What Keeps HR Execs Up at Night?

A panel of three HR executives shared their experiences, perspectives and challenges, as well as what they value in their advisors, at an April 19 session at the 15th annual NAPA 401(k) Summit.

The panel, moderated by Ann Schleck of Ann Schleck & Co., featured:

• Rhonda Curry from Hornet Sports & Entertainment in Charlotte, N.C. (parent of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets) (188 participants, $6 million in assets);


• Kathryn Wall from Mary Washington Healthcare in Fredericksburg, Va. (5,710 participants, $226 million in assets); and


• James Bunt from Continental Resources, Inc., in Bedford, Mass. (302 participants, $36 million in assets).

So what's keeping the three HR execs up at night? The complexity of today’s benefits offerings, especially compliance requirements, topped Wall’s list. She also cited the cost of benefits, ruing the increasing prevalence of benefits decisions that are driven by cost factors today; coping with employees’ desire for transparency via things like social media and interactive communication; and the changing relationship with employees. That relationship, said Wall, has shifted from the employer’s goal of taking care of participant’s retirement readiness to providing tools that they use to take responsibility for that themselves. Mary Washington Healthcare’s advisor is Jania Stout at Fiduciary Plan Advisors.

Curry said she depends on her advisor, Kathleen Kelly at Compass Financial Partners, to be an expert on changes in the field. “What's evolving? What does the fiduciary rule mean to me? Tell me what I need to do,” she said. “Give me a 1-page summary and action steps.” Curry suggested a general goal for advisors: Help her minimize the time she spends studying important issues and emerging trends and developments by emailing her succinct “must-read” lists of recommended content on the web.

Bunt shares his CEO's concern about translating today’s complex benefits landscape to employees effectively. “We rely on our advisor (Jim Phillips at Retirement Resources) to do that,” Bunt says. In particular, he says, employees are concerned about market volatility and its effect on their account balances. “’What do I do?’ they ask. How do you calm their fears and give them the right kind of guidance?” Bunt said he measures an advisor’s success largely by looking at whether participants are getting the right information to tackle this issue, including appropriate benchmarks for deferrals and account balances.

Best Practices

Curry and Wall both get at least one phone call a day asking for meeting time to interest them in a service or product; Wall said she receives a total of about 300 emails daily. The offered a few recommendations for cold calling that at least gets a foot in the door:

• Email: Your subject line must both “grab me” and convey some important information about what’s in the email, said Curry.


• Do your homework: “Show me that you've done your homework and that you’re worth talking to,” said Curry. “Don’t waste my time asking me about my business,” added Wall. “You should know that already.” Instead, she recommended, try saying: “Let me take 15 minutes to tell you what we’ve done about the fiduciary rule with other health care firms.”

To fight commoditization, how does an advisor most effectively justify the “premium” charged for exceptional service? For Wall, it’s the need for the advisor to help her integrate all the benefits they offer, not just retirement, in a true Total Rewards concept — addressing health care and voluntary benefits as well as the retirement plan. Wall values advisors who can “be an integrator,” she said, providing simple, easy-to-grasp information for her participants, like infograms, and can connect her with experts when that’s needed.

To Curry, it's important to have an advisor who “gets me,” she said, and can provide a frank evaluation of her “wild ideas” — as Schleck put it, “thinking outside the box but listening [to the client] and focusing on the client’s business.”

Bunt addressed the difference between average, “me too” advisors and extraordinary ones. In his opinion, there are two key differentiators:

• the interaction of the advisor with participants — in particular, the advisor’s use of tools, and the independence and impartiality of the advisor’s advice to participants; and


• the advisor’s ability to provide “throughput” information — for example, aggregated data provided at quarterly investment committee meetings that leads directly to improvements and new features in the plan.