Revisiting 2020’s top benefits professionals

December 16, 2020 5:23 AM

Despite the challenges COVID-19 brought to the workplace this year, a few benefit professionals still stood out from the crowd.

Our 2020 Benny Award winners helped employees with child care challenges, offered health and wellness benefits, revamped retirement plans and boosted financial wellness offerings for their workplace populations.

Revisit all of our 2020 Benny Award winners and read how they made their mark — and made a difference — during a year of unprecedented challenges in the workplace benefits space.

Bryan Aycock, Professional of the Year

Amidst a year of upheaval and transitions in the world of work, many employees have been left feeling unmoored and unmotivated, searching for a new post-coronavirus paradigm.

Bryan Aycock is not one of those people. As the director of benefits at Zynga, a game developer company, Aycock began the year planning to start programs that supported mental health, family planning and other wellness initiatives. But once the pandemic hit, he shifted gears to offer Zynga’s 2,100 employees support for every challenge the pandemic threw their way. Aycock immediately connected employees with ergonomic assessments, expanded Zynga’s EAP to provide mental health services and waived copays with Aetna through the rest of 2020.

“We're all in this together, so I’m really open to feedback on what employees are missing, and how we can quickly adapt,” he says. “I just wanted people to know that we were here to support them and that we’re doing everything we can to support them as soon as possible.”

Read more:

Zynga’s benefits boss jump-starts new benefits under COVID-19

David Hines, Benefits Leadership in Healthcare

David Hines doesn’t believe having a baby should be expensive — so he restructured his benefit plan to ensure parents would pay zero out-of-pocket costs for doctor appointments to start a family.

As the executive director of benefits at Metro Nashville Public Schools, Hines has a reputation for thinking outside the box when it comes to benefit packages. Thanks to his efforts, his school district is able to provide primary care, physical therapy, chiropractic care and more at five onsite clinics. But his latest accomplishment overhauls how employers pay for maternity care. Hines suspected providing female employees with better care, at a more affordable price, would help lower costs associated with difficult births. Hines collaborated with Vanderbilt Medical to create MyMaternityHealth — a maternity benefit that bundles all costs associated with pregnancy and delivery into one price for employers.

“I felt like I was getting beat up over our neonatal costs,” says Hines. “I wanted something that provided quality, value-based care. Keeping my teachers well is a long-term investment. Imagine what they can do with that extra money they’re not spending each time they have a baby?”

Read more:

Nashville school district leader overhauls maternity benefit pricing

Talika Johnson, Benefits Leadership in Retirement

Making the switch to a new career can be a daunting task on its own, but combining that with a global pandemic can make the transition insurmountable. Yet it was a challenge that Talika Johnson, director of administrative services for the city of Azusa, California, met head on.

Johnson is responsible for leading both the finance department and the human resources department for Azusa, which has a population of almost 50,000. She works with the city’s employees, making sure they have access to pay and retirement resources, while doing her best to save the city money and stay on a tight budget. She would be faced with an uphill battle because of the financial stress caused by the pandemic. Johnson tapped her financial background to increase retirement plan contributions into 457 accounts, a solution for employees that also saved the city millions of dollars.

“I tried to beef up the retirement benefits within their contracts in lieu of a cost of living increase,” Johnson says. “I've had to work a little harder to ensure employees that I'm in it for the long haul and also have their best interest in mind in terms of employee-employer relations.”

Read more:

Benny Award winner gets baptism by fire as she takes on HR role amid pandemic

Tim O’Neil, Editor’s Pick

Employers have been forced to revamp their benefit offerings to help employees make important financial decisions and access resources to ease stress over their future throughout the pandemic.

Tim O’Neil has been charged with running the wellness program at Meredith since 2007. Financial wellness has always played a critical role in his approach to overall employee well-being, but the pandemic has made that support even more crucial. In the beginning of 2020, Meredith partnered with Tuition.io and Gradvisor, a digital financial wellness platform, to start an enhanced student loan platform and 529 college savings plan. The new benefits attracted more than 1,000 employees registering for the benefits within the first 60 days.

“One thing that I've learned from COVID-19 is that we really need to think more about meeting employees where they're at,” O’Neil says. “That is in terms of how they can do their best work, how we can offer benefits that are valued and meet their everyday needs, and at the same time provide resources available to help them set and save for these middle and long-term goals.”

Read more:

This HR pro turns crisis situations into opportunities to support employee well-being