Episode Description
We all know what happens with the best laid plans. Especially when those plans involve something as personal and complex as healthcare.
In this episode, Chris Fredericks sits down with Emily Bopp, Chief of Staff to the CEO at EV, and Kim Dinwiddie, VP of Human Resources at EV, to discuss the challenges of getting employees to engage with the program, the surprising feedback they received at the EO Summit, and why storytelling might be the key to making healthcare feel more personal.
They also talk about what’s next—how we can all shape a healthcare experience that works for EVers and their families.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why Healthcare for Us Matters: This initiative isn’t just about insurance—it’s about helping employee-owners understand and shape how we use healthcare and benefits.
- Lessons Learned So Far: Feedback from employee-owners has shown what’s working, what’s confusing, and most importantly, what we need to improve.
- What’s Next for the Initiative: From better communication to exploring new healthcare partners, we’re refining our approach to make an even bigger impact.
- How You Can Get Involved: Whether it’s asking more questions, using new tools, or sharing your experiences, every EVer can help shape the future of Healthcare for Us.
Jump into the conversation:
(00:00) Introduction to Emily Bopp & Kim Dinwiddie
(00:51) The challenge of making healthcare a priority for employees
(04:43) How storytelling can make healthcare more engaging
(08:55) Employee reactions at the EO Summit
(14:29) Next steps for Healthcare for Us
(21:35) A better healthcare experience for employees and their families
How to Listen or Watch
Listen below or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Watch below or @Empowered_Ventures on YouTube.
Read the full transcript below the media links.
Episode Transcript
Chris Fredericks: Welcome to Empowered Owners, the podcast that takes you inside Empowered Ventures. I’m your host, Chris Fredericks. In each episode, I’ll have a discussion with one of our employees to discover and highlight their distinct personalities, perspectives and skills, while also keeping you in the loop with exclusive news, updates on company performance, and a glimpse into the future plans of Empowered Ventures. This is an opportunity for me to learn more about our amazing employee owners and an opportunity for you to hear regularly from me and others from within Empowered Ventures.
Chris Fredericks: Hi, welcome back to another episode of Empowered Owners. I’m excited to have my fellow colleagues Emily and Kim with me again to talk about everybody’s favorite topic, which is healthcare and EVs initiative, Healthcare for Us. We did have an initial episode about Healthcare for Us last fall. And so now we decided to get back together and just do an update and talk about what’s happened since then and maybe where we see things going from here. So, yeah, I guess. Well, let’s just start with you, Kim.
Chris Fredericks: What’s happened since our last episode of On Healthcare for Us?
Kim Dinwiddie: Yeah, it was crazy. When you said last fall, I’m like, oh, it really has been a few months.
Chris Fredericks: Time flies.
Kim Dinwiddie: I think I would. I’m gonna describe it as a reality check. I feel like that’s where we are now. You know, back in the fall when we first talked about it, we definitely had a vision, still have a vision of what we think is possible and exciting to just forge ahead and see what’s possible. And I think some reality checks will have occurred of like, okay, we have a passion for this. We understand the why, but how do we get that to everyone else for them to understand the why personally as employee owners, but also just individuals and their families. Just now we are starting to get feedback of what people think about it and there’s still some quizzical looks, I’ll just say. And some of them saying, yeah, I still don’t really know what we’re doing here, but I mean, it’s still exciting and you know, so it’s not halted.
Kim Dinwiddie: It’s not okay. We’re just, this isn’t going to work. It’s not that at all. But it is. It’s just like, okay, so here is the reality. It’s not everyone else’s passion in their world. But how do we get them to get excited about it a little bit or. Okay, I’m not going to use the word excited because it’s healthcare interested. I’ll use that word instead.
Chris Fredericks: Well, I’m going to respond to that with a confession. And I haven’t confessed this yet until just now, but I’m feeling inspired. I think I’m one of those people that I think you, the two of you, Emily and Kim, are you bring the passion for this topic that I find helps me want to engage just initially here. I want to thank you both for what you’ve done to just get this going, because getting anything going is the hardest part. So, Emily, what about you? Where are you at with just how we’ve gone so far, you know, in terms of what’s happened since the launch of Healthcare for Us?
Emily Bopp: Yeah, I would echo what Kim has said. Definitely a reality check on what it takes to get a program, or I would even dare to use the word movement, what it takes to get a movement going. Because what we’re attempting to do is make a topic that most people don’t care about at all interesting enough that people will lean in to it with us in a way that will impact how we use health care and benefits. So I’ve always been very careful to delineate between the two. Health care is the actual care you receive or the care you give yourself. It’s wellness. It’s everything having to do with your actual health and your relationship with your doctor. Health benefits is how you pay for it.
Emily Bopp: And I think sometimes we confuse ourselves because we confuse the two. We think benefits is healthcare and it’s not. Insurance is a separate thing. But it’s so confusing. It’s so annoying. You know, we just had at our annual Employee Ownership Summit a conversation with our employee ownership communications committee members about Healthcare for Us. And many people said, confession what you just said, Chris, I hate health insurance. I don’t like thinking about it.
Emily Bopp: I spend literally five minutes right before open enrollment, eeny meeny miny mowing between my plan options. And I don’t want to. Why should I? And I feel like that was part of that reality check is try as we might to have given bullet points on the why this matters and why we want, need to create, not just want, why. We need to create this movement where everybody can lean in together on what’s going on inside healthcare and benefits. Those bullet points haven’t stuck. And what have they been? The bullet points have been how do we optimize our usage of our healthcare and our benefits. So getting everybody to understand that not all pharmacists, pharmacies charge the same and they could save money and they could save the plan money by going to a different pharmacy. How other service providers fall in that same bucket if you need a, an mri, for instance, or any kind of imaging.
Emily Bopp: You know, those places are known for being very disparate in terms of how much they actually charge you and how much they charge the plan. So being a good healthcare consumer and how we optimize our plan usage, that is one piece of Healthcare for Us. Another piece is understanding what’s coming down the pike and just being able to look out over the horizon and including our employee owners experiences with healthcare and benefits to help us be looking for the things that would actually be helpful for them. So, you know, those bullet points just weren’t resonating. I think for me, where we’ve come now is that we’re doggedly committed to this ongoing conversation, enterprise wide, but absent a clear, concise and compelling why that we’re doing it, we won’t get off the ground. And interestingly enough at the Summit we learned collectively from an outside expert, a very simple storytelling technique. And so I think the next really awesome opportunity for Healthcare for Us is to come up with that clear and concise story of why. And so I’m hoping we’re on a podcast episode here in the near future where we’re telling that story.
Emily Bopp: It’s kind of starting to come together in my head, but I think the story will land differently than the bullet points and that will be an exciting turning point, I think for us where what started to happen in the Summit, at the Summit was, you know, people leaning in and saying, oh, I get it. What we save as a company on our premiums actually impacts our share price or oh, I get it. You know what, How I use the plan impacts my fellow employee owners. This isn’t just about me. You know, there’s some putting our ownership hat on stuff that can happen, but for whatever reason it does it. Reality check is great, Kim. It just feels ambiguous, nebulous, kind of up until this point. But we’re in the trenches. We’re, we’re doing it, we’re getting there and I think we’re about to turn a really exciting corner.
Chris Fredericks: Honestly, that resonates. Kim, what do you think about all that and like where we go from here? I guess with regards to this initiative.
Kim Dinwiddie: When I think when Emily and I had originally started talking, like we knew we needed to evoke Some sort of feeling in people for them to really grab ahold of it and understand, oh, wow, this really does impact me and the Enterprise. And I don’t know. Yeah, this was before we talked about storytelling. Storytelling has always been a part of EV. We know that’s important for us, but without really knowing the how, or even for us really understanding how important that is, I feel like we did just jump right in. And data points, they are not going to get that, you know, fire burning in someone to be like, oh, yeah, they’re not going to get that passion from data like we do and bullet points. So I feel like that story, not only our story as to why the Healthcare for Us initiative is so important, but for each individual’s story, there are some fantastic ones that we’ve heard about that people realize, oh, this isn’t again, being done to me. I own this.
Kim Dinwiddie: I can make decisions. I can ask questions of my physician that I never even thought I could. I didn’t know I could do that. And the story of, you know what, there is a whole world out there that we don’t even know yet what that looks like. And we’re all, you know, leaning in together to figure it out. But I think that we have to just get some feelings from people. And I think telling those stories and really connecting to them is how we’re going to do that.
Chris Fredericks: That’s great. We will have another episode that’s going to recap the EO Summit that happened. So that’s going to be another fun episode that we didn’t really talk much about the healthcare conversation in particular. So I guess maybe it’d be interesting to just pause and dig in a little bit further. Like, what did you hear from the other employee owners, part of our companies, and the rest of the holding company team? When this was a topic and a discussion, just what were some of the things that you heard and how did that conversation kind of evolve over the session?
Kim Dinwiddie: Well, I think the first question, I think, Emily, wasn’t it what I asked, I asked like, what are your thoughts on everything that we’ve distributed so far? I think. And it was blank looks at first. And I was like, okay. We kind of were feeling that anyway, but it just like, okay, well, you definitely let us know that. And then I said, who has looked at it? And there weren’t very many hands. And, you know, these are folks that we talk about Healthcare for Us a lot with, I would say more than just our average employee owners. And if this group isn’t really leaning into it, we know others aren’t as well. So that was kind of a.
Kim Dinwiddie: Okay, that I think. I really do think that was, like, my first question I asked the group. So I was like, okay, let’s take a breath and reset. But again, it wasn’t like, oh, I’m so discouraged. It’s just like, okay, well, that’s not hitting the mark that we were hoping it would. So let’s figure this out together. And what would get you to start having conversations and talking about it?
Emily Bopp: Yeah, and I think that’s then when we got some honest hands raising and saying, you know, I don’t like the topic. I see an email come through, my eyes glaze over, and I barely skim it, and I move right on. So, yeah, I mean, I do think that the biggest opportunity then is to demonstrate really through this compelling story, why we’re so passionate, why we’re so committed. And then to Kim’s point, highlight our employee owner stories who are equally as passionate because there are some. They weren’t in the room at the Summit, but there are some others who’ve been a part of this focus group from the beginning, before it was ever even Healthcare for Us, who would consider themselves healthcare advocates. And so highlighting those stories so that we can start to create sort of a groundswell, you know, back to the movement idea of interest. But I would say in the room at the Summit, some of the other pieces of feedback were just a discomfort in engaging any kind of conversation with fellow employee owners around healthcare, because it’s so personal, because this is a very private topic, which very much resonated with me. And so I thought, yeah, okay, we’ve gotta be really clear about what this conversation is and what it isn’t.
Emily Bopp: There’s some privacy to be taken into consideration there. But what was interesting is that coming out of the Summit, all of the committees, when they shared their plans for the year, highlighted that amplifying Healthcare for Us messaging was a part of their annual plan. So even though the actual conversation together felt like this reality check of, whoa, we didn’t really get this ball as far down the field as we thought we might have, I think just that hour together in the room did. And now, you know, folks are trusting us. They’re leaning in. They don’t really know what they’re leaning into yet because we still haven’t gotten that clarity out. But they’re trusting us and they’re like, yeah, Evie, we’re with you now. Arm us, you know, give us what to do next, but we’re with you, and that’s really exciting.
Kim Dinwiddie: And it was almost once we got past that initial response and there was like that safe space because, I mean, even though we’re passionate about healthcare, it’s not like we love talking about the insurance piece of that the traditional way. But there were even some great ideas that people were like, hey, have you thought about this as far as just pushing, you know, little pieces of education out to folks? You know, a few weeks ago, we pushed out a pharmacy cost comparison tool. Someone today sent me a note that they used that tool and saved $70 on their prescription. I mean, that just is encouraging to know we are on the right path. But it was just that conversation in that room. The person had that tool, but they were like, well, when I was at the Summit, we talked about that again. And so I said, well, share your story with other people.
Chris Fredericks: That’s a story. Yeah. That’s fantastic. What I love about this too, and I’m sure it was for you especially Kim, when you got that conversation going. I’m sure it was like, oh boy, when there was the no response. So I’m kudos to you for just rallying and immediately continuing to lead that conversation. But it’s so cool to me how quickly it turned into a real conversation. And what strikes me about it is that it’s the in person relationships that enabled that.
Chris Fredericks: Conversations just don’t work well over emails and texts and they can kind of happen virtually, but like, nothing really beats that in person to get a real conversation going. And I guess this just for me kind of reinforces that to some degree.
Kim Dinwiddie: And the group, I mean, they, everyone knew, like there was one person specifically that spoke up and just said, I just don’t like this. Like, I don’t even like doing my own open enrollment. And you could just see there were groups of people that leaned in like, okay, we’re not alone. I’m not on an island here. You’re right, though. I mean, the body language even at the beginning of that conversation was very like, almost like, all right, I’m preparing myself for this. It’s not going to be fun, but we have like one hour. We can get through it.
Kim Dinwiddie: But by the end, it was very relaxed and casual and it just, it was a very positive conversation at that point.
Chris Fredericks: That’s great. So where do we, where do we go from here? I mean, I think that to me, I’m feeling really encouraged. That conversation really did in hindsight end up seeming like it was probably something that moved us forward in a meaningful way and re energized got some momentum going. So since then, the last couple weeks, like, what are you thinking about? Takeaways and really action items going forward that you’re thinking about or they are already planned.
Emily Bopp: Yeah, well, there’s really three. The first one is back to the storytelling. I mean, creating that very short, very concise, very compelling why story from sort of a macro perspective, why it’s important to empower adventures as a collective of businesses, and then soliciting and amplifying, sort of refining individual stories that sort of fold in under that or reinforce that and getting those out. I think that’s step one. Step two would be sort of what I’m calling communication infrastructure. So that’s both systems. You know, as people inside EV know, we don’t share systems. We don’t centralize our IT here among the companies.
Emily Bopp: So it’s always been sort of a conundrum of how to bridge that gap. But whether we’re talking about how we’re knitting together our systems enough to be able to have the shared communication and then what and when and where and how and with who, all of those communication pieces are happening. You know, making sure that we are just in lockstep with our company leadership, with their finances teams, with their HR teams, with any other folks inside the companies who’ve raised their hands and said that they want to be in Healthcare for Us, advocate that sort of larger group. You know, how we’re engaging them in a very regular cadence and the very small tidbits that we’re arming them with to be able to then echo into their companies on our behalf. When I say communication infrastructure, it’s that kind of thing. And then the third thing is just this, this project that we’ve had going sort of in the background around evaluating who is our best partner in this whole thing going forward. In terms of a broker advisor, this is sort of the wild west out there, because healthcare is so ripe for disruption, and we’re aware of that. And so it would be unwise for us not to evaluate what all has emerged even in the last couple of years in terms of consultant or advisor or broker capability, and then really determine who is best aligned strategically with us and is there cause for us to, you know, make a change there.
Emily Bopp: So really it’s those three things. It’s the compelling story around why it’s our communication infrastructure, and then it’s this evaluating who our partner may be going forward to help us continue to make the decisions that are best for evidence.
Kim Dinwiddie: And I’d also say on the flip side of that actually, in addition to that. So Emily and I come at the benefit piece from two totally different experiences as far as in our professional careers. And so we are really leaning in and I would say educating ourselves on the other’s view or the other’s history, where they have been. So, you know, that way we know. And Emily and I kind of laugh, you know, and I always say this because I’m, you know, again, HR traditional benefit insurance world. And so I told Emily, I’m like, yep, we’ll learn about this and I’m gonna tell you if you’re crazy or not.
Chris Fredericks: And she’ll do the same to you too, I’m sure.
Kim Dinwiddie: But it’s true. Like it’s just so it’s just out of that box thinking it’s not that traditional approach. And so I think for us having all of the information that we can just to know what questions to ask because we’re never gonna be the experts in healthcare, but who can we partner with and you know, what lens should we be looking at to ask the right questions?
Chris Fredericks: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because a lot of companies are, because this has grown for decades as just an issue and a challenge for people and for businesses. There seems to be a lot of action now that wasn’t there in the last maybe 10 years ago. Just people trying a lot of different things. And that’s exciting. There’s innovation happening constantly, it seems like. But it’s also hard to wrap your arms around all that and like really know. Especially maybe in our situation where we’ve got such a dispersed group of people, people all over the country. And I appreciate how careful we’re being to make sure we are exploring what’s possible for our people and how to help, you know, maybe find innovative ways we could, you know, make a difference.
Chris Fredericks: But also being careful not to try something that could be too far. You know, maybe it’s not quite ready for us yet or there’s a lot of great stuff happening that maybe in 20 years is going to change everything, but maybe it’s not quite ready yet for us. So I love that we’re open-minded about all that right now and we’re not just saying no, that’s not for us. And we’re also not saying we’ll try anything, you know, and just like willy nilly trying stuff. So I really like how we’re kind of saying, yeah, we’re going to try, but we’re going to embrace what’s possible but be pragmatic about it.
Chris Fredericks: Does that resonate for you both in terms of how we’re left brain, right brain, approaching this topic?
Emily Bopp: Absolutely, yeah. Kim and I were talking this morning and I shared with her an analogy of a story when my now 20 year old was about 6 or 7. I was homeschooling both of my boys at the time and we were talking about Columbus and how he decided discovered, you know, this whole new continent by trying to sail around to the other side of his own land mass and not realizing that there was so much more to the world and how he, he was so distraught, literally sitting next to me on the couch crying because everything had already been discovered and he was so sad that there wasn’t anything left to discover. And I just thought, how sweet. First of all, a little insight into this little human who’s going to be, you know, on a mission to discover things his whole life. And then also chuckling to myself like, oh child, there’s plenty left to discover. It might not be land masses, but there’s plenty less to discover. Anyways, Kim and I were talking about it.
Emily Bopp: This is like that 90% of companies and individuals are content to be on their landmass, which has been the status quo. But there is a whole world out there emerging and in fact we will have to engage it. And I feel like we’re just right at the the cusp of pushing out to sea. And so much of what HealthC care for us is unknown. We’re literally building a boat together that we’ve never built before, charting a path that we’ve never been on before and that nobody has. There’s no playbook for this. We can’t go read books about it. This is all new and that’s why it feels so hard.
Emily Bopp: But yes, Chris, to your point, it totally resonates that in that journey, we don’t want to set sail on a boat that’s half built in sync. We don’t want to jump onto things that are half baked. Also, we don’t want to just stay landlocked and shrug our shoulders and be like, well, you know, 15 years from now, I guess when we’re forced into the new thing, you know, we’ll do it then and miss out on the opportunity to benefit in the interim.
Kim Dinwiddie: And we also said this isn’t something that just Kim and Emily can do either. We can’t sell that ship, just the two of us. We need everyone again to lean in and do that. And I think with our benefit philosophy, whenever we talked about it, the North Star is people-first, always. And I feel like through our whole venture throughout this initiative, whether it’s okay communicating to employee owners or whether it’s, you know, with our brokers, advisors, that is always in our mind. And that’s really our focus is people-first, always. And that means their families also, you know, but it also is the spend of the healthcare and the benefits and. But it’s the person, their experience also.
Kim Dinwiddie: And I think when we have that lens and, you know, we’re willing to take the adventure and see where it goes, we’re going to land somewhere. We don’t know what is the perfect spot out there for us, but we will land somewhere. I do have confidence in that.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. And I love what you’re. The somewhere is a health care experience, a health and wellness and health care benefit experience that’s good for people, good for our empowered ventures, employee owners and their families. That’s what health care for us really means. I think so. That resonates a lot with me. This has been awesome. Kim, what would you say at this point we’re asking of people? I think we’re feeling that we’ve got direction, we’ve got still got energy, we’ve got commitment to this initiative for the long term.
Chris Fredericks: What are we asking of them now?
Kim Dinwiddie: Yeah, I think now we just want them to not be afraid anymore and understand the importance of it. And we’re not saying this has to be, you know, 60% of your life, 20% just, you know, if something is sent out, read it. If you hear someone talking about it, ask questions. And it’s just more about starting the conversation. I would say at this point and before, it was definitely a subject, like, I just don’t wanna talk about it. I, you know, I just ignore it. I’ll. I’ll think about it in open enrollment time in the fall, but just be open to it now and, you know, maybe just be inquisitive. Yeah.
Chris Fredericks: Be curious. Maybe we’re just trying to inspire a little bit more curiosity for me. People like me who haven’t been curious up until this point. Yeah. And I think this is doing that. So it feels to me like we’re definitely making progress at engaging people in that way. Anything less to add for either of you to wrap this up?
Emily Bopp: No, it’s been a fantastic conversation. Thanks for hosting us.
Chris Fredericks: Great. Well, thank you both. Appreciate it. Hopefully this was helpful to everyone to feel like they understand where we’re going with this initiative and that we’re still really excited about it. So thank you both for coming on Empowered Owners.
Emily Bopp: Thank you.
Chris Fredericks: I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Kim and Emily. Empowered Owners is a podcast by and for the employee owners of Empowered Ventures. Special thanks to share your genius for producing. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website at empowered.ventures. Full episodes are on YouTube @Empowered_Ventures. If you have a question for us about EV, our companies or employee ownership, contact us at [email protected]. You can also text or leave a voicemail at 317-643-2383.
