Ray Goldberg founded Pier Forward to help employers address DEI challenges in the benefits arena, improving organizational performance and addressing disparities. He has decades of experience in HR, benefits, technology, operations, and transformation, with leadership roles at marquis employers, and experience consulting with corporate clients. He actively leads the BennIE Forum, which brings HR leaders together to explore how DEI and Benefits can strengthen organizations. He also serves on the Advisory Board on Community Relations for his home town of Teaneck, NJ. Ray earned a degree in Computer Science from Columbia University, and is certified in Change Management; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Workplace; and Mental Health First Aid. He has spoken and written about wellness, retirement, HR technologies, and leading change.
In this episode, Ray talks about reconceptualizing benefits— from the perspective of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion— to improve organizational performance and the lives of colleagues and their families.
[0:00-5:24] Introduction
•Welcome, Ray!
•Today’s Topic: Reconceptualizing Benefits from a DEI Perspective
[5:33 -10:38] What Does It Mean to Reconceptualizing Benefits?
•Looking at the results of two independent analyses
•Why organizations should be trusted partners to their employees
[10:50 -16:33] Do Organizations Have the Information They Need to Look at Benefits in
This Way?
•How organizations can use the information they have
•Making sure employees understand how their benefit elections will affect them
•Options for providing individualized support and the challenges they present
[16:42 -20:13] Where Should Organizations Begin?
•Understanding and assessing existing strategies
•Comparing your strategies to your competitors’ strategies
[20:22 -24:56] Final Thoughts & Closing
•Understanding that it’s OK to make mistakes
•Thanks for listening!
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“You’ve got to start by making sure that you actually understand your existing strategies… In terms of the analysis, I’d recommend picking some benefits— just pick a few probably in the financial space or maybe non-financial or non-health— and assessing utilization and impact by race and ethnicity, by gender, by age, and by compensation. That’s data that almost every organization has.”
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“This is a spot where benefits people, if you will, and DEI people look at things pretty differently. Benefits folks to their eminent credit are always worried about treating everybody exactly the same. It’s the nature of the beast— it’s partly driven by regulation, but it’s really also the nature of the beast. DEI folks are really struggling to make sure that different populations are getting what they need from their organization. That’s a difficult bridge to start to talk about how to cross, but it needs to be crossed and folks have to come together.”
Announcer:
Here’s an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what’s happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here’s your host, David Turetsky.
David Turetsky:
Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I’m your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we try and find fascinating, interesting, wonderful people around inside and outside the world of human resources to talk to you about what’s actually happening in people data, analytics and technology. Today, we have my really good friend, I would say old friend, but that means you’re old. And I know we’re both old, but I keep repeating it anyways, my good friend, Ray Goldberg, Hey, Ray, how are you?
Ray Goldberg:
I’m good.
David Turetsky:
And like always, we have with us my friend, Dwight Brown from Salary.com. Hey, Dwight.
Dwight Brown:
Hey David! Glad to be back.
David Turetsky:
Like always, thank you for joining us again. So for those of you who don’t know, Ray, I’ve known Ray for so many years, I can’t even tell you, he’ll probably tell you. But we work together in Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank. I was his client in the I was in the compensation space. And Ray was the technologist, HR technologist. We all knew where to go to get our, our daily bread and butter when it came to HR data. And that was Ray. He was brilliant in that role, by the way, and him and our friend Seth, who we just lost sadly, a year ago, I guess it was now we all worked together. We were all really good friends. And we all enjoyed work, which is just what just a wonderful thing. Why don’t you give us a little bit more background on yourself, Ray?
Ray Goldberg:
Be happy to David, thanks for that introduction. And thanks for adding the memory of our colleague Seth Goldwin. Just a terrific guy and a brilliant contributor. So I founded Pier Forward to help employers address DEI challenges in the benefits arena to improve both organizational performance and colleague benefits. My passion is leading effective change that improves outcomes for organizations and their people. I’ve been doing that for 25 years. I did it with David and others at Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank at Lucent Technologies at Marsh McLennan and in consulting with corporate clients. I’ve done it in HR technology, and operations and transformation and for more than a decade in benefits. I actively lead the BennIE Forum that’s benefits IE like inclusion and equity, which brings together HR leaders to explore how DEI and benefits can strengthen organizations. I also co founded the social justice salon where HR leaders learn, grow and act to serve their organizations and communities. And I now serve on the advisory board for community relations in my hometown of Teaneck, New Jersey. I’ve got a degree in computer science. I’m certified in change management DE&I in the workplace and Mental Health First Aid, and I’m glad to be here, David, thanks for asking me.
David Turetsky:
My pleasure. And hey at the social justice salon. Can I get a haircut?
Ray Goldberg:
No, no. You can’t.
David Turetsky:
My nails done?
Ray Goldberg:
Maybe if you ask nicely.
David Turetsky:
Alright, cool. So as we do with everyone else, every other guests, we have one fun thing that no one knows about Ray Goldberg.
Ray Goldberg:
So, a whole bunch of years ago, when my wife and I were volunteering on a project in the north woods of Ely, Minnesota. We were tracking bears and observing their habitats as part of a major research project going on in the Forest Service. And Jerry, a little bit crazy, 125 pound bear, came back down the trail one day and sat down on my lap.
David Turetsky:
Sat down on your lap.
Ray Goldberg:
Sat down on my lap. Like if you picture a three or four year old boy coming down a trail just designed to sit themselves in your lap. Exactly what she did.
David Turetsky:
Wow. Like a child bear.
Ray Goldberg:
Yeah, well, wasn’t such a child. But it was young, but it was kind of a rambunctious bear with a bit of a personality disorder. And I said to my wife, Jerry’s sitting on my lap! And she goes I know hang on, I’m gonna get my camera! Like that wasn’t really my point. But okay.
Dwight Brown:
Wow, you didn’t read it a fairy tale, did you?
Ray Goldberg:
I didn’t. I just sat and waited for her to get up.
David Turetsky:
Yes, Goldilocks. Well, Ray that is one of the more unique fun things and I appreciate it. Of course, it’s coming from a unique person. So that’s that’s awesome. So our topic for today is talking about reconceptualizing benefits and taking the perspective of diversity, equity and inclusion, and trying to improve organizational performance and the lives of the colleagues and families of the people who work at these organizations. I think that’s a very ambitious topic. It’s a wonderful topic too.
Ray Goldberg:
Well, it is an ambitious topic, I think it’s an important one, and it’s one that’s starting to get a little more traction.
David Turetsky:
And we’ll talk about it right now! So, Ray, our first question is, what does it mean by reconceptualizing? Or just how do we think about benefits from the perspective of DE&I and how does that actually improve organizations, employees and their families?
Ray Goldberg:
So there are lots of definitions of DE&I. And I’ll offer a couple that are relevant perhaps here, but I think also hold up in other contexts. People have diverse needs and preferences for many reasons. Those could include age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, race and ethnicity, their mental health status, ability or disability, income, family status, including providing care for others. And it’s important to note that a number of these may change over time. That’s the first that’s the D. Benefits should make employees and families feel included, welcomed, and they belong. That’s the I. And as we continue to learn lack of broad equity in society, in health and finances mean that employees unfortunately just don’t come in the door on an equal playing field. So where’s the business value? Well, let’s start with a very big picture. Citi Group and McKinsey have both published independent analyses that come to roughly the same number, showing that the black white wealth gap has a quote dampening effect on consumption and investment that is costing the country a trillion dollars a year. That’s more than 4% of GDP. They back that up. That’s not like, you know, they didn’t throw a number on a piece of paper, they actually walk you through this.
David Turetsky:
We’ll actually attach that report to the episode. So if someone wants to read it, they can have quick access to it.
Ray Goldberg:
Beautiful. So there’s one example of that gap in the financial space, the median white family has eight times the wealth, that’s like household assets, of the median black family, and five times the wealth of the median Hispanic family. There are also lots of really disturbing and notable differences in health. Black Americans from 35 to 64, 50%, more likely to have high blood pressure than white Americans. Asian Americans, Latinos have rates of diabetes that are 25% higher than white Americans, and the rate for black Americans is 40% higher than white Americans. Heart disease is the number one cause of death for women as it is for men, yet women are less likely than men to have treatment to control their cholesterol levels. And in one particularly interesting example, trans and non binary people are substantially more likely in surveys to indicate that they have an unmet health need than the general population. They’re also just differences in what people need and value. People at different ages or life stages, which aren’t exactly the same thing, may have different needs. Different generations, in quotes, may value security and benefits differently. And for many years, salaries have written very slowly in many cases, especially for lower paid workers, the cost of health benefits has risen more. So what is the benefit of diversity and engagement, particularly for individual firms? Well, McKinsey again reports that for every 10% increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior executive team earnings before interest in taxes, the same EBIT rise 0.8%, which is actually pretty substantial number. According to another study, firms with high employee satisfaction outperformed their peers by 2.3 to 3.8% per year in long run stock returns. So if businesses need peak performance from their employees to do well, it would seem important to step back and see what’s really going on with employees’ health and financial security from a DEI perspective. I’ll close with this quote from a report by the International Federation of Employment Benefit Plans, as they put it, employers that make an intentional effort to stay connected with their workforces, and to build benefits offerings that speak to genuine employee concerns and needs will be able to leverage them to attract and keep the best talent going forward. Doing what is right and supporting employees where they need it most places the employer in the role of a trusted and valued partner.
David Turetsky:
So Ray, companies are now looking for opportunities to get connected, and to keep a deeper connection with their employees. And what you’re talking about is them becoming a trusted partner is important, because then the organization can then keep that tie so tight or can hopefully keep that tie tight. So that in bad times for the employee as well as the employer, they have the opportunity to make sure that it’s not just pay, it’s not just manager satisfaction. There’s something else there that the employee uses to maintain that connection and stay there.
Ray Goldberg:
I think that’s exactly what right, David. Listen, there are tough times in employees lives, there are tough times in organizations lives as you just said. And if you can have a trusted relationship, when you need to deliver a message that might not really be welcome, you’ll at least have somebody who’s listening and actually will believe what you say. Now that trust is easily is easily, you know, destroyed and hard to build. But there, this is definitely one of the ways to build it. I can recall one exercise were changing a retirement offering outside the US and one of the senior actuaries in that company came to us and said, Well, I’m not happy about what you’re doing. But you’ve been transparent and quite clear about the change in value that I’ll be getting. So at least I believe you.
David Turetsky:
Exactly.
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David Turetsky:
So Ray, while that’s really compelling, do organizations really have all the information they need to take a look at benefits in this way? I mean, is it kind of consolidated and what happens to confidentiality and HIPAA and all this?
Ray Goldberg:
Yeah. So as you imply, David, there is a lot of information to be considered. There’s information about employees, about the benefits provided about utilization and about outcomes. Let’s cover each of those separately. But I’m actually going to come to the information about employees last and it’ll be clear why I’m going to get there. So there’s the documentation about the benefits provided, including who is eligible. You know, eligibility criteria is another way of saying ineligibility criteria, want to look at that as well, right? And pricing, look at how the benefits are communicated as well, what avenues are chosen? Then there’s information about participation utilization, who’s participating in the 401k, at what level, who’s getting a partial match the maximum match, who’s putting even more in the required to get that maximum match? who’s participating in the bonus program, who’s getting their annual physicals? Who’s getting their cancer screenings and other preventive care? In terms of prevalence and outcomes? What factors or concerns are identified by the wellness assessments? What health conditions are prevalent? What are balances like in their retirement accounts? And here’s where I’ll come back to employee information. What dimensions are important for the analysis of utilization outcomes. So you really want to sort of start from the end as you think about what employee you want to gather, right? So that’s why I’m covering it last, this should include race and ethnicity, gender identity, age, and family information, such as marital status and dependents, it could include additional personal information, such as veteran status, disability status, primary language spoken, home zip code, and it should also include some work information, like work location, job level, salary, total compensation, and length of service. In terms of confidentiality, health information is subject to extensive regulation, as you just described, David, I’m not a lawyer, I’m not going to try to play a lawyer. But we all know we’ve got an obligation to treat people’s health information really, really seriously. But the truth is all personal information, especially when you’ve aggregated it from multiple sources, has to be treated as highly confidential. In particular, when you slice and dice, you’ve got to be sure that your smallest groups have a large enough n, so that your individual’s identity is truly cloaked. And you want to be careful about where that where this information is shared, just because you’ve sort of removed the confidentiality from with a large enough n and by these aggregated analysis doesn’t mean you broadcast it all over God’s creation, you’ve got to think really carefully about what information you’re sharing, even in aggregate form.
David Turetsky:
I think it’s important, though, to talk about one of the things you mentioned in the middle of that answer, which is connecting to people and making sure they understand the benefit, their participant benefits, the participation, their over participation or under participation, how it will affect them, how will affect health outcomes, and how do you communicate those things to different people, you know, certain populations don’t have access to email because they choose not to, or they’re not using technologies like email anymore, because they’re young kids, kids don’t use email, they use Snapchat, Tik Tok, Twitter to some extent, and text messaging, right, or FaceTiming. Whereas, you know, when we first adopted email, we thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. That really kind of dates me as well, because, you know, what I remember being in the workforce and getting introduced to email in the workforce, and how it changed our lives. So the the avenues to communicate and the ways to communicate, and the methodologies to communicate might be different by those different groups, right.
Ray Goldberg:
100% And you really got to look at who your workforce is, and be sure that you’re reaching them. In addition, by the way, additional communication methods, there are a number of ways to provide individualized support. They range from relatively inexpensive on up to pretty expensive, but you know, so different workforces. In different employers will be considering different kinds of options. But there are some ways to really make sure that that support that is provided to employees is really, truly individualized and those should be looked at as well.
Dwight Brown:
And that’s, that can be a challenge for companies because as you’re kind of taking this multi modal approach, there can be there can be difficulty with that there can be technology difficulty with it, there could be knowledge difficulty with it, then it could be more expensive for the organization with greater expense, there may be more resistance to adopting things that would be more effective for particular groups of people. And but it’s something that organizations need to anticipate, plan for, be mindful of, and be receptive to going down that road. Being able to say at a leadership level, okay, this may be this may require more intensity, this may require more money, but we are dedicated to being able to reach these broad populations, and communicate with them in a way that’s, that’s effective for them. And in return, we’re going to have a happier more engaged workforce.
Ray Goldberg:
Yeah, and it doesn’t really help to say that I have a tree that has fallen in the woods, if nobody can hear it. It just, it just doesn’t. So you got to think about it. And and, you know, David, as you mentioned that the modes that people are using change over time. So we got to be sensitive to that as well. This is not this is not fix it today, and it’ll stay that way forever. It’s it’s, you got to stay in touch with.
David Turetsky:
So, right, we’ve talked a lot about a lot of different types of information. And there’s a lot to unpack there. And I think one of the things that our listeners would probably be interested in is to understand, how do they get started on trying to affect change in the way benefits information and insights are being delivered in the way that DE&I are thinking around the world of DE&I.
Ray Goldberg:
Yeah, it’s a great question, David. So you got to start by making sure that you actually understand your resisting strategies, your human capital strategies, your DEI strategies, both internal and external facing, some firms really have a strong external facing DEI strategy, especially those that interact directly with retail customers, and your benefit strategies. In terms of the analysis, I’d recommend picking some benefits, just pick a few probably in the financial space, or maybe non financial or non health, assessing utilization and impact by race and ethnicity, by gender, by age. And by compensation. That’s data that almost every organization has, those four dimensions we’ve pretty much all got. And if you start on the 401k, if you start on a leave program, or a sabbatical program, or something else, where the assessing the benefit itself is not very hard, right? If you’re participating, that 401k, you’re contributing some fixed percentage of pay. Mostly, what you need to know is that number, there are other things you could look at later. But you just need to know that number. So over time, you can expand that scope to include additional benefits and or additional individual characteristics. Of course, if you have really good data on other benefits, or other characteristics right up front, and those are important to you, great. Pay attention to known pain points. Don’t just look at the data, talk to the workforce, they will gladly help you understand the challenges they actually face. And sometimes they’re not what you think they are, they might be more communications and then actual provisions of the plans, you know, to pick up on a point we’ve already talked about. And I would recommend creating a dashboard of some key metrics early on for senior leadership, perhaps by operating unit, perhaps by job family, by geography, again, think about how your company is organized and goes to market. What are you trying to do is two things at the same time that sound like they’re contradictory. You’re trying to aggregate and disaggregate information, you’re trying to aggregate information from various sources. And you’re trying to disaggregate it based on characteristics of the employee population. So you don’t want to say, Well, gee, on average, our employees contribute this. Well, it may be that this group is contributing a lot more and this group is contributing a lot less and we need to break it out. So you can understand that and then decide what, by the way, if anything, to do about it, not every discrepancy can be fixed or should be fixed. But you got to know where the discrepancy is at least are. I’ll give you one additional piece on the on the data. Some of this data, as I’ve already hinted is hard to get and or hard to understand. In particular health claims data, and wellness assessment data really needs specialized skills. In addition to having HIPAA concerns, you just need specialized skills. And those skills will almost certainly need to be provided by your benefits consultants and providers.
David Turetsky:
I think benefits brokers too really understand how to parse that data. And a lot of them are developing new benchmarking strategies to be able to understand not only how you do things, but also how do your competitors or other people, like your organizations do things.
Ray Goldberg:
100% When I said providers, I was thinking of brokers also, but thank you specifically for calling that. Not everybody hears that word that way so you’re absolutely right.
David Turetsky:
So we’ve had a good discussion around the effective benefits in the world of diversity, equity and inclusion, first of all, looking at what are what’s the lens that we should be looking at, from benefits in the DE&I world? Then we talked about ways in which we might be able to look at how organizations can organize their data in order to be able to give the right people access to information. And then lastly, you gave a really good summary about how we can actually implement those things in our organizations and gave good examples about where to get started. Is there anything else that you wanted to add, that companies can take away and start working on today?
Ray Goldberg:
I think it’s not a question of of takeaway, but it’s just an observation. This is a spot where benefits people, if you will, and DEI, people look at things pretty differently. Benefits folks, to their eminent credit, are always worried about treating everybody exactly the same. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s partly driven by regulation, but it’s really also the nature of the beast. DEI folks are really struggling to make sure that different populations are getting what they need from your organization. That’s a difficult bridge to start to talk about how to how to cross. But it needs to be crossed and folks have to come together. The one thing I would say is, especially if you’re new to the DEI world, and using language properly, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to use the wrong term, you’re going to use an old fashioned term, you’re going to use maybe even inadvertently offensive term. And this is again, a perfect example of where trust matters. If you start to establish trust with each other, the DEI team and the benefits team. And then starting to do that with perhaps employee resource groups or other groups of employees. You if you start to build that trust, when you make a mistake, people will tell you, you can apologize, you can fix it and you can move on. But I wouldn’t want folks to be so nervous about that. And I’ve definitely seen some folks who are that they just are sort of stuck like a deer in headlights and start start carefully. Start honestly, with some trepidation, which would be reasonable, but start.
David Turetsky:
Absolutely that paralysis happens even in the world of compensation when we’re talking about DE&I and it’s the gosh, I just don’t want to do the wrong thing. I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I don’t want to make a mistake. And the answer, I think is like to your point and to your credit is as mature adults, we should be able to apologize and mean it. And that be okay. And these are all these are tough times. We all say and do the wrong thing. Sometimes because we’re human, we make mistakes. And it’s important to develop trust, but it’s more important to be able to have that trust, withstand making mistakes, because we’re going to do it.
Ray Goldberg:
Well put.
Dwight Brown:
I would really echo that too. It’s, as you pointed out, it’s about being adults, it’s about being able to communicate honestly, in a forthright manner and understanding the intent of the people that we’re talking with, then, you know, it’s it’s easy to immediately jump to bad intent in our minds. If we understand that we’re all in this together, we’re all trying to do the right thing. We were trying to build this culture. I think once we have that in our heads, it makes the process easier. And gets the ball further down. Down the road.
Ray Goldberg:
Yeah, there’s some muscle memory, both in terms of the skills and the vocabulary and the trust that you have to build that will carry you forward.
David Turetsky:
Ray, thank you very much for joining. I appreciate it.
Ray Goldberg:
It’s a real pleasure. Thanks for having me.
David Turetsky:
My pleasure, Dwight, thank you very much again.
Dwight Brown:
Thank you! Ray, it’s been great having you here. We appreciate you spending the time with us and sharing your insights.
Ray Goldberg:
Happy to.
David Turetsky:
And thank you very much for listening. And if you liked this episode, please subscribe. And if you know somebody who might find interest in it, please forward it to them. Thank you very much. Take care and please stay safe.
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