Setting the New Standard for Employee Healthcare: Harnessing AI for a Personalized Health Experience

Sponsored by Healthee Employee healthcare has long been a persistent pain point within organizations, but the time to address it directly is now. Join us to explore the current state of employee health experiences, identifying the deep-rooted challenges and new opportunities within traditional healthcare approaches. We'll delve into the transformative potential of AI in healthcare, examining how it can enhance care outcomes, boost employee satisfaction, and significantly reduce administrative burden and healthcare costs. This session will provide actionable insights on designing a seamless, user-centric health experience that meets the diverse needs of today's workforce. Discover how innovation and technology are reshaping the future of employee healthcare. What you'll learn: Understanding the Current Landscape: Gain insights into the existing employee health experience within organizations. Identify the challenges of traditional approaches to employee healthcare and explore emerging opportunities for more effective solutions. The Role of AI in Healthcare: Discover the impact of AI on healthcare outcomes and efficiency. Learn how AI-driven solutions improve care quality, enhance employee satisfaction, and reduce costs. Understand how AI saves time by reducing administrative burdens, allowing HR and benefits professionals to focus on strategic matters. Designing a User-Centric Health Experience: Develop strategies for creating a user-friendly health experience that meets diverse employee needs. Gain practical skills for implementing user-centric design principles in healthcare, supported by case studies and best practices. Equip yourself to revolutionize employee healthcare, fostering a healthier, happier, and more productive workforce

Transcription:

Guy Benjamin (00:09):

First, maybe a quick introduction. El?

Elle Meza (00:11):

Sure. Hi Elle Meza. So the Former VP of People Operations at Crunchyroll, which is a Sony Pictures Entertainment company that spent the last 25 years in total awards and operations for companies like Twitter, Stripe, electronic Arts, DocuSign, and really excited to be here today to talk a little bit about my experience with AI and what I think the future of work is going to look like.

Guy Benjamin (00:36):

Cool. And I'm Guy Benjamin, I'm CEO and Co-founder of Healthee. A little background on me, I'm originally from Israel, grew up there. First career was very, very, very different. I used to be a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force. So I flew F 16 for about 13 years and then about 12 years ago, I came to the us, went to Yale, and then worked at McKinsey, the consulting firm. And the main thing that I kind of realized when I started working in the US is that it's probably easier to fly a jet than to navigate health benefits in the US. And every time I had a question, I would go to HR, they would send me to a call center, wasn't really the experience I was hoping to get. I also noticed I'm just not a smart consumer when it comes to healthcare. I don't know where to go.

(01:15):

I dunno how much it's going to cost me. Again, flying F 16 much easier. And it got me thinking that there has to be a way to harness AI into this whole space of health and wellness benefits. So left McKinsey met with investors. This was three years ago, so AI was not as pavilion as is today. I had to explain what is ai. And then we raised about $60 million and we started a company and we started a company that what we do is we really bring AI into this whole world of health and wellness benefits. So what we want talk about today is really kind of first the overview of the current state of employee healthcare. I'm sure we're not going to nothing new here, but reiterate of what is the current environment. And I really want to talk about the role of AI and transforming outcomes and experiences for healthcare for your employees.

(02:06):

What can be done? I'm here less to talk about healthy. I'm happy to talk about Healthee outside or we have a booth here. You're welcome to come see a demo. I really want to talk about the core of AI and how each one of us can leverage AI and should leverage ai. And then we'll talk about practical step and how to become kind of more of a user-centric healthcare experience. And again, most of, I'm here mostly to be next to Elle, she's going to do most of the talking. But yeah, we can start. So healthcare today really dictate the future that we need. We want to think about where we want to be. How can we get there and think, I'm not going to do a survey here, but I want to just think about maybe how satisfied you think your employees are with your current healthcare options.

(02:54):

But also think about as for you as an experience, maybe even I'm going to do a quick exercise. It wasn't planned, it was off script. But if everybody can close their eyes and think about the last time you called the call center to figure out what you're covered for, just think about it for a second. Now you don't see it, but I can see it. Nobody's smiling. You can open your eyes. It's not a good experience, but it's not. It's not a good experience. It's not what your employees are expecting. Your employees that are, especially the ones that are Gen Zers, millennials, they're barely calling their mom. They don't want to call center for their health benefits. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So this is a quote that we love to say. Health benefits are simple, easy to navigate and affordable based on this last exercise, you can probably guess this is an exact quote by no one ever, right?

(03:54):

It's the exact opposite. It's a sea of confusion and a huge source of waste. There's a lot of waste in the healthcare system. And that waste is being absorbed by you guys as employers, by your employees that are overspending that they don't know what they're going to pay until after they get a bill. They don't know that one X-ray can cost $200 and another x-ray can cost 2000. And the 2000 is not a Louis Vuitton all the same, right? So when you think about how much do we control healthcare costs, I'm sure maybe if you haven't even seen this chart, you are experiencing it. Who here we're now at renewal sum. Who here has gotten an increase in their healthcare cost year over year, right?

Elle Meza (04:40):

An increase.

Guy Benjamin (04:41):

An increase a lot. And I do a lot of conversations with HR leaders and CFOs and it's crazy. It's could be 20, 30% year over increase. And you can see for every a hundred employees, last year we spent about $850,000 a year for healthcare. This year it's going to be, it's about 900,000 and next year it's going to be closer to a million dollars for every a hundred employees. Now think about your CFO when you have to go to that CFO and tell her, Hey, our year over increase has gone by 25%. And then explain why that's not an easy conversation to have. Now another aspect of wasting healthcare is that one in every three adults, nearly a hundred million Americans is struggling with unpaid medical bills. Now it's not only that they have a bill that they have to pay and they can't. It's also sitting, it sits on them, it's in their mind, it bothers them.

(05:35):

They think about it. It's not a good experience and it doesn't have to be this way. And that's exactly what we're here to talk about. There are ways to reduce cost in healthcare that again, I talk a lot with CFOs and they don't even know that there's ways to reduce healthcare costs with using technology. And that's where we want to introduce AI. So again, another question that I'm going to ask. Who here is using AI on a day-to-day basis, some sort of ai. Amazing. That's great. So most of you are already ahead of the curve. So I had a similar talk in Chicago with another group of HR leaders and one person told me that, or they were thinking about it, they were afraid of ai. And I said that basically today where we are is exactly where people were over a hundred years ago when cars started showing up and people were saying, I'm good with my horse.

(06:30):

This is exactly, think about it. This is exactly where we are now. If we are not leveraging AI in our day-to-day basis today, it's going to move too far away or it's going to be too late. There was an article came out last week that open AI, I'm sure you know them, the company that does ChatGPT, they're about to come out with a new ChatGPT model that is a hundred times better than the last one. So think about it, every year or every two years, these AI models are becoming a hundred times better. And I always get the question in five years, what are we going to use AI for? Honestly, I have no clue because it's just getting better. And if you're not leveraging today AI today in your benefit experience, in your employee experience, you're missing out and it's not what your employees are expecting.

(07:16):

So that's what I want to talk about today. And we're going to talk about a new era in employee healthcare. The landscape, as I mentioned, is rapidly evolving. Employees expect more personalized and we'll talk about a personalized and accessible healthcare experience, not a generic, not a call center of waiting 40 minutes on the phone. They're expecting the same experience that they have when they call an Uber or when they use Amazon, it's all in their fingertips. It's all immediate. So it's very personalized. It's not calling anybody. And technology especially AI is driving these changes and there's a lot of opportunities.

Elle Meza (07:52):

Okay, well thank you for that. And what a great way to set the stage. I think it's very funny, every time I have a conversation with anyone in HR or the benefit space in particular, we kind of joke about like, oh, AI is going to take our jobs. I really personally believe that AI is actually really just going to make my job easier and I'm going to have more time to focus on the things that I really want. But we've all heard that. We went to a conference last week where someone was talking about that. So I really want to make today a little bit different and not just say AI is going to make your job easier. Everyone should be using it or you're going to get left in the dust. Don't be the person who loves their horse, get in the car. But the reality is it's not about you, it's about your employees.

(08:37):

When we were talking earlier about said, no one ever this thing about my experience. So for the last 25 years that I've been in the industry, I've been okay with that experience not being great. I've tried to educate employees, but I'm talking human behavior. I'm not changing human behavior. My employees are going to be who they are. I hire really great engineers in tech, but I they'll go to the doctor and go, I don't know what to do so I'll do whatever the doctor told me. Now the doctor's just trying to get fast care, get them out the door. So if they go downstairs and get that X-ray or that MRI, they don't care how much it costs. It means they're going to get that data they can keep moving forward and it's very doctor centric. So how do we kind of switch this and make the employee experience both financially and emotionally through whatever medical thing that they're going through, better, easier, and maybe a little bit more enjoyable.

(09:28):

So I think right now the benefits landscape is very focused on how do we get back to focusing on the people that are actually using the benefits and less on, okay, what does the future look like? How are we going to make this easier for us from an administrative standpoint? I think we can do both, but I think I want us to really be thinking about how do we help our employees more because the better consumers, they are going to naturally have a beneficial experience from an ROI perspective cost savings because they're making smart decisions for themselves and by proxy we're getting some of that reward. So I want to introduce some personas and it says meet John. It's basically guy. It's guy when he came to the us. Alright, so John, is any of your employees? So usually healthy when he's making decisions on his healthcare, he just picks the one that looks prettiest.

(10:18):

If he gets paid really well, he might pick the most expensive because he assumes that's the best. And he covers his family on his plans and enrolls and benefits. Each year is really good. Actually logs into the open enrollment system, makes sure everything looks good, presses the button so his wife doesn't yell at him. And there are new benefits coming in each year because we continue as benefits leaders to try to add more stuff in. So he's saying yes, he's signing up for that voluntary benefit, he's changing medical plans if you tell him that it's a good idea to do that consumer. So we'll talk next about John's journey. So he signed up for his benefits. It's January, he's enrolled in all his new plans and something happens and he needs care. So he gets a cut on his arm and his immediate reaction is, oh my God, I'm bleeding. I've got to go to the emergency room. And that's a natural reaction. I want him to go get care. So he drives to the emergency room, he goes and gets care, he gets fixed, gets his stitches, and then a few weeks later he gets a bill. And the emergency room bill is for just walking in the door. The person who came and administered the stitches, the person who maybe gave him a little lidocaine, the Tylenol on the way out and this bill is quite expensive and he's like, I caught myself. I don't understand logically.

(11:42):

I maybe even could have used a bandaid. I don't know. I don't understand this bill. So he calls his insurance company, he calls maybe us the HR folks and we're like, oh, go talk to Cigna. That's them. That wasn't me. I didn't do that to you. And he calls and he asks for help and all they say is, yeah, yeah, that's accurate. Correct codes, this is what you owe. You did this thing, you now pay for it. And he's left kind of feeling like, well that sucked. I didn't want to get cut, I didn't want to go to the doctor. It happened to me and now I feel like I'm getting a second deep cut right into my wallet to have to pay for this really, really expensive thing that didn't feel like a Louis Vuitton experience. So this is everybody in your organization and probably 90% of the time they're having this experience.

(12:31):

You just have no idea. So used to it, little Pavlovian, right? We're just so used to getting that bill and going, I will pay. This is the price of being an American and living where I live now, meet ri. So RI is on my team. So I run operations for this company. I've got a shared services team, I've got a benefits manager, all folks that are helping sort of the machine of making the programs that we offer so great for our employees. So a lot of what Riley needs to do day to day to keep the machine running is making sure that administratively everything is set up for success. There's a system for people to enroll in benefits. There's a shared website or wiki where it says here's what all of our benefits are and you can read about them anytime that you want. So keeping that updated and is doing health fairs and sending out emails and reminding folks like, Hey, these are your benefits and I don't know if you'll ever need pet insurance, but you might have a dog.

(13:33):

So keep reading my emails, please, please, please. And then also when people start using the benefits, she's in charge of making sure that we as the executive team understand well who's using them? Why are they making good decisions? So she's going to 14 different vendors if we're lucky, only 14, and then saying, Hey, I need to get an aggregate, some information around utilization. I need to present that to my executive team and say, this spend is worthwhile. Now she's also putting all of this stuff together and then it's open enrollment season and she's doing it again and no one's going to hang out with her in October because she's going to be too busy. Don't even invite her to your dinner. It's just rude and she's going to freak out. I remember it. So I have four kids, I'm just going to tell a little personal story.

(14:18):

I made sure that none of them were born in Q4 because I wouldn't have been able to do what I think I needed to do as a mother to have them. So all of my kids were born. One came early, a little bit late in December and I was like, you were supposed to be born January 1st, but basically the end of December through March because I'm like, that's my only downtime. That's the reality of what it is to be purely a dedicated, wonderful benefits person. I got married January 1st and I put pockets, this is before pockets were a thing for women. I put pockets in my wedding dress because I thought I might need my cell phone for a Jan one. We were launching Workday for the first time. This is literally the life of your employee. So RI is a wonderful lady who just wants a break, please.

(15:10):

So we need to help her. That's our job and the burnout and the chronic fatigue that comes. This is why Riley keeps leaving the company and going to another, I don't like the term job hopping, but basically I've spent my career going from one, the reason I have all the brand names that I do is I work really, really hard for a year and then I go, I can't do this anymore. I take a day off and then I start the next one and I feel like, oh, well I have a month before it gets really crazy. And then I literally go through this cycle again and what are we doing as the executive team, the leadership team to really solve for the Riley's of the world because we want them to be at our company for five years because the longer they're there, the more information they have in their head, the better that experience for your employees is going to be and everyone reaps those benefits.

Guy Benjamin (16:01):

Now back to AI. How can AI help with everything that EL just mentioned? What is the role of AI in healthcare and in your employee experience, in your own experience and making sure that you don't need to time your babies and to have pockets in your wedding dress? AI. AI is really shaping healthcare and again, I'm not going to talk about what health is doing, I'm going to talk about what AI is doing because there's many AI tools out there, but I'm going to urge you to go and do some research on what is out there and how AI is enabling to shift from reactive to proactive, from predictive analytics to kind of allow better management of benefits. We talked about John, who's going to pick a plan every year, 50% of employees are choosing the wrong plan. AI can help with that. AI can recommend the best plan for them and their families.

(16:58):

I'm not going to go into too many details of how it works, but it's very, very personalized. It can ask the employee a few questions. It knows what the benefits that they have, what plans they have available, and it can literally say you, John, you have three kids and you're thinking of another one next year. You're timing it so it's not an open enrollment and then this is the plan that you need to pick. Think about it, think about that experience for employees where they don't have to be super overwhelmed and think about, okay, which plan am I going to pick out of these 3, 5, 10 options? That's just a small example of how AI can reshape their experience and that's their first experience and we've done a lot of research on this. The biggest or the most common emotion that comes during open enrollment is overwhelmed, right?

(17:44):

Employees are just overwhelmed, especially if they're new hires or you're making changes on their plans and that's where AI can come in another way, as it says here, better management of health risk AI can figure out if an employee has, for example, diabetes and reminds them that they need to get their prescription refilled or reminds them that they need to get their eye tested every year because people with diabetes have higher chances of losing their eyesight. That's where AI can come in and those are different. I'm not talking about in five years it's going to be available. This is happening today while we sit here, there are AI tools that are doing everything that I mentioned, and again, personalization. Elle mentioned getting an email about pet insurance. If I don't have a pet that I'm going to be annoyed that I'm getting emails about pet insurance and if don't have kids, I'm going to be annoyed that I'm going to get emails and I'm going to just stop reading those emails.

(18:34):

But with AI, you can really learn about your employees and make sure that they get the best personalized experience that they really need based on their own personal profile. It's not all employees are the same. There's ones that the young invincible, the 26-year-old, they maybe need the yearly physical test and one blood test and they're the ones that have young kids and the ones that are dealing with elderly parents. There's different populations and AI can help you figure out what messaging do you need to communicate to every type of employee, not even in those brackets, but specifically for employees. ai. One of the things that I like to say that AI can do is first of all, it can do stuff that we do but better can do stuff that we do but faster, but it can also do stuff that we as humans just cannot do, which is mostly deal with tons of data because in AI you can give an AI tool tons of data that we can never comprehend, but that tool can come out with insights that it's going to take us years to understand and that's what we can do in seconds with ai.

(19:39):

Now let's talk about real world impact personalization. It leads to better health outcomes because think about it, if you can use AI to make sure that we find all the employees that are at risk and make sure that they go see a doctor when they need to, or even as simple as reminding employees that are over female employees that are over 40 to get their mammogram and not just say, Hey, you need to get your mammogram, but say you need to go get your mammogram where you live. There's a place two blocks away, you're fully covered, it's going to cost you $0 and there's an appointment that's available tomorrow at 2:00 PM and I see based on your calendar, you're available. What I just mentioned again is not a future state. It happens. It's happening today, right? That's what AI could do because it takes what I just mentioned, it probably takes 10 different data points and just put them all together into a very, very personalized experience. Cost reduction, we talked about the $200 and $2,000. If I look at my app today just now and I look for an MR, I guarantee it, there's probably radius of 20 miles from here. There's an MRI for $50, $75 all the way to $1,500. It exists.

(20:44):

I always get asked, are you fixing the healthcare system? I'm not fixing it because it's not broken. It's by design, right? It's by design and hospitals and locations can charge whatever they want because that's the way the system works. Unfortunately

Elle Meza (20:58):

Business,

Guy Benjamin (20:58):

It's business and we need to be smarter consumers and it's hard to be a smart consumer when you don't have tools. Think about using Amazon, but there's no prices and you don't know what it's going to show up at your door. That's the equivalent of healthcare today. But with AI, we can change that. We can become smarter consumers and we can see, okay, am I going to go for the Louis Vuitton MRI because there's no need for it. I just need an MRI that is cheap available and I can get it as fast as I can. And that's where AI comes in because that data is available, it's out there. You just need a way to access it.

Elle Meza (21:32):

And I might even just add to this too, is that if we think about the consumer and the way that they use healthcare, and even Amazon, it's okay, my dad used to do the same. We'd go on road trips and he would drive until he saw a hotel he liked. He'd actually tell the front desk, I just want to see the room before I decide if I'm going to walk in. So he'd walk in the room, he'd look around, look at the view and go, no, we're not staying here. And then we'd get back in the car and we'd go and he was very particular and he's hilarious and I love him, but that was really hard as a kid. We were done being in the car, but then he'd find the hotel he wanted and I remember thinking, what a silly thing. Now obviously we do that same sort of thing@hotels.com.

(22:13):

I kind of want to see pictures of the room and I make a decision, but what that was for him was he didn't actually care how much a thing costs. He wanted the experience to be the thing he wanted. He is like, I'm going to spend the next eight hours in this room. I want to really enjoy it. In healthcare, I think about the same thing. If you want to spend $1,500 on your MRI because it's literally downstairs and that convenience is worth the price to you do it. I'm not telling my employees you have to pick the cheapest option. I'm saying do the thing that's right for you, but you can't make a decision like that if you don't have the information to know what you're actually missing out on what you're getting. And I want that trade off the decision to make a better financial choice for you and your family to use less of your HSA dollars based on all of the information.

(22:58):

And I think to double click on what guy just said too, I just want this tool, whatever it is that I'm using to help me make the decision, whether it's hotels.com or help the healthy app to have had all of the information input so that I'm not feeling a FOMO of I don't actually know what's happening and am I making a really good decision. I want to be able to go, you know what? The a hundred dollars one is a little more convenient for me and I have to go pick up a prescription which is right next door. I'm just going to go do that one. And that's okay. And that's actually really huge for your employees because then they feel empowered to make the best decisions for them and their family. They don't feel pressured to have to do what someone told them to do, and it gives them sort of a little glimpse of what the future could be. They're going to start using the app more often because that experience was so good and now we can direct them to that same app to talk about the pet insurance that you're going to offer for 2025 or whatever else that you're doing, and now you've just made them really good consumers of information, let alone behavior.

Guy Benjamin (23:58):

And then just look at what actually AI is bring to the table. It's reducing administrative time because think about it, think about an open enrollment. We're just rolling out with a company that is a public company and we asked them, how many questions did you get there in open enrollment? How many tickets were open? They're in open enrollment, right? It's only two weeks. They have 1200 different tickets that from employees questions because why did we ask them? Because we're now deploying AI and we want to see what it's going to look like after. But think about a world where they're in open enrollment. You're not going to get 1200 questions or whatever it is that you're getting a fraction of that only for the employees that don't really need your help. The rest are going to use AI tools to pick what is the best time for them.

(24:38):

So already reducing your burden. You can see here 87% reduction in HR admin work. That's a lot. Improve employee satisfaction. Elle talked about it, feeling empowered, feeling that I don't need to call every time I have a question. I don't need to wait online and sometimes I don't want to call. If I have mental health issues and I want to talk to a therapist, I don't want to go to HR and say, Hey, what are we covering for mental health? If I can just have it on an app in my hand on my fingertips and just figure it out, that would be a much better experience. And then it is a strategic investment. It's something that you're investing not only to reduce your burden or to save your time and to improve your employee experience, but really to reduce your cost of healthcare and an investment in AI in healthcare will repay itself within the first few months. So I want to go back to John

Elle Meza (25:25):

And I want to even before we go to, we're just going to call him Guy even before we do that. I think the other thing too is a lot of us feel as we're implementing these new tools and solutions, we're getting very excited by them that it's an all or nothing. Like, oh, we got to go all in. I actually really believe that when your executive team or your employees, depending on if they're a bunch of engineers or computer scientists or you're working retail, that you can phase this, that you can start small and say, look, we're just going to do this for open enrollment. We're going to help you make really good decisions. You don't have to use it for anything else. And then naturally the people that gravitate towards it will use it and then you just do a little more marketing and a little more advertising and then maybe over two years or however long it takes your organization based on your culture to really embrace ai.

(26:12):

Okay? So I think a lot of us are being trepidatious and not jumping in because we think we have to do our whole body in at first. That's actually not what's required. I think a lot of these tools have a way to phase or step into what the future is going to look like. My guess is you'll do it in three months in, you'll be like, turn all the buttons on. This is great. Our employees really like it and it's not complicated, but something to remember is you're just kind of thinking about, well, I'll wait until 2026. That's when we're going to get into it. You don't have to and you don't have to do it on cycle. It doesn't have to be open enrollment. It doesn't have to be one, one. It's just whenever it's time for you to reduce that administrative burden. So we'll get to Riley in a second.

(26:52):

If we go back to John, so now he's got access to some sort of a tool or tools that have all the information that he needs. He has that same experience. He gets the deep cut in his arm and he's like, oh crap, I got to go to the er. Where's the local er? So he's opening his app to go figure out where the ER is, and then it just says, yeah, you can go to that er, it's down the street, but here's two or more options just in case you were into it and while you're there, it's not just where they're located, it's average cost of care for an emergency or urgent visit. He's like, oh, that's interesting. I literally can go two blocks further to an urgent care facility that's open 24 7. It sounds like I might be cheaper for me. Okay, I mean they're open.

(27:38):

I'll just go. I'm going to go do that thing again. In the moment, really fast decision that as he's looking up the address for the er, he was able to get a little bit more information. He chooses to go there. He gets the same stitches like he did before and he's paying a hundred dollars. He's paying a copay to go into the doctor's office and maybe 10% of the actual cost of care, which is drastically different than the cost of care in the er. He doesn't have to go call anyone and complain. He's not stressed and thinking, why the hell do I even have insurance? My company doesn't love me. They make me pay $2,000 to get stitches. All of that's gone and he's just going back to his life with his kids coming into work happy as can be. Again, the only difference was in that moment he was looking up an address, a little bit of information came up in front of him, he made a better decision for himself and he moved on.

Guy Benjamin (28:32):

I would argue, first of all, by the way, 50% of ER visits are unnecessary. Think about all the ER visits that you have on your claims. 50% of those are unnecessary and each one is a $2,000 claim. But back to what you mentioned on information and being a smarter consumer, I would argue any day that if we provide the right information to our employees, they will make a smart consumer decision same as we have with Amazon and same as we have with everything else in our life. The only place that we can be real consumers is healthcare because we don't have the right information until we do.

Elle Meza (29:03):

And it's the same thing. If you go to a restaurant and they don't give you a menu and they're just like, it's Mediterranean food. What do you want to eat? Why know, two things that I've liked in the past, I'll just eat those things. But if you're given a menu, you can kind of look and go, you know what the ingredients, and this sound like really interesting. I'm going to try something new. I'm going to do something a little different outside of my comfort zone. And you're having a great experience. You feel like you've got to treat, as opposed to I'm just filling my body full of food. And I think it's that mentality and your employees are expecting the future of their experiences, whether it's healthcare or going to a restaurant to be better, and they actually expect you to deliver that to them.

(29:38):

They're not waiting for the world to give it to them. I am giving you the gift of my time and being your employee. What do I get in return? This is a very easy and simple way to say, I'm actually investing in you and your family and that experience. So think about your employees. I think designing your programs and the processes around those programs, your benefits questions are really important. When crunchy roll added healthy, and I remember the first thing we were like, we have a benefits alias. We didn't have ticketing systems yet. I said, I'm just going to not have benefits@crunchyroll.com anymore. I'm just going to delete it. Nobody's allowed to email us anymore. They have to go on a healthy app if they have a question and let's just see what happens. They still know how to find us. We have Slack, whatever.

(30:24):

They're going to come and get me if they really need me, but let's just see what happens. And it was sort of magical to see, and we did it during open enrollment. It was magical to see how many people were okay asking a question on an app as opposed to an email. And it was very nice because in the app, and I'm not trying to sell, but I actually like that her name is Zoe, right? You asked Zoe this question and then she says, oh yes, you do have this kind of coverage. They actually kind of thought they were talking to us and I didn't have to go beg my CPO and my CEO for more headcount at the entry level for shared services anymore. I just said, we're going to invest all of the sort of entry level work admin work in AI so that I can go hire specialists or I could take my current entry level shared services team and develop them and make them these new and incredible sort of specialists that are there for when there is a complicated thing that maybe today AI can't figure out in the future.

(31:21):

May.

Guy Benjamin (31:21):

Yeah,

Elle Meza (31:23):

So I think the big thing is it has to be simple, right? I don't care if you've got PhDs in your organization and I have it's healthcare. This is not something I want them to learn, nor should they spend any time learning. They absolutely couldn't. Even if they tried, and I am in healthcare and I still to this day look at a bill and go, what was that for? And I have a daughter with special needs. I'm constantly looking at bills and going, what did I do? If I'm having that problem and I sit in this every day, there's just no way that my employees are going to get this. It's got to be simple. It has to be very easy for me to access information and it needs to be updated as fast as the world is updating and as fast as my employer is making changes, it has to be current.

(32:05):

It can't be the wiki page that I forgot to update or I only update once a year during open enrollment. It has to be live and real time, and the feedback has to be personalized. If I asked Zoe a question and said, blah, blah, blah, pet insurance, Zoe now needs to know that I have a pet. And so maybe we'll surface more information around the pet benefits that my employer offers, much like a human might do. Like you told me you had kids. I mean, I hope I remember the next time I see you that you're someone that has kids and I might say, oh, did you see the new park that opened up down the street? Right? It has to do that same thing, but it has to do it better, faster, stronger. I dunno, there's the nine inch nail song in there, and then it has to continue to learn.

(32:49):

So this is the thing is whether it's I've got a new policy or a new program, the world is changing too. Healthcare is changing, right? Ozempic is now a big thing, GLP one we were hearing yesterday during the event. As these things happen in healthcare and your employees start getting really excited about what the future is for that, there's a new drug on the market. If they're dealing with an autoimmune disease, there has to be information for them to get that's not Google. You have to be able to curate it for them so that they're making really good decisions about their healthcare and to know what they have access to in their organizations.

(33:24):

Back to Riley, obviously the big difference for anyone on my team is that they now aren't having to learn everything. They're telling a system or a tool to remember everything on their behalf. Oh, I wrote a new LOA policy. Throw it into the AI tool. So if anyone asks a question about do we offer parental leave? How many weeks? Well, I'm in California, here's a niche difference about that. The system will need to know those things and not your employee. So I'm not spending time teaching them these things or asking them to remember or to even know that Massachusetts changed a law and now it's this. AI is going to do that for you and all your current platforms. Nothing has to go away. If you're using Workday for your benefits enrollment system, that doesn't go away. You're still using Workday to have people enroll in benefits, but as they're coming in, they're coming in through a front door full of information.

(34:20):

So whether you use a tool that does decision support, maybe you've got Jelly Vision, maybe you've got healthy, you're now able to say, okay, right before I get into Workday, I'm going to be able to access information to make really good decisions, and I'm not having to learn a new tool or a new thing. I'm going to the place I always go, but with more information. And now RI is a benefits manager and not a benefits analyst because she's managing programs, she's building the experience, she's thinking strategy. I've just created a career path for her that she just didn't have time to do and I wasn't going to invest because I really needed her to do the admin. Somebody had to do it right. This really gives me an opportunity to say, I want to mentor you and I want you to grow. And she now is getting the credit or the kudos for people understanding their benefits, actually using them.

(35:12):

When I go to my CEO and I say, Hey, everyone was using our mental healthcare program probably about let's say 14% of our population, it's now up to 25. And it doesn't mean people are languishing. It means they know that they have access and they're getting the help that they need. And I can say, Riley did that. Okay, so we're going to end this now. I think the big thing is everything that you've been hearing about AI taking your job, it's only taking the parts of your jobs that you probably don't already want to do. So don't be scared. Let that go. Let AI do the things that don't make sense for a human to do today so that you can leave time for those humans to do the really good work that you need to do. Keep things personalized. Your employees are expecting it to be personalized, but don't spend time trying to build it. Let the AI figure that out for you. And then, like I said, invest in doing this now, even if it's just a small piece of the whole program that you've got going on, kind of dip your toe in, figure it out, and then keep moving forward because you don't want to be the person with the buggy and the horse when your neighbor's driving by and they're awesome. New Ford.

Guy Benjamin (36:19):

Yeah, I mean, we don't have time question, unfortunately, but I'm here. Elle is here. We have a booth, so feel free to stop by. But yeah, thank you so much for the time. Appreciate it. Thank you.