Introduction to Change Management

Health benefits is the last area to modernize within employers. Over the last 20 years, areas such as supply chain, talent management, sales and marketing, etc. have modernized using tools such as SAP, Salesforce.com and so on. With each of these, those who achieved the greatest success invested in change management. Unfortunately, there is a pervasive disconnect between the statement that “employees are our most valuable asset” (which every CEO says) and status quo health plans that don’t properly steward this highly valuable asset. After all, is it good stewardship to put people in harm’s way financially and medically which, sadly, our status quo health plans do? Let’s remember that 60% of bankruptcies are driven by medical bills and 70% of those are people who had health insurance (usually from their workplace). Further, old-line health plans with outmoded PPO networks will put employees in harm’s way medically.(e.g., low quality/value healthcare providers are treated the same as high quality/value providers). The fact is that the best designed plan poorly rolled out will fall on its face if there isn’t a well thought out communications and cultural change plan. In the chapter below, we will outline the 10 steps to successfully lead (short list below). At the end of each step of the process, we provide a checklist. We’ve appended the checklist from the end of the “Creating Urgency to Change” step of the process to give you a taste of what’s ahead.

1. Creating Urgency to Change
2. Building an Alliance for Change
3. Creating a Vision for Change
4. Communicating the Vision
5. Overcoming Obstacles to Change
6. Using Short-term Wins to Create Momentum
7. Consolidate Improvements and Build on Gains
8. Anchoring Change Into the Culture

The following checklist ensures you have taken the most important actions to create urgency:

• Does the organization have a clear understanding of the current trajectory of benefits costs and how the future financial impact will lead to even greater painful decisions that will impact the overall business (not just benefits)?
• Conduct an Opioid Vulnerability Assessment and/or Plan Grade to determine the risk from status quo benefits in terms of addiction, death and potential legal risk.
• Estimate the number of employees in the workforce that has a deductible greater than $500. Roughly half of these people have less than that in savings and thus have latent anxiety about medical bills that is likely impacting their ability to fully function at work. If HR or leaders have individual stories of employees who’ve faced bankruptcy, share these with executives who may be shocked that after spending so much on health benefits, they’re still putting their employees in financial jeopardy.
• Reprice all medical claims to a relationship of Medicare Allowable that provides a benchmark of the value of their current PPO network.
• Use the CFO calculator to compare healthcare spending changes to sales revenue growth at www.healthrosetta.org/CFO.

Find an example from the list of items in the chapter titled America Has Gone to War for Far Less that you believe will particularly grab the attention and activate your leaders and organization.