Plan Sponsor Interview with Pat Campbell on Plan Technology, Personalization and Cybersecurity

We spoke with Patricia Campbell at Cedars-Sinai back in 2019 on what millennials what from their retirement plan. After three years, we caught up with Pat on the progresses and reflections the team has made with regards to millennial engagement and utilizing technology to realize a plan's fullest potential:

When we last sat down for an interview, you were in the midst of launching an employee app – can you share the progress have you made there? What processes have become automated/streamlined as a result of the app? What does this do for your participants?

We do have our employee app that’s in place! We’re also still working on our ERP strategy so what we’re intending to do is basically have that employee app leveraged for more personalization, for both employees and managers.

When we last spoke, the app was being rolled out for HR-related and payroll-related employees but we then sat down and thought, what’s the greater strategy here? ­ We’ve since added Finance and Supply Chain employees to the app – both of which are big pieces of our company.

We also had to take a step back and add that to our overall ERP strategy – the Oracle platform. The integration process is coming along now with the idea being whether you’re an employee, manager, HR, payroll, finance, supply chain, etc – all these pieces are integrated to be made easier across the organization.

What efforts have you made towards personalization?

Are employees more responsive to communication via the employee app? What other tools are you employing outside of the app?

We’re still expanding it, so it’s not all-encompassing just yet. We’ve had to go back and add pieces and reconfigure to best leverage the technology. What we have in place now – and especially given the last couple years with Covid – employees have been pushed out of their comfort zone. We had a segment of our employee population who didn’t necessarily care for apps or newer technologies but now most are seeking out those new capabilities.

Even from a patientcare standpoint – we’re using newer technologies to help patients quickly and make sure our business is efficiently run.

How do you know if employees are satisfied (or dissatisfied) with the initiatives you’ve been rolling out?

That’s a great question. With anything that we roll out – whether it be new technologies, programs, etc., the first thing we do is try to measure awareness: do you know that ____ exists? The next thing we try to answer is have we made this easy to use? Can you adopt this? On your phone, laptop, etc.

The third thing we look for is the feedback loop – we conduct various surveys throughout the year, one of the most important being the Glint platform that we leverage several times throughout the year. This is where we find out what our employees want, what they’re missing, and if they’re happy with what we’ve rolled out so far.

We try to let them know that this is not just a ‘one and done’ type of application or technology push, this is something that is iterative and we let them know we are actively looking feedback so that we’re able to keep making progress. We continue to use this feedback to make things easier for employees, managers, and even patient care.

How do you collect employee feedback and what do you do with that information?

Is there a disparity in app-usage between younger employees and those nearing retirement? If so, how do you keep older participants engaged and up to date with newer tech?

There’s definitely a disparity between the different generations (baby boomers, gen z, millennials, etc) – so we just do our best to meet our participants where they are in life. Baby boomers, for example, have had to embrace the rapid transition to a digital world. While we do hear the occasional grumble, our employee base understands that this is the safest, smartest, and most effective way to connect.

On the other hand, we’ve seen a high uptick in app usage from our younger employees – they’ve wholeheartedly embraced the virtual world and the work-life balance that comes along with working digitally. No one here in LA wants to sit on the freeway for an hour if they can work from home! We’ve even had some employees move out-of-state, where cost of living is cheaper than here in the LA-area. Virtual employees have been able to stay connected with their team regardless of where they physically are – and we believe this will help us attract and retain top talent.

What technology do you ‘dream of at night’? In other words, where would you like to see technology in the DC space go? How far off are we?

One of the things that concerns me most is cybersecurity. The rapid transition to digital has been good and bad. From a participant standpoint, one of the most common things I have been hearing is the worry about ‘how are you going to keep my money safe?’ – I have even been hacked myself. It’s a very scary feeling. How do we keep our people engaged and keep using our technology (or our vendor partners’ technology) and still feel that their information is safe?

I’d like to see more done in the cybersecurity space to help people feel more comfortable and alleviate fears that no one else can access their retirement savings or personal data. I still hear that there are occasional breaches and accounts being compromised. The millennials and Gen Z’ers are a bit less concerned, but those of us who have been saving for years and years – we want to make sure our accounts are secure and our money is there when we need it. We’re looking for those providers to partner with organizations like ours to make sure our app is very secure and our participants are comfortable. The last thing we want is our participants up at night worrying about their money disappearing suddenly.

When you hear news stories where groups have hijacked organizations’ data – that’s a very scary feeling. It’s a part of the world today but unfortunately it feeds into people being comfortable with newer technologies. I think we still need more done from a cybersecurity standpoint, both generally, but especially in a way that helps protect our participants.

Join us at the DC Institute Half Moon Bay Symposium this September to continue the conversation on engagement and technology with Pat's discussion session!