So it's a whole, really seamless experience without having to read through a 50-page document. (Whitney Boyer)
(22:22-27:45)
Whitney Boyer shares how her team uses AI Chat to streamline the RFP (Request for Proposal) process, turning what used to be a cumbersome 50-page document into an easily navigable experience. This AI tool not only helps prospects find the information they need quickly but also empowers employers and employees to get the right answers fast, especially when making crucial health and benefits decisions.
The conversation highlights how AI is being used in real-world business applications to enhance transparency, improve communication, and provide a seamless experience for both clients and employees. Whitney Boyer explains how this approach sets her company apart from competitors by offering a practical, hands-on demonstration of their AI-powered tools during the sales process, making it easier for clients to understand and trust the technology.
Tracking employees' preferences with RELAYTO Analytics
I have a lot of different gated content that lives in RELAYTO, and people are required to put in their email addresses. I could see how many views it's getting and how many leads it's generating, all through RELAYTO. And then we can send employers their financial information and we can see. Usually, those are password protected, so then we can see the exact individuals who are looking at the plan performance information. Then, we have the benefit guides, and we can see how many employees spend the most time on this HSA page. (Whitney Boyer)
(27:45-34:05)
Whitney Boyer's team leverages AI Chat and analytics to streamline the benefits process, from responding to lengthy RFPs (Request for Proposals) to tailoring communication strategies based on real employee interactions.
They discuss how AI not only simplifies the way information is presented but also provides valuable insights into employee engagement. By analyzing how employees interact with digital benefit guides, companies can customize their communication plans to focus on the most relevant topics, ensuring that important benefits are understood and utilized.
This AI-powered approach doesn't just improve the employee experience—it also enhances the company's competitive edge by offering a smarter, data-driven way to manage and present benefits.
Staying Ahead: How LHD Uses Tech and AI to Lead the Employee Benefits Industry
The number one question that we get all the time is, “Well, does the AI give you wrong answers? Are you getting wrong answers?” It does not give you wrong answers because it will go to the exact place and give you the exact page number and the exact document where they found the information, so you're not getting wrong answers. Essentially, it's citing its source right below where it answers it. So you have the confidence and your employees have the confidence that they are getting that right answer. I love that feature in the AI, and how it links back to that. (Whitney Boyer)
(34:05-41:00)
LHD's rebranding and use of platforms like RELAYTO have transformed its deliverables, making them not just visually appealing but also easier for clients to navigate and understand.
The speakers explore how AI is helping LHD stand out by providing accurate, easily accessible information to clients and their employees. The AI doesn't just deliver quick answers, it points directly to the source, ensuring users have full confidence in the information they receive. This focus on innovation and user experience is what keeps LHD ahead of the competition, making them the agency others aspire to emulate.
Whitney Boyer also talks about the challenge of getting the entire organization on board with these changes, particularly in blending marketing creativity with sales needs.
Winning with Innovation: How LHD Uses Tech and Collaboration to Outshine Competitors
We needed him for the content, and he needed us to be able to package it all together and make it easily digestible. Then, package it into a hub where we can just share a link, and he can easily send that off again instead of attaching a gigantic 50-page PDF with 50 more pages of appendix items. And then you get the error message back that it was too big to send. So then you have to upload it to our shared file and then send a secure link, and this is just much easier. (Whitney Boyer)
(41:00-47:57)
Whitney Boyer shares her insights on how having an internal sales champion can drive the successful adoption of new technologies. By working closely with a proactive salesperson, LHD was able to create custom deliverables and streamline their RFP process, making it easier and more efficient for both their team and their clients.
The speakers discuss the impact of these innovations, highlighting how the integration of RELAYTO and other tools has not only enhanced their deliverables but also led to winning new clients and boosting referrals. Whitney Boyer highlights the importance of having a sales champion who can showcase the value of new tools and drive broader adoption within the team.
Check the episode's Transcript (AI-generated) HERE.
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Author
Experience-focused Leaders is the #1 Multimedia Podcast! We talk to senior business & tech leaders about the experiences that move forward organizations, customers and society at large. True to form, we mix audio, video, web and eBook formats to turn these authentic conversations into personalized nuggets you'll remember & use.
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