Women's Health- Caregiving, Reproductive Benefits and Menopause

Transcription:

Lee Hafner (00:08):

All right. Hi everyone, and welcome ladies. So we'll jump right in. Isha Vij is the VP of Employer Growth at Maven Clinic, which is a virtual care platform that helps people navigate at various life stages. And then Michelle Hamilton is the Director of People and Talent at InStride thank you very much for joining us here today. So we're going to be talking about women's health, caregiving, reproductive benefits, menopause, basically the full spectrum. And so ladies, we've got our agenda, but please feel free to add as much as you want as we go. This is an incredibly important and wonderfully broad topic. So let's begin by talking about the importance of establishing benefits within companies that grow with the company and with employees. And Isha, if you want to go ahead and get started and Michelle will hear if me to,

Isha Vij (01:09):

Yeah, happy to. Really nice to see everybody out in the crowd. My name's Isha Vij. I serve as VP of Employer Growth at Maven Clinic. For those of you that are not familiar, Maven Clinic is a digital health platform that helps individuals navigate both various paths to parenthood, through parenthood, and actually through menopause and ongoing care as well. What we've really seen is sort of this generational shift happening where people are becoming much more vocal around their needs and their frankly unmet needs. We're also seeing things like really escalating healthcare costs but not great outcomes. And so what we're trying to do at Maven is support individuals by giving them access to information and resources and actual great clinical experts as they navigate how to start a family, if they want to start a family, how to be a working parent. I myself am a parent of a very spirited two year old daughter, not just sort of balanced working parenthood, but survive weight, working parenthood.

(02:14)

And then of course in menopause, I'd say this is probably the area we're seeing the fastest growth among our employer partners, of which we have about 700 today. We're seeing a big rise in individuals speaking up that though they're so pleased to see a great investment in benefits, particularly on the fertility and family building side, that it feels like there is a major gap for individuals that are experiencing symptoms of menopause, both premenopausal, menopausal, and postmenopausal. And so this is an area where we see a number of employers making pretty significant investments so that they're working and supporting employees regardless of where they might be in their life stage.

Michelle Hamilton (03:01):

So Michelle Hamilton, thank you for having us. I work for InStride, so we're actually an education workforce development company. And so we at the core very much care about our people, our lives, the individuals that build our product. And we are small relative to many that you've seen up to this point. We're about four years old. And so when we built the strategy at the first year, it was at the core of the lifecycle of every employee, and that included women and very much on the early days. We were thinking about what lifecycle they have, what milestones we needed to be thinking about because as we talked about, we're building women leadership. One thing we pride ourselves at in Stride specifically is that we built a lot of our women. It's actually where our numbers strive. And so it's something that we have to think about at every side goal, not just the typical startup mentality.

(03:50)

And so that's something of caregiving, it's something around family planning, around menopause. It's such an interesting topic as we were talking earlier, it's what do we do about that? Where's the industry and where do we think about how we support those women leaders or individuals at that stage in their life, right? Because we've heard we all have multi-generational individuals and they're at different points and how do we support that? And so we are very lucky at in stride where our leadership and our strategy has always been thoughtful around the individuals and the different sizes way before we were 10 years old or when we had the income to do so. And so we continue to invest and we continue to think about alternative solutions that are not normal or maybe that not as interesting. And so we're not afraid to push the boundaries and think about what does that benchmark and how do we do better. So really proud of what our team does and really excited to talk about this, especially in the crowd of benefits.

Lee Hafner (04:39):

Yes, thank you. So Isha, your company works with 450 employers worldwide.

Isha Vij (04:48):

About 700 now seven. Very fast growth growing. Yeah, we cover about 18 million lives globally.

Lee Hafner (04:54):

Wow. Okay. So that being said, can you talk for a second about Global Parity and how you are working with employers to help approach that with their own businesses?

Isha Vij (05:05):

Yeah, absolutely. A couple of things come to mind. Number one, the majority of our business when we initially launched in 2014 was US based, right? Today. And something that I think was really accelerated through the pandemic where there was a much greater distribution of where people lived and where they worked. Employers started saying to us, we actually need much more equal benefits across all of our team members in every single country where we have operations. So though, when Maven initially launched, I would say 90% plus of our members were in the United States alone. Today it's closer to about 50% of our employers do offer Mavens benefits to their global workforces. And what they're looking for resources us for is understanding number one, there's a lot of regulation, there is a lot of legal nuances around where you can adopt, where you can use a surrogate, where you can access different types of resources or medical care.

(06:16)

And it's not even at a country level. If you think about Canada, this is at a province level, it changes. So we have a whole team that is staffed really to keep track of these regulations and nuances and make sure that we are actually driving people to the care that they need. First of all, again, we're a digital platform, so we're able to offer access to high quality care regardless of where people are located. But if they do need in-person care, which of course does happen, particularly on the family building side, if you do decide to go through with fertility treatment specifically, we will look at the best places for folks to go that are not only geographically convenient, but it's so much more than that. These journeys are incredibly complex. They're deeply personal. And so we look at identifying clinics as an example that will understand a person's lived experience, their lifestyle, their cultural background so that they can meet with individuals that understand who they are as human beings and deliver service that is extremely culturally competent.

Michelle Hamilton (07:24):

It's really interesting you say that because as a small company, we're just starting to expand internationally and we're not sure where to start. We don't have a traditional brokerage experience. And so we're looking at who can we use EORs PEOs because of the regulations and then how do that benefits compare apples to apples? They don't they, to your point. And so we're constantly thinking, especially because we are people first, we really care about our in Striders lives and want to make sure that we can provide equitable, maybe not equal, but at least equitable experiences. And it's really important to have providers that can think through that with you because it is so difficult to, especially with the standards that we have to build something special. And so I love that because something we're literally dealing with right now, and maybe you guys can relate to this, is working internationally for the first time or trying to figure out how to build your brand or your strategy, same or similar.

Isha Vij (08:14):

Yeah. I think what I hope makes you feel better is you're in good company. You look at the biggest multinational companies in the world and you would be surprised to hear that they're in the same boat. It's not that anybody has any one thing figured out. Most people are on these journeys to figure out what is the right dollar amount if you want to reimburse employees for fertility treatment. And there are big companies out there that will say, I'm just going to do an equal dollar amount in every single country. But the truth is treatment can differ wildly. The cost of treatment can differ wildly. So they work with a maven to help them understand, okay, maybe this country needs X dollars, but this other country might need Y thousand because the cost of care is different. And so we become that partner that essentially can guide them so they're not starting from scratch.

Lee Hafner (09:07):

Absolutely. And Michelle, you touched on brand, which I want to come back to in just a second. But before that, can you both speak a little bit to why it's so very important that when we say, oh, women's health benefits for women, it's not just for women. Oh yeah. So it's a full gender neutral spectrum of care because this impacts the families, the partners, whomever else it may be. And these are very appealing benefits to everyone. So why is it important that those educating employers, working with them, people who are working with employees and hiring and advertising these benefits, why is it important to say these aren't just for the ladies, they're really important to have in general?

Isha Vij (09:49):

Yeah, I think at the end of the day, we do believe that this is as much a gender parody question as it is an economic question. It makes good business sense to invest in women and families. Women make the majority of healthcare decisions. Healthcare is a multi-trillion dollar business and make 80% plus of general economic decisions for a household. So it just makes sense to make sure that people are well-equipped. Two is if you think about talent attraction and retention, I know that we're going through really meaningful changes and shifts in power dynamics, frankly, between employers and employees, but what remains true is good talent is good talent. I think in any market it is incredibly hard to find good talent that is the right fit, the right cultural fit, and can do the job. And I think what we hear from employers is despite these changing shifts, they want to hold on to individuals.

(10:46)

And third, we do hear most employers say that achieving gender parity, particularly in senior leadership roles, is a big initiative, but frankly it's kind of lip service unless you are investing in women particularly that are at the time when they're up for many of these senior leadership roles experiencing symptoms of menopause that are causing them to drop out of the workforce. Number one, we see one in five women say they have left the workforce because of symptoms they're experiencing for menopause, not having the right type of access to care, whether that is nutritionists or mental health coaches or reproductive endocrinologists, all types of providers we hear are menopause members use quite significantly. You can't really achieve gender parity in particularly senior leadership roles unless you figure out how to invest in those individuals that need it most. And at Maven, we think about that really holistically because all of the programs that we have, we have four today, family building, maternity, newborn care, parenting, pediatrics and menopause across the board, actually 40% of our members identify as male because there is curated and specific content that comes along with partners that have relationships with individuals that might be going through these experiences.

(12:11)

We have same sex dads that are starting families for the first time. We have individuals, managers who are managing employees that are experiencing symptoms of menopause, but frankly aren't well equipped to manage them. And so we do see a lot of engagement from both women and men around these types of programs because at the end of the day, you really have to invest holistically in your employee base.

Michelle Hamilton (12:36):

Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. I don't think I can say it better, so great. But I do think the talent retention is an interesting area as well as attraction because we are seeing more males asking about these benefits for their partner or their family member, and they are looking at it as the whole picture of rewards. How can you support my life outside of this organization? And so it is interesting about tailoring your messaging and making sure they get the right resources, but we're seeing it more commonly asked, what are you doing here, here and here? Traditionally it used to be like, okay, what does your FMLA look like? Or what does your leave look like? And maybe the dads maybe we're looking at one side, but now they're looking at the whole picture. What other services do you provide and fertility? Are you looking at other types of services, et cetera.

(13:20)

And they're becoming more educated. I truly think they're just both sides of the coin. We're asking for more and they're asking for more, right? And so it's really about the employer thinking about that messaging and the marketing and making sure that they know it's accessible because we're paying for this, right? We're talking about ROI. We see it in turnover. People actually, we were just talking about this, I have boomerangs that came back because of our benefits. One had a health issue and thought the grass was greener. The other was family planning. It was like, you know what in Stride had the best service and they were great performers and we were welcomed to have them back. And I expect that to continue as long as we continue to invest. And so I'm really excited about this conversation in many ways, but it's truly about communication and marketing.

(14:00)

And I talked to all of you in this way because when you work in different organizations, it may not always seem like HR is reaching out to the individuals, but we're just a marketing team, just like our marketing groups, we have to campaign, we have to think about our cohorts and all of the different types of personas we have, even if you're a small population because we're now and you think about the people that live in our homes and it's just a whole life cycle now that we have. And so it's an interesting time and I think it's going to continue to be pushing on what other services, what's better, how can you compete? And I know we talked about point services in the past, there's just so many and how do you really make it so it's this clean market for them and really easy to adopt and to attract? And so it's been a huge win for us from attraction retention, and I hope it continues.

Lee Hafner (14:46):

I'm sure it will. And we'll talk about streamlining too because such a big topic as well. So can we go back for a second to the branding aspect of it and how more and more employers seem to be using their benefits to help build their brand? Can you talk for a second about how these two things are deeply interconnected and why they're a great benefits are a great tool for employers to say, this is about your wellness. We care about your wellness, that's why we're offering you A, B and C.

Michelle Hamilton (15:16):

Yeah. I think it has to root at who you are as a business and it needs to feel real and genuine because people will read the bandaid fixed instantly. They'll know if you're not being genuine about who your brand is. And I think, and it can evolve over time. I think one of the things about InStride is we are four years old and we're constantly learning who we are as a culture, as a team, our leadership and our strategy. But I think something that's core is we care about our people. We want to provide opportunity. That's our service. We're trying to provide education to those that have never had it through their employers. And that's the same with benefits. We're not going to just do education. We need to do the whole experience for our striders. And so that's something that's rooted for us and I hope many leaders adopt that principle over time. I know there isn't everyone who thinks that, but I think it has to come genuinely and in the heart and HR leads that, right? And I think the big thing I heard earlier today, which we do as well, is making things public. Don't hide your benefits page. Don't hide your offerings or the way you speak to it. You should be proud of it. And that's something that I think we do a great job of is with our recruiting or even marketing of our roles.

(16:20)

Look, this is genuinely who we are. It's full transparency and I think that's where the brand comes to life. It's who we are and it speaks to our values and our goals for our teams, and we don't hide that. So it's super important for us to build that brand and continue to think about it because it's going to evolve and it's going to continue to change and it's working with good partners. I think something that is important to me is to work with women owned companies. Actually, my team will tell you that's something that I constantly am thinking about or boutique vendors. It's something that's important is building together because they're going to give you more offerings than maybe, sorry guys, for any of the big boys, you're not going to be able to serve me as well. I'm a small organization with smaller needs and I don't have that much money. So I need to work with people that work with me, have the same mentality as me and want to grow with me. And I think that's super important to our brand, our strategy and how we think about development as a whole and our benefits.

Lee Hafner (17:13):

And I think your advice really could apply to anyone in the sense that the more folks that you bring to the table to have this discussion, the more ideas and then the better benefits packages you're going to end up with and women, whatever the case may be. Isha, can you talk for a second about how you work with employers? As Michelle was talking about, we are peppered with point solutions these days. What is your advice as far as how to be a little bit more streamlined in choices so that employees are getting the best of what's out there versus just here are 800 things to choose from and enjoy?

Isha Vij (17:50):

Yeah, it's been a big reason why the number of employers that have chosen to work with Maven has grown so substantially. Particularly if you look across the last 12 months or so. We're definitely, and I'm sure many people in the audience can agree being asked to think really strategically about the types of vendors we're bringing on board. And a lot of us are being asked to do more with less. And so when you think about even vendor management, that's a whole job in and of itself. And so there are certainly, and this is a good thing for the industry, that there are so many different point solutions that exist, whether it's on fertility and family building benefits specifically or menopause benefits specifically. It's good that there are so many different options because it keeps everybody really sharp and competitive and making sure that they're keeping the member or the patient really at the North Star.

(18:48)

So I love that. But what we have seen is people are looking to not just breath but actually depth. And so it's very easy to spin off and say, oh yes, we have created this program that is for menopause, but really when you take a peek behind the curtain, there's not a lot there. And so what we always encourage individuals to do when they're evaluating different members is actually understand what does the member experience look like at Maven, we say that we have providers 350 different subspecialists available 24 7, and that's a pretty big claim to make, but actually understand, can you do it, open up the app, do a live demo and understand, okay, if you're saying I can talk to a doctor, an OB GYN or a pediatrician in 20 minutes, can you actually do that because very easy to say that we can.

(19:40)

And so really taking a deeper look at not just what is available and being talked about on surface level, but actually understanding what is the employee experience and the member experience going to look like. And ultimately from a sort of resources perspective, do I have the bandwidth to manage relationships with 5, 6, 7 different vendors or can I work with a partner like a Maven who can support not just one specific type of employee population that is maybe starting a family, but rather they can work with my groups and my ERGs that are focused on resources and support for folks starting their families. They can also work with my working parents group. They can also work with the group that is actively in their newborn care phase and then actually work with ERGs and folks that are a part of the menopause communities as well. And so it's really a resourcing question as well.

(20:43)

One of the major initiatives we have at Maven is when we do bring on a client, our care advocates that essentially become the first point of contact for your employees, their first job is to understand the existing benefits ecosystem at a company so that they can essentially become an extension of your people and HR teams. So giving people so many options is only helpful when number one, they know how to use them. And so think about that navigation piece as well and think about partners that can actually help you go deeper, not just check the box across the board.

Michelle Hamilton (21:20):

I think that's important because I think your vendor relationships are the most valuable element you have as an HR professional. They're a service, but we need them and we need to have a relationship that can help us grow and our teams grow and that breadth of knowledge, because healthcare changes every day and really does and the laws change, the rules change, international compliance, et cetera. And so having that marketplace so consolidated is important for your users, but it's also for you as an HR professional because the less you're doing or managing five vendors or 17 vendors depending on who you are, it's just a little bit easier, but that depth is so important and having a really good relationship to understand, Hey, I can lean on you, right? You'll be there for me at hard times or when an employee has a difficulty or so forth, so on. Exactly. It's so important.

Lee Hafner (22:06):

You do a lot with education with your workforce. Can you just talk for a second about why that is so important? Hey, we've picked out these platforms, here's some of the feedback we've gotten, for example, but how do you actually educate the population on how to access, how to use, and why is that so important?

Michelle Hamilton (22:24):

Yeah, I mean, we are a primary white collar environment, so they are more tech advanced in multiple ways. So they're actually driving us to think differently about our platforms. And so we do work with providers to help consolidate, I'll call it our marketplace, although that's not exactly how we would frame it. Our people experience is really consolidated into one place and there's quite a bit of documentation or that's one traditional way. The other ways we do it is micro learnings or trainings or reach outs if it's in our weekly company meeting where we're bringing out a benefit saying, Hey, do you know this exists? And we're really trying to get our employees to advocate, which has been hard, don't get me wrong, but trying to ask them to talk about their experience. One of my favorite, and I love it, gives me chills when I think about it.

(23:06)

The company is called Helper and it's a care support. Backup care is primarily how we use it, but our parents are constantly advocates. I needed to get a couple hours away in, and the business model is like, Hey, they need sick days or they want to take a day off. You'll have support, we'll cover the productivity, but that's not how our people are using it. Oh, date night I want to go out. It's the person outside and it's something that, so the experience is easy, right? It's an app and a lot of our products and the solutions we have are tech-driven, should have an ease of use. Some of it's better than others, we all know that. But we try to work with those partners that make it quick and easy as possible and using different, I call it marketing, right? Different campaigns to reach different audiences.

(23:50)

So if it's our Slack channels and looking at those ERG type groups like parents or so forth, or if it's our weekly Connect US saying, Hey, remember this exists, you get free glasses and most people wear glasses, they forget about it outside of open enrollment. I know many of you are probably in that right now, but the one and done model doesn't scale with a company like ours where we need touch. And so when we think about that, there's just so many avenues to do it, right? I mean, you could do the mailers, they have to do the traditional form, but digital cards to just really a one-stop shop, we're able, and that's what we call our people experience, although it does slightly brow out technology is not fully there, but just thinking about even Apple Wallet and trying to use things that adopt to different crowds.

Isha Vij (24:31):

I mean, I think the demographics you have to be really thoughtful about because the truth is not every organization is full of white collar individuals that are sitting at their desk and have a corporate email address. And so benefit education is actually really challenging. We work with an incredibly large, very distributed employer with almost a million employees. And so one of their biggest asks of Maven in their launch was People don't have our email address. We don't know people's email address. How do we even tell them about this? But what we worked with them on was we identified, okay, how do people show up at work? And we learn that people wear name tags mostly in the warehouses in which they're working. And so what we decided to do was actually on the back of their name tags post information about the new benefit with a QR code because the traditional email or they don't have slack or a mailer, it just wasn't going to work. But they actually saw incredibly high adoption because when they picked up their name badges and checked into the warehouse, they learned about the Maven benefit. And so thinking really creatively and strategically about how do I actually educate my people on the types of benefits they even have access to in the first place so that you're not just bringing them on for them to sit there but actually get used.

Michelle Hamilton (25:59):

Well, I think you bring up something around creativity and curiosity because I was in a warehouse a few years back and it was really hard to attract that population to benefits, and it was either language barriers or just education. We had to rotate around staffing hours, things of that nature. And you do have to be creative, and I know you were in the AI session before, but think about how to use AI to think outside of your HR box. It's something that my team, we've been talking about consistently think outside of the box and if you can't think about that marketing campaign or think about it, try and ask AI, obviously don't give any I or anything sensitive by no means, but there is a curiosity and creativity that comes with how to get that adoption to get that ROI because we're paying for it, right?

Isha Vij (26:39):

Yeah, for sure. And it ultimately is driving outcomes.

Michelle Hamilton (26:42):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lee Hafner (26:45):

So you mentioned the changes in healthcare, how it changes all the time, and very recently there have been a lot of changes that affect everyone, but I think women in particular reproductive benefits have been affected by this. What have both of you as a vendor and then as someone who works directly with the employees in your company, what have you heard as far as the conversations and how this has impacted more recent benefits decisions?

Michelle Hamilton (27:15):

Yeah, I think Roe Wade may be one of the memories that I have forever from an HR perspective. I remember jumping on a call with our leaders and whoa, what do we do? How do we respond? We're a young company and figured out how to respond. And I remember my team one specifically out in the crowd, so she literally was like, okay, how do we think about eggs? How do we think about it? We're hosting and we have a lot of women in our industry or our area that actually were telling us, Hey, we're an IVF, what do we do with our eggs in Texas? And we did not know what to do, and I will tell you neither did our vendors, and it's been insane to see over the last year or two the progress of the vendors and the options.

Isha Vij (27:53):

Yeah, I mean I think, so that was a big step back for women and reproductive rights at Maven. We have always fundamentally believed that reproductive rights is a core part of healthcare and in our maternity care track or in our program rather, we have a specific track that is called Pregnancy options, and it's called Pregnancy Options on Purpose. That's thoughtful. It's not because it's not an abortion track, but it's rather to help people understand that there are options and that we can help guide them to the right options for them, whether it is through meeting with different OBGYN, meeting with different mental health coaches, career coaches. When Roe v Wade was overturned, we saw a huge spike, frankly just as a business in employers signing up for Maven and particularly that maternity and pregnancy options track specifically because I think they were in the position that you mentioned, Michelle.

(28:54)

It was like, oh my God, what do we do? And y'all are not experts around how to manage this. No. So that's where they really leaned on Maven to have a really sort of robust conversation around what are the implications based on where my employees are located? We did take a look at where are people geographically and identify the types of benefits that the employer wanted to offer to their employees, particularly ones that were impacted in certain states. Many employers decided to offer a travel benefit for folks that needed to seek abortion care, and Maven administers that benefit, right? It's not something that every employer was vocal or public about, but there were a number of employers that said, we believe that reproductive health is a core part of women's health and we stand by this benefit. We are working with Maven to administer this benefit. And we saw huge uptick in enrollments there too, and that all essentially was, it just showed that the gaps really exist for individuals and people need really trusted partners as they navigate these really sort of, it can be quite scary at times, changes in legislation, but of course don't want employers to feel like they're in this boat alone and can have a place to start that can help them with their employees that might be impacted.

Lee Hafner (30:30):

Yeah, absolutely. So we call this a women's health discussion. It's really kind of almost everybody health discussion when you think about it and all the different ways that this impacts people. So you've talked about the need for easy access, single point navigation solutions is an example of that. Also, employers being able to shift as healthcare changes and adjust to fit that and fit their employees needs. How can they make it clear to whether they're trying to attract talent, whether they're trying to retain it, as Michelle was talking about, to, we are going to care for you holistically from the time you begin your journey with us until the time that it's time for you to go. And that may be through right out of college all the way through post-menopausal, which would be phenomenal. How can they communicate that with potential employees and employees to really drive it home and keep the people they want?

Michelle Hamilton (31:26):

Yeah, I think keep it simple. Don't complicate it. Benefits are complicated and that's why we're here to try and make it easier. And I think it's being transparent, it's having that, it can be simple things. It doesn't have to be a grandiose experience. It could be a one sheet and it could be, or if you have wikis or intranets, right? Something to show how you're thinking about progression and growth and how you tie your benefits to it because the life cycle's there and the milestones are there. So how do you think about that entry level employee and what's that? And I don't want to use cohorts, but thinking about those stages and literally draw it out on a piece of paper, I think your employees will appreciate, it doesn't have to be pretty, and just showing what benefits could help them or support them in that or checklist. If you're here, here and here, we talk about menopause, it's like, what do we do? It's such a new space and it's continuously like, I'm not sure. And so I think that'll help you. Yeah, but it's more around that simplicity. Make it simple for them, and even if it doesn't feel great all the time, because sometimes we want better things or we want different things, you have something great, I'm sure of it. So just advertise it and make it simple for them.

Isha Vij (32:35):

Yeah. I mean, plus one to everything Michelle just said, but I think also, particularly in light of the topic, we're talking about caregiving, reproductive benefits. Menopause is normalize the behavior too, and that often comes from the leadership team and so normalize that you need to be offline for a couple hours in the middle of the workday because you got to drop your kid off, or you got to pick them up, or you got to go take care of an aging parent or normalize that there are symptoms of menopause that will impact your work. And there may be some modifications that need to be made to make sure that you are keeping very talented employees that are going through healthcare symptoms that are just not, they're kind of invisible in the workplace and make it okay for them to talk about. That often becomes, I think first and foremost, it is a responsibility of people in leadership positions to model that behavior so that their teams and their employees also feel comfortable talking about it openly and talking about what their needs are on that front.

Lee Hafner (33:43):

That's such a good point. Ladies, thank you so, so much. This has been a phenomenal discussion. Very much appreciate your time.

Isha Vij (33:51):

Thank you. I think this one's mine.