What Do I Want For Xmas? Lower Health Care Costs!

– by Dennis Passovoy –

In recent years there have been countless medical advances that have brought treatment to thousands of medical conditions.  We now have much greater insight into the appropriate care and treatment of individuals with far greater reach and positive medical outcomes.  As a society, we have become quite adept at treating a multitude of disease states, reducing both the cost associated with treatment and the ill effects on the individual.  However, through all of these advances, the primary focus from a medical perspective has been to treat the patient after a medical event, and after the associated expenses have been incurred by the underlying health plan.  Enter Medical Risk Management.

Medical Risk Management is the practice of identifying, assessing and prioritizing the medical risk in a group prior to a medical event taking place in the life of one of the members.  Recent technological advances in data analytics coupled with 10+ years of clinical work in the field have enabled enormous strides in our ability to predict who the future high cost claimants will be with a high degree of accuracy.  With the right data, the right tools and the right clinical resources, we have three times the industry standard capability to predict medical risk.

The greatest fallacy of health care is believing that skyrocketing costs are driven by how sick and old your workforce has become and that better access to medical care will reduce costs and improve quality.  Actually, the majority of medical costs are driven by a small fraction of your workforce, and that group changes almost every quarter.  The biggest impact we can have on both our plan premiums and the health of our employees is the early identification of a potentially catastrophic medical episode and then to intervene with an application of appropriate care.  Medical Risk Management takes a plan sponsor from being a “consumer of health care” to being a “responsible manager of his or her medical plan”.

Dennis Passovoy is the president of RFG, Inc., an Employee Engagement Advisory firm in Austin, TX that believes in inspiring and harnessing the limitless power of individuals to create unstoppable organizations.  He can be reached at dpassovoy@rfg.com.

Do Job Titles Matter?

– by Dennis Passovoy –

This is a question that probably has more to do with corporate culture than it does with personal satisfaction. Sure, there is that time when you received your first promotion and you took a stack of business cards home to your mother. But that aside, the issue of what people are called in your organization tells others something about how you position and market your company.

Some companies are traditional in their approach to job titles. Their employees are Manager of this-or-that, Director of something or Vice President of whatever.

Other organizations don’t seem to value titles much at all. Case in point: banks. In every bank branch I’ve ever walked into it seems like everyone that works there is a vice president (aside from the tellers).

And others still, are very creative. Examples include Chief People Officer, Director of Human Possibilities, Director of First Impressions, and Director of Interplanetary Relations (when this creative director for an ad agency in Austin, TX was asked what his job title meant, his response was “You’ll know when the ships arrive!”).

From my perspective, however, job titles probably cause more negative feelings amongst our employees than they are worth. Their nature is anti-team – causing employees to feel badly about themselves and others in the company when someone else receives the job title they thought they should have received. They generate a notion of inequality (i.e., power distance) between team members, which in my opinion, can lead to social loafing (i.e., deferring action and decisions to their “superiors”).

If our goal as leaders is to create “unstoppable organizations” and maximize creativity and productivity, then these types of behaviors are counter-productive.

And if you believe, as I do, that words matter, are we really contributing positively to our bottom-line by awarding job titles?

Dennis Passovoy is the president of RFG, Inc., an Employee Engagement Advisory firm in Austin, TX that believes in inspiring and harnessing the limitless power of individuals to create unstoppable organizations.  He can be reached at dpassovoy@rfg.com.

Employees First!

– by Dennis Passovoy –

What I’m about to describe admittedly is not absolute, but at the very least it is common.

All companies have a marketing department (or at least the function exists) that has the task of creating a common message, language, and vision that all of it’s customers and prospects can understand.

But what about for our internal audience – our employees – how do we create that same level of consistent understanding?  Most companies don’t have a department or function dedicated to crafting and institutionalizing what our employees know about our company.  This commonly leads to as many different ways of explaining what the company does as there are employees.  Not good!

Sure, we have an HR department that theoretically is supposed to work on all things employee, but that often translates into a tactical set of functions – answering employees questions, making sure the benefits program is functioning properly, hiring and terminating employees, and making sure their employer is fully compliant with state and federal regulations.

Now, if you ask an HR specialist if they would like to work on strategic projects as well, including internal marketing, most will tell you “YES!”, with a note of frustration in their voice.  In fact, that’s what most went into the HR field to do; but reality is a cruel master.

So, why don’t we spend as much time and effort marketing (e.g., communicating, branding, visioning, educating, etc.) to our own employees?  I think the answer lies in our priorities.

I have long maintained that happy employees make for happy and loyal customers (who, by the way, spend more money on our products and services), which in turn, makes for happy shareholders – all in that order.

But instead, we tend to get our priorities “bass-ackwards” and we put shareholders first.  We put profit ahead of everything else we do.  This in turn, leads often to under-provided-for employees, who then make for unhappy customers.

I suggest we rethink this issue and take a lesson from more considerate companies like Starbuck’s or SAS, just to name a few.

What kind of company do you work for -  one that puts employees first or one that puts shareholders first?

Dennis Passovoy is the president of RFG, Inc., an Employee Engagement Advisory firm in Austin, TX that believes in inspiring and harnessing the limitless power of individuals to create unstoppable organizations.  He can be reached at dpassovoy@rfg.com.