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After some much needed sun, sand and good times with my beautiful family, I’m back to bring you some more quotable gems from BFE. Enjoy, and leave your own quotable gems in the comments.
“In HR, we’re always responsible for taking care of everyone else. And with health care reform, we’re only likely to get beat up even more. So, I want to help you reward and energize yourself.” —BFE speaker Jill Kopanis, corporate HR director at Dynamic Dies Inc., just before handing out chocolate bars to session attendees.
“An administrative committee is the hub of plan governance. All the other committees circle around it like a wheel.” —BFE speaker Gary Broder, senior partner at Salbiello & Broder, on the importance of forming an administrative committee to oversee summary plan governance.
“Our company was founded by three brothers, and when you start with family, it connects your whole business because it’s family you’re taking care of.” —BFE keynote panelist, Janet Baker, SVP and director of human resources at Aflac
“Everyone has stars, next stars and … those other people. Some employees weren’t engaged and wanted to be elsewhere. And in some cases, we helped them get elsewhere.” —Baker, on Aflac’s ‘no layoffs’ mantra, while still separating the employee wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
“It’s nice to network with people who feel as crazy as I feel sometimes dealing with health care. We recently removed 170 dependents from our health plan through a dependent eligibility audit, and this year [due to the dependent eligibility extension under health care reform] we’re adding all but 22 of them back in.” —one exasperated BFE attendee at a peer-to-peer networking session.
“Americans are ambivalent about cost-containment, because they don’t perceive their health care as waste. Raise your hand if you’ve had a procedure that your didn’t need and would be happy if your insurance hadn’t paid for.” —BFE keynote panelist Dr. Artie Southam, executive VP of health plan operations at Kaiser Permanente. (By the way, no one raised their hand.)
“Employees are tweeting and Facebooking and gaming and doing things I don’t even understand. But we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to get smart about using social media to reach employees.” —BFE keynote panelist Kay Curling, Senior Vice President, Human Resources at Salient Federal Solutions, Inc.
“If you take care of the people, the people will take care of the business.” —Baker (and I’m sure many of you), on the topic of stabilizing and boosting employee engagement and morale during the recession.
