Traditional mental health benefits often fail the populations that need them most due to deep-seated stigma and cultural barriers. When aggregated health data reveals high stress markers but zero EAP utilization, benefits leaders must decide whether to double down on failing campaigns or throw out the standard playbook entirely.

In this conversation, Kristen Ynclan, Sr Director of Total Rewards at JD Finish Line, breaks down a radical decision to introduce on-site puppy therapy for factory populations. We explore the transition from blue-sky brainstorming to navigating a P&L contraction, and how to sell 'crazy' ideas to a CFO by anchoring them in hard financial data. Kristen shares her framework for identifying underutilized benefits and the importance of thinking like a business person first and a benefits leader second.

What You'll Learn:

• How to use aggregated health data to identify specific stress patterns in manufacturing populations
• The blue-sky brainstorming framework for removing barriers to creative benefit design
• Strategies for pitching low-cost or free benefits to stakeholders during company contractions
• Why EAP utilization often lags behind medical claims for stress-related illnesses
• The logistical reality of partnering with charitable organizations for on-site wellness
• How to measure the ROI of novel benefits through claim reduction and qualitative feedback
• The necessity of trade-offs: when to cut underutilized benefits to fund high-impact programs

Key Quotes: — The crazier the idea, the better the data supporting it needs to be. — Benefits are supposed to take those potential stressors and help the employee manage them so they can focus on work. — It is more fun than anything in the world to start at crazy and end at success.

Kristen Ynclan is the Senior Director of Total Rewards at JD Finish Line, with extensive experience leading global compensation and benefits strategy across enterprise environments.

This episode explores total rewards strategy, employee stress management, healthcare data analytics, manufacturing workforce benefits, and the ROI of mental health interventions in an enterprise HR setting.

When healthcare renewal rates hit double digits, the instinct is often to shift the financial burden onto the workforce. Choosing to move in the opposite direction—cutting a popular carrier to lower employee contributions while maintaining identical coverage levels—requires a masterclass in data-backed advocacy and change management.

Lisseth Zouhbi, CHRO at Child Care Resource Center, joins the show to break down a high-stakes medical plan transition. She details the specific calculus used to evaluate geographic provider density and the communication strategies that prevented a potential morale crisis. This conversation moves past high-level strategy to look at the granular work of Q&A tracking, broker-led webinars, and the push-pull of internal budget approvals.

What You'll Learn:

• How to conduct a quantitative carrier analysis to ensure coverage parity
• Strategies for presenting benefits changes to the board using competitive external data
• The three-pillar framework for complex benefit plan transitions
• Using internal budget approval windows to leverage better carrier terms
• Why over-communicating through office hours reduces enrollment disruption
• Balancing employee demographics with rising healthcare market trends
• Lessons in proactive due diligence versus reactionary benefit renewals
• The role of wellness programs in driving long-term healthcare cost containment

Key Quotes: — "It was about having a plan for the employees that would actually save them money instead of increasing their benefit costs by double digits, but eliminating a carrier that was one of the most popular." — "When you present it not just in 'here is the cost,' it’s explaining beyond what is the financial impact... this is where engagement, attraction, and retaining talent are important." — "Check off the boxes, but ensure there is participation; we created different forums to make sure we created opportunities for them to ask those questions."

Lisseth Zouhbi is the Chief Human Resources Officer at CCRC, bringing over 25 years of global HR leadership experience across hospitality and the non-profit sector.

Professional benefits leaders seeking to manage escalating healthcare costs while maintaining a competitive talent edge will find this analysis of medical plan renewals, carrier consolidation, and CHRO-level decision-making essential for their upcoming open enrollment strategy.

Negotiating medical insurance renewals often feels like a defensive maneuver against double-digit increases. When the carrier proposed a significant hike despite positive claims experience, Pamela Brown saw an opportunity to do more than just lower a number — she saw a chance to fund a culture shift. By aggressively bidding the business and peeling back the onion on carrier margins, she secured a 4% cost reduction that allowed Crunch Fitness to extend benefits to their critical part-time workforce.

In this conversation, Pamela Brown, EVP of People & Culture at Crunch Fitness, breaks down the executive-level math behind switching carriers. She explains how she moved from a 14% proposed increase to a 4% absolute savings, and why she traded the pain of employee disruption for a 25% improvement in retention. We explore the tactical side of manager enablement, the strategic value of a 20-year broker partnership, and the specific way to pitch a benefits overhaul to a CEO by leading with the business outcome.

What You'll Learn:
- The specific underwriter data points used to challenge a 14% renewal increase
- How to leverage competitive bidding to secure a second-year rate cap guarantee
- The internal messaging strategy that secured executive buy-in in a single meeting
- Why lowering the full-time benefits threshold to 25 hours transformed trainer retention
- Strategic use of voluntary benefits to provide value to the entire workforce
- How to manage employee frustration during prescription and provider disruptions
- The importance of bringing your broker on-site to meet the people the plans serve
- Negotiating margin back into the portfolio to fund expanded coverage

Key Quotes:
— "The outer layer of the messages the carrier is going to give you shows you what they want you to see. We dug deeper to see that they still had margin."
— "If you really do your homework, you're also going to be more confident in that one executive leadership meeting."
— "Our retention among part-timers has improved twenty-five percent... and a lot of that difference came after we changed our benefits."

Pamela Brown serves as the EVP of People & Culture at Crunch Fitness, bringing over 20 years of HR leadership experience to the enterprise fitness space.

Learn how senior HR leaders manage medical insurance carrier transitions, negotiate broker transparency, and use benefits cost savings to drive employee retention and EBITDA in enterprise organizations.

Moving an enterprise with decades of tradition toward a modern benefits philosophy requires more than just data—it requires deep cultural conviction. Consolidating 27 competing legacy time-off plans into a single, unlimited model is a high-stakes play that most conservative industries avoid.

Kristine Karnath, Group VP of Global Total Reward at Moog, Inc., explains how she successfully navigated the internal resistance of transitioning an aerospace and defense giant to an unlimited PTO structure. Despite initial skepticism from the C-suite and manufacturing leaders, she leveraged the company’s core value of trust to replace outdated accrual systems with a recruitment-forward model. She details the critical lessons learned about implementation timelines and why the 'black and white' data of medical billing doesn't apply to the gray areas of corporate culture change.

What You'll Learn:
- The strategic process of consolidating 27 disparate legacy PTO plans into a single enterprise-wide policy.
- How to pitch radical benefits innovation to a conservative C-suite without a traditional slide deck.
- Navigating the specific challenges of implementing flexible time off within manufacturing and engineering environments.
- The 'liability side-benefit' of reducing millions in banked vacation payout obligations from the balance sheet.
- Why the timing of your benefit announcement could be creating unnecessary organizational anxiety.
- Strategies for managing high-tenure employees who view legacy benefits as a 'savings account' for retirement.
- Real-world advice on distinguishing between theoretical change management and actual behavioral shifts.
- How to use culture and trust as the primary defense for unconventional benefits decisions.

Key Quotes:
— There were teams told to consolidate everything but not take anything away and not add costs. When you have 27 plans, that is impossible to do.
— This wasn't just about a plan design. This was about actually working with people to get them to understand the concept of what we're doing.
— You don't learn that much when things go well, but you learn a ton when things don't go well.

Kristine Karnath is the Group VP of Global Total Reward at Moog, Inc., a world leader in flight control systems, where she has led benefits strategy and compensation for over two decades.

This conversation focuses on Total Rewards strategy, benefit consolidation, unlimited PTO implementation, and change management for HR leaders in aerospace, defense, and manufacturing enterprise sectors.

Summary
On this episode of Build Your Benefits, Aditi sits down with Michael Bodziner, Co-CHRO at Gensler, to explore what benefits leadership looks like when empathy drives the decision-making process. Michael shares how Gensler navigated one of the most debated benefits decisions of recent years — offering GLP-1s for weight loss — and what it took to get a cost-conscious executive committee to say yes. He also opens up about the tension between empathy and scale, and why some benefits decisions that feel like the right thing to do have to wait. In his closing remarks, he offers a simple but powerful framework for career success that cuts against the grain of today's hustle culture.

Chapters
00:00 Michael's 40-year journey from summer intern to Co-CHRO at Gensler
03:30 The co-leadership model: how two CHROs split the role without a rulebook
06:00 The GLP-1 decision: cost, culture, and a committee
10:00 What data couldn't tell them — and why gut instinct filled the gap
13:00 Seeing the transformation: when results show up in the room
16:00 Benefits communication: why you can't overcommunicate
19:00 Life-cycle based outreach and what AI could unlock next
21:30 What keeps a CHRO up at night: the one employee with a story you can't ignore
24:00 What Michael wishes more people understood about benefits work
26:30 Slow and steady: career advice from someone who's been at the same firm for 40 years

Takeaways

1. Offering GLP-1s for weight loss wasn't just a cost decision — it was a values decision, and framing it that way is what got it approved.
2. When data doesn't exist yet, common sense, empathy, and gut instinct are legitimate decision-making tools for a benefits leader.
3. The hardest part of the job isn't saying yes — it's saying "not this year" to a benefit that matters deeply to a real person with a real story.
4. Overcommunicating benefits isn't spam — people only pay attention to what feels relevant to their current life stage.
5. Relationship-building isn't soft skills advice — it is the career strategy, especially in a people-first culture.

Connect with the Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-bodziner-4236352/
Website: https://www.gensler.com/

Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Multiply Mortgage, helping employees unlock the value of homeownership. Learn more at http://www.multiplymortgage.com