Are you familiar with the Burger King slogan, “have it your way”? You’re not locked into just one combo, you can mix and match according to what you want, what you need. I think for most things in life we typically want it our way. With that in mind, we developed our Early Childcare and Education (ECE) Healthy Advantage healthcare solution to follow the “have it your way” approach.
If you’ve read my last two blogs you’ve problem noticed there’s a theme around stabilization of staff or as I like to call it, “The ECE Secret Sauce to Success.” One of the ways to achieve the secret sauce is creating a strong company culture. Our Healthy Advantage does that by offering a 4-tiered benefit plan. Staff can choose a plan which suits their needs and their finances without being locked into one option.
When we first rolled out Healthy Advantage, we recommended to all our members to take the time to thoroughly talk through with their team the options and benefits of Healthy Advantage. This is specifically important for younger staff members who have just come off their parents’ insurance and are not familiar with the ins and outs of a healthcare plan.
Our team at IC360 started to see a difference among our members as to who had employees that were enrolling in Healthy Advantage and who had employees that were opting out. It all came down to communication. Our member who took the time to sit down, answer questions and thoroughly explain Healthy Advantage saw a higher enrollment rate than those who did not.
By clearly explain and answering questions, staff have a clear idea of what their options are and an understanding of your genuine interest in their wellbeing. At this point, there’s typically a change in mindset, your staff can see you’re investing in them, so they start to invest in your school. They start to see their role as a career and not just a job. By changing their mindset, they’ve started to strengthen your company culture.
As with most of our solutions at IC360, Healthy Advantage can be used as a core solution to build your company’s culture. When your company culture grows, the following fall into place, a decrease in staff turnover, an increase in recruitment, successful operations, and business profitability.
When I personally rolled out Healthy Advantage in my schools, I saw a 15% decrease in turnover and was now in possession of a major bargaining tool for recruitment purposes. As a lot of our IC360 members also experienced, having an affordable healthcare plan is something not a lot of ECE schools offer. Healthy Advantage set them apart from their competition and allowed them to gain top talent.
When there are less turnover and top talent recruits, the vision and values of your school will be more efficiently implemented. You will no longer have a team made up of mostly new members, rather a team with experienced staff who are all on the same page and want the same thing. When your school is run at top notch level efficiency, parents notice and feel comfortable having their children there. They also are more inclined to speak to their friends positively about your school(s).
When parents start to spread the word, your enrollments will grow, which will bring more revenue into your school that you can reinvest back into your staff, operations, and the children you serve. If this cycle continues, parents continue to talk, enrollments continue to grow and you will get to that elevated stage most owner seek to reach, a waitlist for each program!
Building culture over time is critical to your success. Including core fundamentals such as competitive wages, professional development, strong leadership based on values, a sense of belonging, recognition and a flexible and affordable healthcare plan.
We built Healthy Advantage with the above results in mind and that’s exactly what we’re starting to see. As with all our solutions, Healthy Advantage is not meant to be a band aide or a quick fix. Rather, long term solutions to help ECE owners build a sustainable culture, simplify recruiting and retention of staff, and create a profitable business they can reinvest back into their staff, school and the children and families they serve.
If you want to learn more about Healthy Advantage and if this can help you and your staff, visit our site to speak with one of our IC360 experts. https://www.inspirecare360.com/get-started/
-Tony Dagostino
