I can help companies improve margins via driving down the indirect people costs
Sick leave/absence management is one of the biggest – and costly – more “hidden” challenges to most executive teams. Reality is that many executive teams are focusing too much on if reported Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIF) is decreasing or if they have a short-term saving to an insurance premium. This is such a huge misunderstanding! Likewise, this is not unlocking the company potential of creating both further savings, while also improving people care.
In a world where everyone is lacking workforce, you as a company need PEOPLE to deliver on your contracts with your customers. You need people not to call in sick or to leave you for a better job. There is a risk of both, and therefore, you should see people as a RISK – a good one, yes, but still a RISK…. If production machinery breaks down, we fix it – if people get sick, we encourage them to use the insurable benefits and medical plans, so they can come back quickly. Companies are happy, when people get back quickly, but the price paid is that use of the medical and other insurances is weakening the risk managers negotiation power, and you have a large loss of productivity. This is the balance between being reactive (use the insurances) and proactive (seeking the root causes to prevent) – which one are you?
Corporate sick leave is massive direct and indirect cost. Do you #know your numbers? Corporate sick leave impacts more than you think and the underlying drivers to sick leave are often an area that does not get much attention by top management. In my mind, many executive teams think that sick leave is an HR responsibility. 100% wrong! Sick leave should be the responsibility of the full executive team. By lowering the sick leave (with the many related side effects to lost performance etc.) I´d (almost) promise that this can improve your margins, while also improving your own negotiation power to many of your people insurances. Would it be attractive with ROI on 200 or 300%?
When you align and correlate your #Total Cost of People you give your self the opportunity to take better and informed decisions based on your own numbers.
If the above resonates with you or you want to hear more about how this new mindset working with “total cost of people” may be interesting (and cost saving…) for your company, don’t hesitate to contact me for talk.
Global Surveys and Analytics
Insurances, pension plans and related costs:
By having the global overview of all your insurable benefit and pension plans and the massive costs to plans you can take informed decisions backed up by your own company data. Most often, these costs represent the second largest cost next to the salary, so it is important you get value for the money. Many companies struggle with resources and don’t have time or knowledge in house to do these surveys.
Having the global overview of these data will also reveal potential gaps or overlap for you to work with when updating your global benefit or reward strategy, which you most likely would like to align with your people values and D&I strategies
Any executive team should know the total cost of people benefits. Do you #know your global cost? Do you want to unlock your potential, optimize spend to insurers and advisors and improve your people benefits to become an attractive workplace?
I´ve developed a global model to capture relevant data, it is easy absorbable, easy to communicate to most companies and will be company specific depending on your needs and priorities. Should I also help you?
Let me know if you want to hear more, how I can help you
Financial wellness and saving plans
There are several ways to support employees to be or become on top of their private economy, both now and at retirement.
Insurance at Heart will work to
- Increase awareness to closing the global gender pension gap, which is a natural negative effect of the current large gender pay gap we see, ref to the annual OECD reporting. Systemic changes are needed in parts of the world, combined with corporate willingness to decide, that they will not allow these gaps in their company.
- Increase awareness and work with companies to offer pension saving plans to all employees and to equalize pension contributions.
- Reduce financial distress among employees, as this is the root cause to many private pains, which again can lead to sick leave or days off work. Surveys show that approx. 75% are anxious about the financial outlook for their private situation. This shows cross countries, all ages, gender, and most job functions.
- encourage more companies to offer financial support, e.g. access to advisors employees cannot afford themselves.
Financial support programs are one of the strongest benefits companies can offer to provide employees with a psychological safety net, as private financial struggle is a biased topic that you, as employee, often don’t want to share openly with your employer.
Let´s work together to tear down these walls.
Let me know if you want to hear more, how I can help
IAS19 global oversight and cost analytics
Defined Benefit plans must undergo IAS19 reporting, which can be rather costly.
Are you one of the many companies that are using too many and different advisor on IAS19 reporting, but don’t have the time and resources to optimize this cost impacting area yourself? Do you #know your global cost? If not, you may have a potential, both to save money, but more importantly to lower your HQ and country admin time, lower alignment activities between countries and HQ and improve the reporting quality and decision making cross countries.
By having the global overview of all actuaries and the country costs you can take better decisions how to streamline the accuracy to the annual reporting.
Let me know if you want to hear more, how I can help you
Defined Benefit
If Defined Benefit plans are an unexplored area of your CFO life…..
Defined Benefit plans are expensive, and a cost impacting the balance sheet. One thing is the accounting of plans together with external actuaries, another challenge is the underlying volatile drivers (such as the discount rate, inflation and the salary increase) and how you as a company can maximize the value of your spend. As Denmark is not a “DB country” some CFOs struggle to realize, why it most often makes sense to invest money and resources in getting under the skin of the defined benefit plans and investigate potential risk mitigating possibilities. No, it is not “embarrassing” as CFO not to be on top of the implications of defined benefit schemes….. This is “normal” in Denmark.
Let me know if you want to hear more, how I can help you
Pension policy, strategy and governance
Most companies know the spend to Defined Contribution and Defined Benefit plan, because they report it to the annual report – but what about the content?
Companies are underestimating and not proactive enough in getting a global overview of the content of the plans, country by country – that´s a local decision….
Companies are encouraged to have a global and clear pension policy to govern all Group countries, but this will also encourage leadership teams to discuss the people strategy and how it is reflected within the insurable benefits. You could start by asking yourself the below questions:
Do you allow countries to open new Defined Benefit plans that would increase the risk to your balance sheet?
Have you considered your governance and internal approvals?
How do you reflect your D&I agenda and people values with the insurable benefits? Are you already aligned?
It might be time for you to optimize or create a global pension and care policy?
When it comes to communication about insurable benefits things are even worse…. Most often companies don’t communicate that much to employee about the total reward package, pension plans and insurable benefits most often representing the second largest cost, after the base salary. Surveys shows that employers only get credit for approx. 80% of the total pay package – people tend to forget some of the benefits…. Think about your total staff cost and imagine the perceived value from the employees. Do you #know your numbers? To cost, coverage, admin burdens, service levels etc.? For many years I´ve been internal advisor to large and listed corporates. I´ve “tried and tested” many ways of communicating about these very technical insurance and pension plans, incl. large campaigns on different media. I can honestly share, that communication about your benefits does pay back and improve your value proposition.
Let me know if you want to hear more, how I can help you
Global Tender Governance and guidance
Brokers are strong doing tenders – for several reasons not all companies are using brokers to do tenders.
If your organization don’t have a broker to assist or have any global guidance how to do tenders in this technical world of insurance and pensions, you are more than welcome to reach out and hear, how I can help you steer the process.
I will underline I will not act as broker but can act as an independent and trusted advisor if you don’t have the in-house knowledge still wanting to improve your internal guidance from HQ to your countries
Let me know if you want to hear more, how I can help you