Executive Yak

Suzanne Elshult, http://executiveyak.com Executive Yak, sponsors live round tables for senior marketing and human resources executives in the Seattle area and offers executive / professional coaching and virtual learning opportunities for leaders, business owners, consultants and coaches committed to growth and high performance.

I had a provocative discussion on healthcare reform with some 25 top HR executives in the Seattle area last week. Any doubts I had silently harbored  about how meaningful this roundtable would be, evaporated almost instantly  as the group started interacting in a meaningful way almost immediately. Some of the comments from long-standing members have ranged from : “fantastic session” to “the best HR Executive Forum we ever had.”

So, what did I walk away with? A sense that healthcare reform will happen. There is an expectation that something will land on Obama’s desk before the end of the year. We can save a LOT of money by addressing systemic problems such as overutilization and administrative waste (some say as much as 50%). A single payer plan is not possible in the US at this time – it’s too great of a clash with our culture of differentiation, choice and competition – one size fits all simply will not work here.  Realistically a public/private option is most likely to fly.  One of our member executives pointed out that in the 13 countries her company is doing business, the US is the only one with no government option, but in most other countries with a public option it is not comprehensive and employers still offer supplemental plans. What else? The expectation that we can cover everybody for everything is unrealistic. We have to decide what it is we can afford and what our priorities are. That is hard to do without it becoming deeply personal.  Regardless of what happens employers will continue to play a big role.

Questions I Have

1. Can we really save 50% of healthcare costs without doing a single thing ( some say we can achieve that level of savings by addressing things like overutilization, defensive medicine and administrative waste)?  There are huge barriers to overcome including the fact that trial lawyers have 2/3rds of congress in their pocket (in part our litigious society is at fault and the expectation we have that any outcome that is less than perfect is unacceptable and reason to file suit). Doctors are being increasingly squeezed – paid less, expected to be more productive and thus see patients less – and trying to make up by finding new ways to make money (in-sourcing services, more tests etc…). Some say the individual practice model is dying and morphing into something different. As an industry, healthcare has lagged sorely behind in terms of investing in technology to reduce administrative waste. 
2. Will the US economy collapse if we fail to do something now. The weight of our current debt is staggering and healthcare reform may  be an issue of national security. What happens if China stops buying our treasuries?
3. Does it make sense that employers continue to play as big of a role in providing healthcare as they have in the past? The current model grew out of the depression. Are things different enough now to warrant a totally new and different model?
4. How can we be successful long-term with healthcare reform if it does not decisively address the underlying issue of becoming less healthy as a society? In fact some reform seems to go against some of the inroads we have been making with wellness strategies in recent years.
5. How can we better educate our citizens/employees to become more savvy consumers? We have not done a very good job in the past.
6. Is it realistic to expect the average citizen to track healthcare reform and understand the implications for themselves and others when one single bill is more than 1000 pages (are you wonky enough to go on the internet and read it all?), and there is a lot of secrecy and machinations under the table in Washington DC? Newt Gingrich calls the legislative process “perverted “ (at least one thing he and I can agree on).
7. Is fee for service medicine all over and going away? How do consortiums differ from managed care? Is our specialty-oriented way of providing care viable? Our specialty orientation is very unique to the United States.
8. Why is dealing with healthcare so different from how we deal with education in this country? We all pay for public schools and then as a private citizen you have the choice to pay more for a private school?
9. Can we afford to pay for everything? Probably not. The problem with the Washington State Basic Plan is that it is trying to cover too much. So, how do we decide what we can afford and what is important to us as a society? Does it ultimately boil down to what Keith Olberman  said recently….it all becomes very personal when we start talking about death. It is really all an academic discussion until you or someone in your family gets sick.
10. Some healthcare reform options provide employers with an opportunity to pay a penalty (for example 8%) if they stop providing healthcare? Is this a built-in incentive for employers to say “Great, I will write you  a check?” Is this a way to give the public option a jump start? Is this good or bad?

Do you have answers to any of these questions or other questions you want to add? Reply to this post!!!

Do you have  personal stories related to healtcare reform to share (anonoymously? Go to http://hrundercover.com

For more information on Executive Coaching please visit http://www.hrnow.net/coach.htm

Suzanne Elshult sponsors live round tables for senior marketing and human resources executives and offers executive / professional coaching and virtual learning opportunities for leaders, business owners, consultants and coaches committed to growth and high performance.

In my last post we explored how HR can help Marketing. In this post, the  third of four in a series on Internal Branding, the focus is on how Marketing can help HR. Here are some ideas brainstormed in my joint Marketing/HR Executive Roundtable  a few weeks ago:

• Bring creative expertise to internal branding
• Provide writing and messaging support
• Foster enthusiasm for internal initiatives
• Help HR stay informed about external strategies
• Share  expertise for soliciting feedback to get internal/employee input
• Capturing and publicizing brand heroes during a relaunch
• Connect to Purpose campaign to use testimonials from customers as an external branding campaign
• Hold events for employees centered on your products and/or mission
• Encourage employees to hold parties celebrating a new product launch, and introduce the product to your friends/families; providing marketing materials and small incentives  (grassroots marketing)

 In my final post in my internal branding series we will discuss how social media is impacting internal branding. Stay tuned!

Question: What are some other ideas on how Marketing can support HR in internal branding? What is your marketing department doing?  What are the barries and opportunities?

For more information on Executive Coaching please visit http://www.hrnow.net/coach.htm. Suzanne has two blogs:  http://executiveyak.com and http://hrundercover.com/ (we want your workplace stories).

Suzanne Elshult sponsors live round tables for senior marketing and human resources executives and offers executive / professional coaching and virtual learning opportunities for leaders, business owners, consultants and coaches committed to growth and high performance.

It  is not always easy to know where marketing ends and where HR starts and vice versa. For HR and marketing executives to not run into each other takes a commitment to coordinate, communicate and collaborate. The bottomline question is: what is good for the company, not what is good for HR or Marketing. The main focus for executives should be on representing the company, not their own  functional goals and interests. Here are some ideas for how HR can help Marketing brainstormed in my joint Marketing/HR Executive Roundtable  a few weeks ago:

• Help recruit employees that reflect the community that Marketing is trying to target  (for example Spanish customer service reps needed before marketing to the Latino community)
• Partner to help communicate marketing initiatives to employees in advance of launch
• Connect and work together regularly; reporting to the same executive helps
• Work together to collect survey data from employees
• Find ways to make sure the customer story and brand is reflected in human resources training/communication/orientation
• Make sure  new recruits are a cultural fit to the brand
• Help with the details of the big picture; fill in the blanks
• Combat turfism together; sit at the same table on strategic initiatives
• Have employees help with tradeshow booth, to learn about the event/tradeshow and the products featured
• Bring customers to employee meetings to help convey brand positioning and customer perspective
• Help with consistency in communications – inconsistency is the enemy of authenticity
• Use employees to evangelize the brand in whatever ways you can think of

In my next post, we will explore how Marketing can help HR.

Question: What kind of leader are you? As a member of the executive team, do you represent your own functional interests or those of the overall organization? Or both? 

For more information on Executive Coaching please visit http://www.hrnow.net/coach.htm. Suzanne has two blogs:  http://executiveyak.com and http://hrundercover.com/ (we want your workplace stories).

Suzanne Elshult, http://executiveyak.com Executive Yak, sponsors live round tables for senior marketing and human resources executives in the Seattle area and offers executive / professional coaching and virtual learning opportunities for leaders, business owners, consultants and coaches committed to growth and high performance.

As the healthcare reform debate rages on in Washington, HR executives are having to manage the fallout from an increasingly antagonistic environment. Some businesses are openly taking a position and engaging their employees as advocates. Others are staying neutral and taking a wait and see approach and closely monitoring what will come out of Washington and what it will mean for their employee benefit plans. Without a doubt many plan sponsors  are also actively thinking about the impact of some of the proposals on their plans and their Employer Brands.

In a few weeks I will be meeting with a group of senior HR executives here in the Pacific Northwest to discuss a variety of critical issues related to healthcare reform. Here are some of the questions this group has decided to address:

• What should we – HR executives – be asking of ourselves and our executive leadership? How can we take a strong leadership role relative to healthcare reform? Should we?
• Is your company taking a public position wt re: to reform? Is your company approaching this issue from a “business” or “moral” perspective or both?
• How are you communicating about healthcare reform wt your employees? Are you trying to engage them with a particular point of view (asking them to send letters to senators etc)? What about unions?
• What are the real life impacts on your organization of various healthcare reform scenarios, how will they affect your organization and how should you position yourself for the decisions that need to be made in your role as steward of your organizations’ benefit and total compensation dollars?
• Is it possible that many of you in fact have plans that do not measure up to what the government states is sufficient levels of coverage?
• What would be  acceptable minimum coverage to avoid an employer getting fined – or needing to pay a tax?
• How is the sufficiency of the plan assessed  (i.e. by design elements such as coinsurance and size of deductible; by premium costs, by percentage of employer contribution to premiums?   What are the early indicators on what is acceptable to be considered a player in the “pay or play” world we will likely be seeing?
• What are implications of this on recent trends that encourage more employee skin in the game – (HSA, HRA, qualified HDHP plans, etc,)?
• Does the endorsement of wellness as central to the strategy of containing costs open the door to more aggressive “carrot and stick” motivators to encourage participation in wellness programs?
• What tax implications will most likely be included – and what are the likely effective dates – and how do we educate /communicate same to our employees?

What other questions and issues do you think HR Executives need to concern themselves with relative to healthcare reform? Do you have  stories related to healtcare reform to tell? Go to http://hrundercover.com

For more information on Executive Coaching please visit http://www.hrnow.net/coach.htm