Michelle Anthony, Public Sector and Education Market Leader at The Hartford
On this episode of The 3rd Question we talk with Michelle Anthony, Public Sector and Education Market Leader at The Hartford about the trends she is seeing in the public sector and the creative ways employers are educating their employees on their voluntary benefits.
Video Transcript
Ryan James:
Hello and welcome to The 3rd Question, a video interview series with public sector thought leaders from around the country. Today I am joined by Michelle Anthony. Michelle is the Public Sector and Education Market Leader for The Hartford, which is one of our Pinnacle Partners. So, Michelle, thank you so much for joining me today.
Michelle Anthony:
Yeah, thanks so much, Ryan. I appreciate the opportunity.
Ryan James:
Well, before we get into our three questions, why don't you give the audience a little bit of an introduction about you and your role and The Hartford itself?
Michelle Anthony:
Sure. So I came to The Hartford in 2008. At the time, The Hartford was just really getting into working on public sector business. So they had started their real focus on public sector around 2006, 2007, so when I came on in 2008, it was definitely something that The Hartford was working very strongly towards, becoming a real leader in this space. I actually started with The Hartford on the RFP team, so the team that was responding to public sector business, and I wasn't really sure what I was getting into when I started in the insurance industry. I actually had an English and politics degree to start out. And so, going into insurance was a little bit new to me. I had been in the financial business before I took some time off to be home with my kids.
Michelle Anthony:
But one of the first meetings that I had when I started at The Hartford, the presale team, or the RFP team was actually talking about some of the information that they had just learned doing their NIGP certification so that the government procurement course that they had taken and become certified to respond to the public procurement bids. So I just couldn't believe how interesting that was and I just gravitated towards it right away. So I became the public sector subject matter expert on the RFP team and I was doing that for a number of years before I moved into my role that I'm in now as part of the product organization and group benefits and the public and education sector market lead.
Michelle Anthony:
We do right now have about 4,100 public and education sector clients and our group benefits a book of business at The Hartford and that's pretty evenly split between public and education.
Ryan James:
Okay. I was going to say, you must be a little bit of a glutton for punishment if you both did the public sector and the RFP was part of your world because you're a better person than me.
Michelle Anthony:
Yeah. Those RFPs can be daunting, that's for sure.
Ryan James:
I've seen some interesting ones over the years. Well, let's get into our three questions.
Ryan James:
I would love to hear, for this first question, I would love to hear your thoughts around how the public sector vertical has been expanding and adopting their benefit strategy over the past few years and how you've seen those changes really help public sector employers offer much more robust offering to their employees.
Michelle Anthony:
So I think in the past few years, we've really seen a shift in demographics in the public sector. So we've seen a lot of younger folks, the millennials were coming on board and that was slow to come in the public sector. But those younger folks are starting to sign up and get their government job. And we still have baby boomers that are hanging on working past that retirement age. So we see a wide spectrum of life experience and life stages, and that's really given us the opportunity to increase employee awareness in some of our voluntary benefits. We've seen that public sector now has some shrinking budgets, that's precipitated changes in some of the pension plans.
Michelle Anthony:
So some of these younger employees that are coming on don't have the same benefits that some of their older coworkers do. And so, I think that it's really important right now for us to focus on things that are just more employee choice based. So whether that's supplemental life or supplemental disability, or one of our products that fills in the gaps in their medical insurance, like critical illness, accident or hospital indemnity. So really giving employees that flexibility to choose what's right for them in their life stage today.
Ryan James:
So would you say, I guess, as a followup to that, would you say it's because of the shift in the demographics that you've seen the choice to add more additional benefits for their employees?
Michelle Anthony:
I think so. I really think it's the combination of having this wide spectrum of life stages in their employee population, but also with those shrinking budgets. So knowing that they can't always offer everything that they have in the past to their employees, making sure that there are benefits out there available to them for not too expensive cost coming out of their paycheck each month, but something that can really help them if tragedy were to strike and they were faced with a disability or even some good life choices that happen like a pregnancy.
Ryan James:
Well, and I see an ever growing range of some of those benefits. I just read an article today about the benefit of helping couples who might want to get pregnant. I keep seeing it. Then there was pet insurance and identity theft insurance. Things like that, which two decades ago, no one would have even thought about.
Michelle Anthony:
So much out there right now that employers are offering as just an added benefit to their employees, for sure.
Ryan James:
Yeah. Well, let's move to the second question. So I'm going to shift a little bit to what's our world, which is around more of the technology aspect. So as it relates to communicating and, I guess, educating public sector employees about these benefits that the employers are offering, what do you see is one of those carriers, especially as you partner with these organizations? What do you see as some of the biggest challenges to getting your information out in front of public sector clients? And then, how has the technology evolution helped drive enrollment and participation rates in your opinion?
Michelle Anthony:
Sure. So, I mean, I think that certainly in 2020, it was a different year. But in 2020, we saw an 80% increase in customers looking for guidance when it came to enrollment. So those benefit fairs of the past were gone and employers wanted to know exactly what they could do to help their employees understand and enroll in benefits without those face-to-face conversations that they've been so used to in the past. And I think this is something that we've been seeing shift over the past few years anyway, as more and more public sector entities have been moving away from that real paper based enrollment that they've had, but this was a more of a push than they ever expected, obviously, when we went into this virtual world of 2020. So we see a real need for more robust tools in the enrollment space, those decision tools, persona based decision tools that actually take into account exactly what life stage you're at and help you to decide what benefits are right for you now.
Michelle Anthony:
Having more of those interactive experiences that they can get through either a platform like yours or some of the things that The Hartford has to offer as well, really going through that enrollment virtually and explaining things as they go. We've had to get some virtual enrollment fairs on the calendar in 2020, things that we've never had to do before. Put together more educational videos and things for folks to actually watch and be able to understand what their benefits are. I think that these things, like I said, we've been developing them for years, but this year, public sector employers just saw more of a need for them than they've ever seen before.
Ryan James:
Right. Would you say that you've been able to fine tune some of those offerings from the private sector experience, and now it's being adopted more on the public sector side? Because COVID changed everybody's needs. But some of the things that we seen that are being adopted now in the public sector have been adopted five years ago in the private sector.
Michelle Anthony:
That's right.
Ryan James:
So it's not like it's brand new.
Michelle Anthony:
It's not brand new, but that bureaucratic ship is sometimes hard to move. And they had to really take a quick right-hand turn and this year and do some things that they hadn't had to do before. And I think it's been very important for us to have partners like Businessolver who do focus specifically on the needs of this population. I mean, this is a really important population, public and government sector makes up about 15% of the workforce in the United States. So there are a lot of public employers out there and The Hartford just like you do at Businessolver is there to help them and help them get everything they can for their employees.
Ryan James:
I will say, it's been exciting because I get to talk to public sector organizations from State and local government to higher education to K12 all across the country. And it's been exciting to see a lot of the ... There's some really smart people in this space and the thought leadership, sometimes the bureaucratic part that you talked about, it's hard to move the needle, but when the needle was forced to be moved, they were ready to go. And I think that's what's been great is the quick adoption that we've been seeing across the country.
Michelle Anthony:
Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan James:
All right. Well, we're already at the third question. It's fast. And what I've been asking people in season two is I've talked about handing them a blank check and I've asked if they would use their blank check towards their organization, what would they do to evolve or grow or change in some way? I'm going to twist it a little bit for you guys, because what I'm going to ask is now that we've gotten through 2020, and a lot of the changes that have happened, moving forward, if you were given a blank check to help your public sector clients continue to grow their benefit offerings to their employees, how would you use it and why?
Michelle Anthony:
I think it still comes down to technology and education. I think it's getting the right information to the right people in the right way at the right time. That's what I think is really important right now. I think I would want to make sure that we're furthering that research driven communication. So really understanding who your employees are and basing your benefits and your communication to those employees on that research, making sure that the message really resonates with the employees on an individual level.
Ryan James:
Right.
Michelle Anthony:
I think I'd also just want to see an increase in efforts to support resiliency. I mean, we've seen this past year that human beings in general are very resilient, right? But what can we do to continue to support that resiliency? And make sure that we're helping, not just your employees, but once those employees become our claimants, making sure that we can help them to understand what their true abilities are and get them everything that they can to move their lives forward.
Michelle Anthony:
I think that what The Hartford has been doing with the United Way and our 211 sponsorship, really being able to help our claimants to reach out to their the 211 phone line or 211 online and be able to get the help that they need in their own communities. I would want to make sure that we're continuing to do that work and helping all of our employers and all of our clients to be able to just further that work and really showing our compassion to support people's abilities.
Ryan James:
Got it. Well, I'm glad I would be able to give you a blank check because you've got a lot of good things there. A lot of boxes you can check. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for joining me today on The 3rd Question. I appreciate just a few minutes to talk through all things public sector, and for any of our viewers, if you want to see more interviews from people like Michelle and other public sector thought leaders, you can go to the3rdquestion.com. You can click and subscribe and be notified as we continue to release these interviews on a regular basis. So, Michelle, thank you so much again for joining me today and I hope you have a great week.
Michelle Anthony:
Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate it. Take care.
