Claie Morin: (00:12)
Welcome to HR Trends. I'm your host, Clare Morin. Today we're discussing 2021 benefits tech trends we have with us an amazing panel. We have Josh Bersin industry analyst, researcher, educator and a global technology analyst who covers all aspects of corporate HR training, talent management, recruiting leadership and workplace technology. He's of course the founder of Bersin & Associates which is now known as Bersin by Deloitte and founder of the Josh Bersin Academy. A professional development Academy which has become the home for HR. Welcome Josh.

Josh Bersin: (00:53)
Thank you Clare. Great to be here.

Claie Morin: (00:56)
We also have with us Swapnil Prabha. She has 15 years of experience in the insurance industry. Swapnil is the vice president of Digital Offerings at Unum. Prior to that she spent seven years at McKinsey and company where she was a leader in the insurance practice focusing on digital services across all lines of business and specifically employee benefits. Welcome Swapnil.

Swapnil prabha: (01:21)
Thanks Clare. Happy to be here.

Claie Morin: (01:23)
We also have Mike Simonds, Chief Operating Officer of Unum group. One of the Ethisphere Institute's world's most ethical companies. Since joining Unum in 1994, Simonds has worked in various leadership roles and he's helped lead the company's focused on customer satisfaction and expansion into voluntary dental and vision benefits. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Anthropology and a Master's in Business Administration from Harvard business school. Welcome Mike.

Mike Simonds: (01:55)
Thank you Clare. It's a pleasure to be here.

Claie Morin: (01:58)
Today were talking about benefits. The need for benefits and technology trends in 2021. Josh, I wonder if we can begin with you. You spoken of recent SHRM webinar about the future of the employee benefits experience and you gave this fascinating talk about the economy at this very moment in time. Where you see the economy going in coming months and you've said it's about to become explosively hot. You also spoke to those C-suite perspectives this need for talent as the economy starts bouncing back, the need for productivity and a lot of demands on people and added pressures on their mental health. Can you start sort of giving us a lay of the land?

Josh Bersin: (02:42)
Sure. I'm not the only one with this hypothesis but maybe I can make it very relevant to HR people. We're coming out of the pandemic slowly but we are coming out of it and different parts of the world are going to work and going back to travel and going back to life and going back to vacations and seeing their families and the pent up demand is massive.

Josh Bersin: (03:09)
Every company I talked to is growing and I talked to a lot of companies. The airlines are hiring. I just talked to Delta Airlines and I talked to Southwest Airlines both of which are hiring again. The planes are getting back in the air, the roads where I live are full. People are driving from place to place I don't know where they're going but they're going somewhere. And we have a $1.9 trillion bill that just got passed and another $3 trillion bill in the United States that's potentially going to get passed so there's a lot of money in the economy. And frankly most of us have been traumatized for the last year and we're waiting for an opportunity to go back to the lives we had before. All the signals are an incredibly dynamic economy ahead because what happened during the pandemic is most companies did a lot of digital transformation, a lot of re-engineering of products and services, a lot of becoming more efficient and becoming more directly connected to their customers and so it's going to be a great time to be a business person, an HR person and a job seeker because I think there's going to be a lot of opportunities. Also wages are starting to go up. If you look at the wage data and the Bureau of Labor Statistics they're poking up also which of course is a slight sign of inflation but I these are...

Josh Bersin: (04:33)
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the biggest economic boom many of us have ever lived through. Witnessed the roaring twenties which people talk about all the time. It'll be the 2020s but it's very likely to be true. Of course we're going to talk more about mental health and behavioral health. There's a lot of baggage we're still carrying with us and so we'll talk about that later but that's essentially what I see happening in the business community.

Claie Morin: (05:01)
That is fascinating. Mike, I would love to hear your views sort of as a COO who's been staring a leading benefits provider and a company with 11,000 people through this time any thoughts on what Josh said?

Mike Simonds: (05:14)
Thanks. Just picking up on Josh's point we're beginning to see the same. We have clients of about 180,000 strong across the US and actually in the UK as well similar dynamic where we're just starting to see payroll starting to increase, merit pay coming through josh like you were talking about and then jobs being added and would agree I think there's momentum building here and it's an interesting context, right? Because while I do feel very optimistic about the growth prospects in the economy I think we come out the other side of the pandemic changed in some pretty fundamental ways when it comes to employees and in our business employee benefits. I do think this pandemic has shown everyone just how vital really good benefits are and we've learned firsthand ourselves and through our friends and our families and our colleagues how fragile our health and financial situation really can be.

Mike Simonds: (06:13)
It is certainly about making sure that employers are equipped and capable of getting benefits out there and in the hands of employees for when they need it and they're acutely more aware than they were pre pandemic for that need but it really does go beyond that. I think the stress on employees through this period has been really remarkable and we've not been immune to that here at Unum. Clare you mentioned it 11,000 folks needing to transition to home, dealing with the challenge of their own workload and that transition being a full-time teacher, being a full-time mother or father that's taken a real toll. And so I think issues of mental health have definitely been building on and we see this particularly in the Gen Zs and the millennials but I think the pandemic has really brought that to the fore. All of us have to be thinking about strategically how do the benefits become a much more important not only safety net but present the capability to sort of really care for our people and be sure that they can show up with their whole selves and be as productive as possible.

Claie Morin: (07:25)
That's so true and Josh I'd love to bring that back to you because I know you did a recent pandemic response study that showed taking care of people and families was number one. Taking care of this health and safety and creating what you mentioned as integrated support for families. You also spoke about the big trends in HR right now. So if there's employees there's that need but you've also talked about how in HR we kind of need to make the tech go away and simplify things-

Josh Bersin: (07:58)
Yeah.

Claie Morin: (07:59)
Make the tech easier for everyone. I wonder if you could speak to those two elements.

Josh Bersin: (08:06)
The big word that became very popular this year is resilience, individual and organizational resilience and most of us know what that's all about because we've been stressed all year with various things. And what the pandemic response research pointed out was that not only taking care of employees from the standpoint of benefits and health but taking care of their families was an enormous piece of this last cycle because everybody's families were under stress with kids at home and parents and not being able to see parents. We also found that having a sense of purpose and mission was an enormous sort of accelerator of successes last year because people looked at work during the pandemic as a refuge from the risks of everyday life. I don't want to go to the grocery store because I might get sick but I can go on Zoom and I can actually be with the people I like working with and I can do some good stuff for my customers or my clients or my teammates.

Josh Bersin: (09:07)
I think people gained a greater appreciation of the value of work beyond the work and employers and executives and CEOs and I'm sure Mike you feel this way also really came to understand that. And then there was the issue of technology. And of course it turned out that video conferencing and Zoom and teams was a lot easier than people thought. There was a lot of fear about work at home. The first couple of months companies weren't sure if they were going to let their employees work at home and then they said, "This works pretty well." And then there were a bunch of press releases saying, "We're never going to come back to the office you can work from home the rest of your life." And now they're realizing that's not so great either. We do need to get together and meet and talk about things.

Josh Bersin: (09:52)
There's a new really emerging completely new way of thinking about work technology around the employee experience. Microsoft is big into this now and other vendors to make it flexible, simple, easy to use, productive and integrated into the work itself. If you're using Salesforce or using Outlook or using Gmail or whatever it may be you don't want to go to 15 other tools to get your work done you want to do it all in one place and that's really what Unums benefits experienced technology is about too. And that's been a guiding light for the HR and the IT vendors over the last year and I think it's very positive. And I think we're going to be in a hybrid work environment for many years to come. Sometimes at home, sometimes in an office, sometimes in a satellite office and that technology ease of use is a critical part of making that a success.

Claie Morin: (10:53)
That's fantastic. And Mike and certainly Swapnil who I know is leading a lot of this digital experience work at Unum. I'd love to pick up on that idea of bringing sort of work into the tools that HR is using every day. Before we go there then Mike I wonder if you could just sort of react to that in terms of maybe how Unum is supporting its own employees around this environment.

Mike Simonds: (11:21)
Sure. Thanks Clare. And Josh, just to pick up on you, I loved your point in your HR predictions for 2021. One of your headlines was the employee experience is becoming a corporate strategy and that really resonated because we had this incredible... I don't know. Almost paradoxical experience here at Unum where we've never been sort of physically more distant but more connected as a firm and it really has been that sense of purpose of just being there for each other and for our clients through a remarkably challenging period of time and really focusing on the team and what they need and it is so funny but it is so true their families as well to navigate such a challenging time. We see the pandemic heading for our business leaves and short-term disability claims jump up as people get sick and/or go home to care for their families and yet we see our engagement scores which came into the period high jump by nine points.

Mike Simonds: (12:28)
And we saw even in the midst of the volume things like customer satisfaction jump a similar level as well and you just see these things as [inaudible 00:12:36] and it's kind of a light bulb going off about the purpose of the company and then the experience for all of us being so consequential to what we ultimately can deliver in the marketplace. I think it is huge and it plays out I think in every part of a well-run company but certainly Clare your point within the HR technology and for us I know Swapnil can comment on this. It was really just having the humility to start with the fact that our clients are going to adopt platforms that are not Unum and therefore we ought to do our work to say, "What do we think those winning platforms are?" And Josh you named a couple of them and then let's start building around those platforms so that it does become seamless from their points of view and from their employees point of view. And then that gives us a great way to sort of access data and deliver an experience that's integrated and differentiated and lines up with that strategy of the employee experience being paramount. I know Swapnil will have more to say about that.

Swapnil prabha: (13:37)
Absolutely. And in some ways it's almost lucky that we started to recognize that and think about it prior to the past year that we've had. As we think about the positioning of HR admins right now and all of the trends that Mike you have mentioned and certainly Josh you talked about before where the job for an employer is more challenging than ever before. You are actually dealing with distributed workforces. Not just the delivery of benefits that they already have becomes a challenge but also what other benefits do they actually need? The fact that we did invest in integrative technologies like Interconnect that really made it easy for employers to administer the benefits, hopefully that will be an asset that will allow employers to create that capacity to then focus on employee experience and to really understand I can feel at peace or have the peace of mind that the benefits that I am providing, I am doing so in the most efficient way possible but what else could I do to really either meet the new needs that have emerged with the blurring boundaries between work and life certainly in the mental health space but also as I'm sure none of us are surprised by the increasing complexity in the leave landscape.

Swapnil prabha: (14:59)
How do I actually make sure that my employees if they need a leave and by the way there's going to be different types of leaves that will be needed. There's going to be a lot more what we call in the industry intermittent leaves that are on and off leaves but people need that flexibility. How do we make the delivery super intuitive and really hold ourselves to the bar of consumer experience that for some reason in the benefits industry we've just not done as good of a job but now is the time when we really need to think about employees as those consumers and how are we going to actually create that very real digital consumer life experiences for them to make benefits delivery certainly just as easy as buying something on Amazon for example. Can we actually set ourselves to... That aspiration for ourselves.

Josh Bersin: (15:46)
I have a sort of an observation about that. I think one of the reasons perhaps... You guys would know better than me. That this experience hasn't been great in the past is that we looked at it as an optional benefit not as a strategic part of the company's value proposition. And even the word benefits is a little bit misleading. These are essential. These are part of making your work experience productive and work and meaningful to people. And I thin it's the funny thing about the pandemic we have is skyrocketing engagement like you guys found and skyrocketing stress. So that seems weird. Why would you be highly engaged with your job and highly stressed? It's because the value of your work has just gone up and when the value of your work goes up, the company can afford and should spend more money on taking care of you. And that's basically what's going on is these things that used to be sort of optional benefits are becoming essential parts of the work experience and the value proposition of the company. One of my stories and messages to HR people is you kind of need to take this thing that's sitting over there in the benefits department and make sure you're really looking at it very, very strategically now.

Claie Morin: (17:05)
That's fantastic. Mike and Swapnil anything to add onto that?

Mike Simonds: (17:10)
Right. Swapnil and Josh were really well aware but you get to know HR professionals over the years and you know what they are best at is that strategic thought and where people can be trained, developed, applied to the biggest impact, to the business and so there is part of the mission here, which is how do you use thoughtful design with simplicity as being paramount under... I sort of supported with really good sound technology to get our HR teams out of the procedural and the process and get them back to focus on the people because we again... Josh who made the point beautifully. At the end of the day the light shown through the pandemic on your business starting and stopping with the effectiveness and the engagement of the people and what truly engaged and purpose-driven organizations can accomplish under the most challenging of circumstance.

Swapnil prabha: (18:14)
And maybe one of the things I wanted to essentially pick up on what Josh said as well was the whole... The recognizing that maybe we shouldn't even be calling these benefits and they are really essentials. I do think that that is something that folks like ourselves who are really working hard to bring those innovative solutions if you will instead of benefits to the market, need to be thinking about that as more and more employers recognize and providing these essential solutions benefits to employees is moving from becoming more from where it used to be the check the box exercise to now really being, "This is part of my culture and I'm going to define that culture." And also by the way recognizing that there's true dollar value associated with making these investments. There is a productivity case to be made as well along with the cultural case and certainly the more compliance and the check the box cases as well but we're going to probably see a shift of employers moving from the left hand side, the check to the box to the really recognizing the value in investing in these essentials.

Claie Morin: (19:24)
I wonder if we could sort of finish with another sort of historic levels. We're seeing trends from the pandemic. Of courses is the level of anxiety, right? Mental health. We're coming up to mental health awareness month in May. Josh, I'd love to ask you some of the most important issues you're seeing here for HR.

Josh Bersin: (19:49)
Mental health is a big topic and there's all sorts of specialty branches of it. Obviously companies need to provide various different forms of benefits but I think the core of mental health relative to work is psychological safety, belonging, clarity about your responsibilities, appreciation, thanks, teamwork. They're really management practices. As much as there are mental health programs and benefits and all sorts of tools to help you with it, I would remind the benefits buyers and the HR people that this is also about leadership and treating people with respect because nothing stresses you out more than having a boss that's on your neck all the time or isn't listening to you or a team that's not working together that will create more stress than anything at home usually. We need to not create that and I think a lot of companies did a lot of work on that this last year but it's a never ending process of balancing the business imperatives and their financial goals and the revenue and all the things we have to do to keep the company running with the human needs so that's my perspective on that topic.

Mike Simonds: (21:05)
I love where you went with that Josh with psychological safety. I really feel that that's paramount and you're kind of referencing it from a productivity point of view. Completely agree with that. I would say also from a creativity point of view. What is your organization actually able to imagine? What are they willing to challenge? Where are they willing to sort of think differently? And if you have created that sense of real psychological safety you're going to get the best of people's thinking and so in a lot of ways it ties with what is another sort of strategic and important objective for our client companies and for the HR leadership around inclusivity.

Mike Simonds: (21:48)
Then we think about inclusivity often in a correlation to sort of effectively tapping into the diversity that you want to drive in your organization which makes all the sense in the world but it's broader than that. It's about a culture that really does pull in the best and the whole that people have to offer and so I'm tracking with that 100%. The other piece when I think about mental health or even more broadly, the idea of behavioral health it's just beginning to think and for those that are listening and think about everything over the last several decades that we have invested in physical health as an employer. Thoughtfully and creatively designing the health plans and looked into and managed wellbeing programs and disease management with chronic conditions and all the thought and all the care that's gone into physical health and I think we're really just almost at jump street has employers when it comes to behavioral health. And I think that when we get mental health on parody in terms of lowering the stigma attached to it, having good open fact-based decisions that's when I think we really start to change the game when it comes to issues of mental health.

Claie Morin: (23:11)
Right. And Swapnil I know you two been spending a lot of time defining Unums digital offering in the space. What are you seeing and how are you thinking about this?

Swapnil prabha: (23:22)
Sure Clare. Let me start by echoing what Mike said in terms of good news. We are definitely seeing a lot more people willing to seek help with their mental health than we have seen before and related to that we're seeing wide-scale adoption of digital and virtual technology in the mental health delivery space. What this has allowed us to do is two things and by us I really mean the industry. What the industry is now doing is one helping increase availability of providers by leveraging those national networks as well as making it easier for folks who may be in more rural settings to be able to access care where in the past they would need to perhaps drive hours to even get the basic level of care for their mental health needs.

Swapnil prabha: (24:10)
The digital and workforce technology adoption and rise of these has really allowed us to solve that problem of access for them. Now what has also happened is just a lorry of activity in this space where you see a lot more point solutions coming up and it's all been good but what it has resulted in is some confusion for both employers as well as employees in terms of really identifying the solution that will help meet the needs of their entire employee population for employers and then for employees to really figure out what is the right solution for them. How can they actually go about navigating the ecosystem that has been created to figure out their best access point for that care. What we're seeing right now is a gap if you will in a more of a holistic or integrated experience that employers need to be able to provide that guide and experience to their employees as they navigate through their mental health journey.

Swapnil prabha: (25:13)
That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to essentially bring the experience that we have as Unum the claims provider in the behavioral health space, marrying that with all the latest and greatest innovations that we're seeing in the space and really building that digital first solution. But recognizing that there are aspects that we cannot just fall by technology and through integrations we also need to remember that we need to hold the employer's hands as well to encourage really a culture that supports employee mental health through things like trainings and engagement campaigns really driving adoption of those digital tools because at the end of the day employees are spending significant time in their employer communities and it's not fair for us to just make solutions available to them but not really create or help rather create that culture at their workplaces where they will be encouraged to use those solutions.

Claie Morin: (26:10)
Thank you Swapnil, Josh, Mike so much for coming on the show today. We actually launched the HR trends podcast at the beginning of April, 2020. I'm so glad we're sitting here a year later talking about the economy potentially coming back. Talking about new innovations to help people with their mental and physical wellbeing and just let's hope we're in an even stronger space next year. Thank you again so much.

Speaker 5: (26:48)
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