Jim Thomason's "The Business of People"

As I mentioned on my last post, we are renewing all lines of coverage for the same premiums as we're paying this year; no changes in coverage or cost for the company or our people.  In breaking down the numbers it is obvious that there were three factors contributed to this successful outcome; broad movement to high deductible plans, the discounts of the S network, and good fortune in that we had few high-dollar claims. Breaking these numbers down further, however, the S network discounts stand out as the real game-changer in our plan. Just to review, we offer three health plans: a High Deductible Plan with the broader P network (HDP-P), and High Deductible Plan with the S network (HDP-S), and a PPO with the S network (PPO-S).  For the underwriting period April - November, 2011 here's how these plans performed.  The HDP-P claims were 116% of premium, meaning that we paid 16% more in claims than we paid in premiums. Were this our only plan our premium incre...

Last week we met with our broker and learned that we are able to renew all lines of benefits coverage with no increase in cost.  As such we will also opt not to make any changes in insurance coverage.  This doesn't come as a complete surprise.  We've been tracking our insurance plans' performance all year and we're running about 83% claims-to-premium.  That suggests a good renewal, but our last year with United Healthcare we had 84% and still received a 33% increase proposal.  This year's good news comes mostly due to two things: very few high-dollar claims and a significant migration from the PPO plan to the High Deductible Plan.  The beauty of these results is that the overall cost of co-pays and coinsurance paid by our people is not significantly higher than last year.  This indicates smarter medical buying on the part of people in high deductible plans. It appears that, in aggregate, both workforce and employer saved money or at least held thei...

Nobody likes stress.  All the typical language around that word is negative: "Don't stress me" "You're stressing me out" "I'm stressed to the max" Even the liturgy of my Church has changed to include the phrase, "...and protect us from all stress...".  Stress is an inevitable part of life so taking the negative energy and turning it into something positive becomes an essential life skill, as well as a career skill.  Several of the Fortune 500 were founded during depressions or recessions.  People do things during stressful times out of necessity that they normally would not have done.  They get degrees and professional certifications, seek promotions, open businesses, change jobs, kick bad habits, get out of bad relationships, etc... because they got "stressed out" of their complacency. Think of stress like you would a big snowfall.  You can either look out your window in dread, or grab your sled and go play outsid...

If there is a touchier subject in the workplace than "fairness" I've never seen it.  I'm not talking about "our" workplace necessarily: I'm talking about "any" workplace.  For positive morale the workplace needs to have an overall sense of fairness; that the rules are known and people are held consistently accountable to them in terms of outcomes and consequences.  The problem with managing an overall sense of fairness is that often people equate fair with equal , and they are not the same thing.  Every person is different and every situation is different if only in nuance.  Sometimes the most common offenders in mistaking equal for fair are HR people.  After all, the laws governing employment practices require that we treat every similarly situated individual in a similar way.  While the law doesn't say that, it does in practice. If you treat two similarly situated individuals differently, and those individuals happen to differ by race,...

I'm old enough and from enough of a rural area to have grown up around some (thankfully) old ideas about how people should live. Having been born in 1960 my earliest memories of television were news coverage about the Vietnam war and the equal rights struggles of the mid to late 60's.  I heard my family and friends detestation of race and gender equality protests and legislation.  One of the difficult realities I confronted as a young man was that these people that I love so much were (and in some cases still are) wrong about so many things. This last week I saw first-hand how far we've come regarding gender.  I had to have a series of tests and procedures at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, mostly related to a bad fall I took back in September and some lingering injury.  Every one of my doctors, nurse practitioners, and ultrasound techs were women, and the oldest was probably in her late 30's.  I received excellent, state-of-the-art care from bright youn...