The Problem
Markus McVay, Senior Total Rewards Consultant at Bright Horizons, likens his previous efforts to engage employees about their benefits as a traveling roadshow. McVay didn’t mind running two-hour workshops and traveling. But, with the company’s 750 employer-sponsored child care centers around the country to reach, he couldn’t be everywhere at once.
“I’ll flatter myself to say I was good at it, going out and talking to and connecting with people,” McVay laughs. “But if I could even drop in on three a week, it would take years to get through them all.”
He would find himself having half-hour, one-on-one conversations with employees, but that wasn’t enough to reach all employees during open enrollment. He needed a way to extend that personalization to the entire workforce, regardless of their location.
The Plan
McVay brought ALEX on board to help Bright Horizons reach its dispersed workforce with the kind of personalization he was used to bringing in person. The goal was to increase employee confidence in healthcare plan choices and highlight additional benefits, such as telemedicine and mental health coverage, to ensure employees would get the most out of their benefits offerings.
The Outcome
“ALEX was so very well received,” McVay said. “It really filled a gap of being able to, in a personal individual way, have a meaningful conversation about benefits. It’s just such a no brainer.”
Bright Horizons has now used ALEX for more than four years, with a focus on helping employees make the best healthcare choices. But during the pandemic, it’s become especially crucial as a time-saving tool for the HR team too, when there have been lots of employees furloughed and brought back at different times.
“For me and for other folks on the benefits and HR team, being able to scale that kind of person-to-person support has saved us who knows how much time,” McVay says.
Though Bright Horizons “hunkered down” during the pandemic and didn’t make major plan changes, it sets them up for better engagement around future plan changes.
“If we have any major plan changes, ALEX is a great tool that will be a shot in the arm for folks to engage because it does a really good job at what it does,” McVay says.
