David Saltzman: 0:01

What's new and what's trending in the world of voluntary or enhanced benefits? We'll find out on this episode of Shift Shapers.

Announcer: 0:12

Change either energizes or paralyzes. The choice is yours. This is the Shift Shapers Podcast, bringing the employee benefits industry interviews with individuals and companies who are shaping the industry shifts. And now, here's your host, David Saltzman.

David Saltzman: 0:31

And to help us answer that question, we've invited my old buddy Eric Silverman, who is now a four-time guest and has lived to tell the tale. He's a founder of Voluntary Disruption. He's a podcast host, an author, and the 2017 EBA benefit advisor of the year. Hey Eric, how you doing?

Eric Silverman: 0:49

Hey, what's up, David? Thanks for having me back for a record fourth time.

David Saltzman: 0:53

A record fourth time? I'm gonna have to get you like a little award to put on your mantle back on your shelves back there or something. I will last time we talked was back in 2023, almost exactly two years ago now. Um and I know a lot has changed in a variety of different ways pertaining to what you call enhanced benefits. Um let's let's dig in and let's start at the at the very bottom. What's changed in terms of product? Have product offerings gotten broader, more pointed, um pulled in? Where's that at?

Eric Silverman: 1:24

You know, I I I often think about the evolution or what carriers would like to call revolution of products in in our space, or I should say my space, the enhanced benefit space. But to be honest, I haven't seen anything crazy revolutionary, uh, even even evolutionary over the last uh handful of years. Um I'd say it's a lot of the same old. Um, you know, some of the uh non-insurance programs are still gaining more and more popularity and traction because let's just face it, uh pet benefits and ID theft and prepaid legal as not sexy as those sound, I agree. Um they catch the employees' interest and they catch the human resource professionals' interest and they're simple, quick add-ons that uh that employees appreciate. And and to be honest, they're things that they get offered anyway. When you go to, I don't have a pet anymore, unfortunately. My Mike, I'm a cat guy, they passed away a few years ago. But when I would deal with a Pet Smart or Petco, the cashier is gonna ask you if you want to buy pet insurance or pet plans. Um, so employees are getting them anyway. Norton Lifelock, God bless them, they advertise like crazy on the radio. So employees are getting these things anyway. So employers have realized if they just offer it on a group platform at time of enrollment and new hire, they can actually make it a true employee benefit and give employees a discount. Uh and the other, the only other benefit I've seen growing in more engagement and popularity, I would say, is uh, and this is a good one, uh, is uh life insurance with uh with long-term care. Um there's really not much of a standalone long-term care market anymore on the group level. So tying it in with a life plan has been about as innovative as I've seen, and it is quite popular.

David Saltzman: 3:05

Yeah, the pet insurance uh was one of the most sold benefits last year. I I read someplace in an episode of EBA or something. Um so it, you know, obviously these things are desirable, and you're right. If if you can do it at work, you know, why not? So if if the benefits haven't changed in terms of you know what's being offered all that much, has there been more change technologically? For example, uh is there more benefit decision support tools? Um, or are there more benefit support tools? Um, and you know, how are employees taken to those?

Eric Silverman: 3:38

Yeah, I mean, there's a plethora of uh companies out there that have been in the decision support tool uh industry, I should say, uh, for years. Um, and there's new ones, I believe, coming out quite often. I see them at a lot of conferences uh trying to get a corner on the market. Um, and they're quite useful. They really are. Uh the challenge that that is the decision support tool model uh has been and and still is, and I believe will be for the near term at least, uh, is the affordability and the perception of the value that it brings. So a mega company, right, a Home Depot size company, I don't have one of those, I wish I did, but those types of companies put it in, it's no big deal. It makes sense. Their advisor carriers help pay for it. The heck, the company might help pay for it, and that's fine. Um, but when you try to streamline it down to the uh even the mid-tier, let alone the lower tier market, you know, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 lives, um, it's still very costly. Uh I highly recommend it. I would love to use it and do it, um, but it becomes very, very cumbersome to put in value and money-wise. Uh so I think, like any technology, right? You and I love technology, it's gonna continue to get uh better, it's gonna continue to get more affordable as as it scales. Uh, but I personally haven't seen it there yet.

David Saltzman: 4:57

That's interesting. So it, you know, do you think that as AI becomes more pervasive and easier to use and more interactive, that that will be one of the things that drives engagement of that of those kinds of tools? Because I know employees love them.

Eric Silverman: 5:11

Yeah, I mean, I I they're they already exist. I'm not gonna sit here and name vendors for the sake of naming vendors, but they can they can reach out and sponsor you if you want, if they want. Um, but with all seriousness, um, no, uh, there's no question AI is gonna help. It already is. We use it every day. And with respect to decision support, you know, I would love uh uh with a with a passion to see something on scale that we can implement in a 10-man group the same way we can do a hundred and a thousand and a ten thousand-man group. And I would love to see something to the effect of Amazon, whereby, you know, you liked this, you probably would love this. Most people who get this also add these three things. I can easily see a world where that is ubiquitous in offering. Um, and it exists, don't get me wrong, but again, it would be super helpful for the low, mid-size market um and very, very valuable for employees alike.

David Saltzman: 6:02

Well, sure. I mean, if if it looks at the census and it knows that, you know, you're a young parent with three boys, it's going to say accident insurance is something that you've got to have. Right. So, you know, it'll but it but it'll come. Have you seen any changes in distribution? Is it still pretty much broker-based?

Eric Silverman: 6:17

Uh, you know, it so I mean, I'm I'm I I like to think I'm still young, but I've been in the business now 26 years. When I started 26 years ago, everything was one-on-one old school enrollments, uh knee-to-knee, face-to-face, mandatory this, mandatory that. Uh, you had to horn swaggle employees into trying to buy stuff, whether they need it or not. I'm just telling you how it is, right? Or was. Um these days, increasingly over the last many years, I'd say even the last decade, let alone the last five years, um, it's been increasingly more uh popular for employers uh to actually go through their medical broker, advisor, or consultant. Uh years ago, I guess my point is it was more direct. You had carriers that were um swarming the market and going direct cold-calling businesses across the country. That still exists by all means, good, bad, or indifferent, love it or hate it, not here to argue that. But I've seen more and more of that going away and more and more advisors, brokers, consultants, ABC, getting into the market and continuing to dive feet first into the market, uh, partnering with companies like myself and others who can really streamline what they used to not be able to do or uh really just help advisors truly own the benefit package, as opposed to, you know, we still meet brokers who will do medical and they'll do pharmacy and they stay in their own little world there. And then when I ask them about the enhanced benefit side or even the employer-funded side for core, disability life, et cetera, brokers will say, Yeah, we don't really touch that. It kind of just rolls over, or whatever the carrier says we should do, we do. And I find that unfathomable, to be honest with you. Um, I see brokers too often, uh, more often than not. And if you're listening and your advisor, please don't hang up on me, but I see it. I'm just spating facts. The reality is uh advisors spend so much thought and purpose and time putting together a strategic medical and pharmacy plan for their employer group clients and their employees who are the true consumers of healthcare. The challenge is they don't give an iota or a you know what, a flying you know what, when it comes to um strategically placing disability life, dental vision, accident critical hospital, let alone pet benefits or anything of the like. So uh we just want advisors and brokers and consultants to, this is harsh. This is really harsh. I just want them to stop being too-faced. And if they're gonna say they care about the holistic approach of the employer and the employee spend, really own it and really mean it. And that means every benefit. Because let's be honest, a benefit is a benefit, is a benefit, regardless of who pays for it. Anything you can get working across the street at a competitor is and was and always will be considered a benefit. So the more an employer can offer, whether it's employer funded or employee funded or shared, the more they can offer it and a package, the more perception-wise it's gonna be to work there. Great, it's gonna be greater to work there from an employee perspective.

David Saltzman: 9:12

Well, I mean, it's also it's also a risk tool. I mean, I we say a lot, especially when we're talking about self-funded plans on the program. There's really only three things you can do with risk. You can take it, you can share it, or you can give it away. And, you know, maybe part of it is risk to the employer, but part of it is risk to the employees as well. Um, and then, you know, you circle back when it's just a risk to the employee, it also touches the employer because you have absenteeism, presentedism, all of that other stuff that, you know, we we all like to talk about. But it can it can be a lucrative part of somebody's practice, can't it?

Eric Silverman: 9:42

Oh, extremely. And, you know, I don't hear it as often nowadays, but I still hear it. And I certainly heard it years ago where an advisor broker consultant would say, well, you know, we just don't touch that side of the house, the enhanced benefits, voluntary, uh, ancillary, whatever. We don't really get into it because it's kind of a pain and there's really no profit in it, there's no margin, the benefits are the benefits, it's it's no big deal, where nobody's getting rich on it. And and they don't say it candidly to be offensive. They're being very blunt and direct, and I appreciate and respect it, but they're just missing out because they don't understand how this side of the fence works. It would be the equivalent if I just all of a sudden tried to start selling health insurance and and self-funded medical plans. If I didn't have somebody guiding me and showing me the way, I wouldn't know any better. And I too may think it's a pain in the butt and there's no money in it. So um, you have to have that subject uh matter expert to guide and and really, in my case, just partner with works what works even better.

David Saltzman: 10:39

And now, a word from our sponsor. If you're like most advisors, you've used platforms that promised to help but only added work. Outdated legacy systems, weeks-long setups, endless data formatting headaches. Venopower changes all that. Built by Benefits Pros or Benefits Pros, it was designed for AI from day one, so everything works faster and smarter. They integrate vendors in days, not weeks, and take any data format, Excel, PDF, whatever, and make it usable instantly. Venapower's Truvo app gives employees real-time AI-powered help by chat, email, or voice, and pre-authorization alerts prevent costly surprises. You get performance measurements and one-click reporting, so you spend less time on admin and more time growing your book. Move from frustration to freedom, from vendor to trusted advisor with Venepower. For more information or to schedule a demo of Venopower Advantage, go to Venepower.com. And now, back to our conversation. So one of the concerns that that always happens when you start adding more benefits and more employee choices is communicating properly. Are are you seeing any changes in the way I mean, we used to just get everybody at open enrollment meetings and plaster them with materials and whatnot? Are you seeing any changes in how that's happening?

Eric Silverman: 12:04

Uh yeah, I mean, and I could go on forever with it, but one of the biggest focuses we're making uh over the last couple of years and and now even more so than ever, is uh a targeted message focused on the family uh of the employee, the the true consumer of healthcare themselves, the employee. And, you know, when I present this concept to advisors, brokers, consultants, I always start there because that's my my client. Um, and then before we meet with employers, but even employers, they kind of scratch their head and say, well, how can you do that? Well, you know, one kind of pro tip for anybody that wants to give it a shot, it works so well, is you want to make it a family decision. And more often than not, husband, wife, mom, dad, um, you know, yeah, the uncle who's a financial planner, they'll say to their uh their family member who's going through open enrollment, well, geez, I didn't know it was open enrollment. What do you mean it ends tomorrow? How long has it been open? It's been open for three weeks. Ah, yeah, well, here's that packet of information. Um, if you you can take that uh out of the equation by just going direct to the source, the family member themselves. And the way you do it, a lot of people say, well, geez, how? Within most and all benefit platforms, whether it be uh a payroll service enrollment platform or an employee navigator type system, God bless them. Um the reality is the emergency contact number is more often than not we find a husband, a wife, a uh a significant other of some source, and we just message them. And the message is simple. You can use chat GPT to help you, but it's something simple like, hey, we see you listed as the emergency contact, and we make fun. Great news, no worries, everybody's fine, but we wanted you to be aware that uh it's benefit season and benefits are a family decision. Click here to help your uh significant other of some sort, uh, et cetera, et cetera, uh do their open enrollment and pick their benefits. So uh, and there's a science behind it, and we have um scripts and hundreds and hundreds of templates we have, but the reality is when we dive into that feature alone, um it's uncanny how the enrollment rates go up and we get feedback. We don't do every group doesn't do a post-enrollment survey, but if and when we do, we uh we hear and see comments about how they really appreciated getting their family member involved. Uh and I'll be sexist for a minute. A lot of times it's the wives who will comment and say, Hey, geez, I'm so glad that you messaged me because Joe, my husband, hasn't told me about open enrollment yet.

David Saltzman: 14:27

Well, you know, those of us who are married, have been married, et cetera, know that the wives are usually smarter and certainly more on top of this kind of stuff. So um, you know, we're more interested in other things. So it escapes our mind. Are there different modes of communication that you find work better? Are you doing like, you know, kind of internal podcasts or uh texting or other things? What's what's working?

Eric Silverman: 14:50

Yeah, so I mean we take uh uh and I didn't create the term, but we take an omni-channel approach. So we tell employers all the time, hey, you're already sending out a massive email, you're already doing it, uh, fantastic. Don't stop. You're already putting up a sign old-fashioned style in the break room above a time clock. Great, don't stop. We're not telling them to cancel or change what they're doing. If they like it, they don't mind doing it, and they believe that it works. What we're trying to do, excuse me, is just be more additive. We're simply saying, let's augment what you're currently doing with the mode of communication that people value and trust more. So nowadays it's text message communication. And I probably said that when we met a few years ago, but the reality is that hasn't gotten worse. It's gotten increasingly better. Um, so we're identifying ourselves as the employer enrollment team. Uh, we're using their image, their logo, their likeness, they're they're approving it. And um, and people recognize it immediately. And they have hyperlinks that they can click on to go directly into the enrollment platform using their uh what I have I didn't coin it. Chris Wolper, my good friend coined it, the remote control of everybody's daily life, which is their smartphone, their Android, their Google device, their iPhone, or what have you. Um, so that's one, but it's also a two-way text communication platform. So, you know, these days, and we see it all the time, uh, particularly to be to be honest, we hear the younger generation, they have what's called uh uh phone anxiety, uh voicemail anxiety. They don't know how to use the phone uh properly. And I think it's sad, but that's a uh topic for another day. So they have grown up texting and they prefer it. So if you're communicating with this generation and then some, you want to make sure you're communicating with them and meeting them where they're at, which in this case is using that same technology. We're taking it a step further, though, because we're getting the employer to record themselves on a video that we blast message to all the employees, where I can tell you, ma'am, if it's me on a video, nobody cares. Nobody knows who I am. If it's my counterpart, advisor, broker, partner, uh, consultant uh uh putting themselves on video, they don't care about them either. No offense to my partners. What they do care about, maybe at least a little bit better than us, is the employer, head of HR, putting themselves on a one-minute video and we blast that out and we put a progress bar and we put captions and we make it look fancy, we make it look like a TikTok without the dancing, we make it look like an Instagram reel without the um the music, because we're trying to appeal to a generation that is so used to that type of video format. And then to round it all out, not only are we doing it in multiple languages, all of what I just told you, uh, if and when needed, but we're also doing internal webinars that I would call more of an internal podcast where we're having employees uh who we ask if they'd be on the show or an employer, where we can literally blast out a quick um 30 second, 60 second, or two minutes about a certain product or a certain uh part of the uh the benefit side that we want to get across to that employer. And those tend to be bite-sized drips of information, very similar to when I do my podcast just like you, we clip out the best parts and we send them out to the social media feeds. Very much the same thing when it comes to uh to it to talking about benefits throughout the year.

David Saltzman: 18:00

You know, one of the things we talked about off-air was um self-service enrollment. Is is that becoming more comfortable and more available because of the generational shift?

Eric Silverman: 18:11

Yeah, I mean, hands down, my goodness. Um yeah, I haven't literally, no joke, in in more than a decade, I haven't organized a one-on-one in-person enrollment in more than a decade. And uh business has never been better and employees have never been better educated because of the tools at our fingertips. Now, I know there's a lot of naysayers that will argue that, particularly the uh voluntary carrier reps that make a living doing one-on-one lip uh enrollments. And I did that for 15 years, almost 15 years. But the reality is technology is at us at such a high and it's increasingly getting better that we're doing multiple tens of thousands of employee companies as well as the 10-man company uh virtually. I mean, we have 99% of our employer group clients and our advisor partners that bring us in. I've never even met in person. I'm not bragging, I'm simply saying I there's no need. We do a virtual handshake on Zoom, we close the deal, we set up the open enrollment communication and technology, and we're off to the races. And when I explain it properly to a human resource professional, an employer of sorts, even an advisor who doesn't know any better, their head explodes in the best way possible because David, they're not used to it because they don't know any better and they're not convinced that it's gonna work. And here's the interesting thing uh that that happens in the best way possible. We're seeing enrollment rates uh at at highs, just like if they were meeting one-on-one with an employee or a uh a 1099 commission counselor. And in this case, there's no commission counselor. Uh, counselor is a term for salesperson. Um, and moreover, uh, we're not having pushback on the back end because back in the old days and still to this day, if you uh are an employee and you meet with a uh a 1099 commission salesperson who's gonna uh try to sell you a bunch of stuff you may or may not need, what happens is night follows day is a couple of weeks or a month later, you have buyer's remorse and you try to get out of it. And if there's pre-tax, there's a whole challenge of getting out of it if and when it can be allowed. In our case, we have a digital timestamp of when the employee themselves went in and made their election and how many times they went through the platform over open enrollment before they made an election, which makes there's they can have buyer's remorse, God bless, but it's very, very difficult for them to say they didn't want it because they weren't forced to do it. They did it manually on their own. So there's no headaches on the back end for us as advisors, brokers, and consultants. And there's certainly uh very little to no headaches to the employer, the HR department alike.

David Saltzman: 20:35

Now, as as we've talked, obviously you deal with open enrollments like all the time. Um, and I know you're pretty much become an expert on that. Are there things that um some firms are doing that are actually hurting their enrollments or things that brokers are doing?

Eric Silverman: 20:52

Yeah, I think the uh and I I I'm really passionate about this. I kind of uh uh I say there's there's basically six to seven different things that uh that employers are doing wrong and their advisors are helping them do wrong without even realizing it, uh, as far as you know, what's the term in any industry is what are the best practices, right? So, some best practices, some of the biggest things that I see that we try to overcome, and once I explain it, we very readily overcome it with ease. Um, and then random order. Um, one, yeah, I mean, if you really want to host an in-person meeting, that's fine, but why? Why do you need to um to take people off the line if it's an assembly line? Why do you have to pull people in if they work from home? Why are we still trying to arm wrestle people to do in-person meetings? So virtual works so much better. Um, also, when you do a virtual meeting, uh, make sure you record it. And when you upload it to their custom micro site that we make for them, uh, so it's 365, 247 for the employees and their families to view it. Um, uh, I'm sure people listening are familiar with YouTube chapters, right? So if you put an hour video up on YouTube, you can scroll to see the chapter that you want to actually check out. I'm a big car fan, I'm an enthusiast, and I'm not shy about it. So when I watch a lot of car videos, I might not want to see, no offense, I'm a host as well. I might not want to see the opening part, but I want to see them get to the fun part. So I'll scroll to what I care about, right? And it saves me a lot of time and effort. Why aren't you doing that with benefit videos? So if you record, it doesn't have to be an hour, but if you recorded an hour meeting live with the 27 people that came to the Zoom or the team's meeting live, when you put it on uh the website for employees to see the benefit site, why not chapter it out? So extract the dental and just put the four minutes on dental so they can click on only the dental if that's what they really care about. Extract the 37 seconds on prepaid legal or pet benefits, extract the one minute on accident and the seven minutes on medical. You get the idea and the two minutes on pharmacy. So the chapter um segmentation is instrumental. Um, don't rely just on email. We kind of touched about that on uh earlier, but email I don't want to say is dead, but people get email anxiety the same way they get voicemail anxiety. So again, you got to use that omnichannel approach. Um, here's a big one. Don't drag out the open enrollment window. Uh the 80, 20, 10, or I should say the 70, 20, 10 rule is is is very much a thing. So uh if you do an open enrollment um launch today, on the day we're recording this message, um you're gonna have a lot of type A, not a lot, you're gonna have the type A personalities go through right away. Fair. And we love those, by the way. You're gonna have most people not do anything in the middle of the two or three or four week open enrollment companies like to have. And then you're gonna have everybody rush at the end, and then HR's pulling their hair out trying to arm wrestle people to go through open enrollment. The shorter the open enrollment window, the better. So uh you can always extend it by a few days if you need to, but stop for the for the life of me, stop telling employees they have a three-week open enrollment or a four-week, even a two-week. Our maximum open enrollment window that we like to promote is a week and a half tops, and even that is too long. And people always say, Well, but we have you know 1,400 employees. You can't possibly do it. Really? The system can handle 1,400 employees on the same second at the same day if that happened, right? So, what do you mean you can't possibly do it? They're scattered around the country. Of course you can do it. It's just you've never done it that way. So you have to be open-minded to something different and new and unique that will help save them and you time. Procrastination is the uh is the detriment to all good open enrollments. Here's another tip when it comes to launching open enrollment. We've never opened launch an open enrollment uh for a new account or a re-enrollment on a Monday. I don't care if the employer, um, if the employee themselves work on a Monday or if that's their off day, Mondays are just a Monday, right? There's the old saying, you have the case of the Mondays, right? Sunday night, people don't want to get up for Monday morning. Launch on a Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. Heck, we love launching on a Friday because we promote that the weekend is a perfect opportunity for them to make it a family decision. And then we leave it open for the next five to seven days or what have you. Um, a couple other final things. Uh, one would be um January one is not the only option. We increasingly encourage brokers and advisors and consultants to help their employer clients move their effective date off of January one. So it helps us as advisors, brokers, consultants, and it also helps the employer and the employees not have to do it during the crazy world that is fourth quarter. Um, we're doing a uh supermarket chain right now and they're doing it during fourth quarter, but we told them this will be the last year. If they're open to it and they loved it, we're moving them to next year. We're doing a short plan year now, and they were like, oh my gosh, it's a new advisor took over the health. We never were told that. We didn't know that was a thing. We thought we had to be January 1. So if you explain how a supermarket that makes turkeys for Thanksgiving for their customers, you don't have to do it in your busy season. Let's move it off cycle so you don't have to deal with the rigmarole ever again. Um, and you know, I guess the bottom line is stop as an advisor broker consulting, stop taking orders from your clients that think they know what they're doing only because some bad broker told them that's how it had to be years ago. Start consulting and guiding them to the best practices that I outlined and then some that truly can make benefits open enrollments uh great again. I I don't know why I said that, but it's gonna be funny for people that don't like that saying.

David Saltzman: 26:28

Well, we won't we won't make any red hats, I promise you. But that's you know, the that that's the thing. If if you want to differentiate yourself as an advisor, advise. You know, I get that question all the time, and and that's the answer that I've been giving for, I don't know, at least the last five, six years, is is is be an advisor. Don't just be a product peddler or a product placer. It's way more than that. It's anybody there. Right. Anybody can do that part of it. The part of it where you're really a value to your client is your insight from how many ever years you've been in the marketplace and the things that you've learned and to make it easy for them. It it's it's not rocket surgery, as somebody once said. It's it's really pretty simple. Hey, Eric, if folks want to work with you and want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do it?

Eric Silverman: 27:09

Sure, I appreciate it. Uh, so voluntary disruption.com, two words, voluntary disruption altogether.com. Uh, I'm pretty darn uh darn active on social media, particularly LinkedIn. Um, so just Eric Silverman and LinkedIn, uh combined uh 70,000 of you already follow me or are connected. So love to have more. And if we haven't met yet, send me a message. Let's connect and and figure out uh how we can work together. And even more so, because this is what I'm passionate about. If you want to just talk cars, um, send me a message or follow me on Instagram. I'm Toys for Dad. Um, and you can see all my fun toys.

David Saltzman: 27:43

Toys and fun fact, you know, from somebody who's known Eric for a long time. If you really want to win his heart, buy a mistake.

Eric Silverman: 27:49

Mistake, or take me to an Orioles game.

David Saltzman: 27:52

Yeah, well, you can take him to an Orioles game too. Eric, thanks so much for sharing your expertise. We appreciate it, and we appreciate having you back on again.

Eric Silverman: 27:59

Thanks, everybody. Thanks, David.

Announcer: 28:02

The Ship Shapers podcast is a production of Ship Shaper strategies and may not be reproduced or quoted in whole or in part without our express written permission. Copyright 2020, all rights reserved.