Continuing our series of profiles with Health & Protection Awards 2022 winners, Towergate Health & Protection principal health and wellbeing consultant Paul Bridges explains how employers are taking a wider look at their health and wellbeing benefits for staff.
Bridges also reveals how a fresh perspective and addressing legacy issues helped him win the Best Health Insurance Adviser title.
Employers are increasingly looking at whole of workforce cash plans as a means of supporting staff wellbeing and getting more bang for their buck, according to Paul Bridges, principal health and wellbeing consultant at Towergate Health & Protection (pictured).
Bridges told Health & Protection how just such an employer was instrumental to winning the Best Healthcare Adviser Award at the Health & Protection Awards last October.
Reflecting on the night Bridges said he was delighted to have won the award and had received an overwhelming response from colleagues.
“It was nice to be shortlisted and then to actually win the award was great,” Bridges told Health & Protection.
“I’ve been around for a long time – I’m a bit of a veteran – so it was nice to hear from so many people who I’ve known for a long time. They seemed pleased for me and it was a really good night, but I didn’t enjoy the hangover the next morning too much.”
Harmony in benefits
Elaborating on why he was recognised, Bridges pointed to “pretty good” results over the year in question as well as a strong case study.
“It was a manufacturing organisation that had been reducing their benefits for some time to manage costs but not really managing claims at all,” he said.
“They hadn’t really been getting a great broking outcome and we just came in with a different approach.
“We were able to harmoinse benefits, create some savings and were then able to introduce a cash plan, off the back of which enabled them to offer wellbeing budgets to the whole workforce.
“We reviewed their benefits more effectively and looked to change the benefit structure to get rid of the legacy issues that they had and the legacy costs they had experienced.
“That enabled them to really widen their wellbeing solution to their whole workforce which was really well received by staff.”
This widening of solutions will likely be a main focus looking ahead to the rest of the year and his award has helped get client attention, Bridges revealed.
“I’m looking to develop the current clients that I’ve got, offering wider solutions to them, maybe increasing penetration of different products to those existing clients. There’s definitely been some interest since the awards.
“We’ve launched our employee engagement portal. There’s definitely been some interest in that – again, businesses looking to ensure their communication is as good as it can be to their employees and that their benefits are being maximised.”
Brokers supporting business and employees
Bridges added all of this underlines the importance of a good adviser as wider benefits propostions become more relevant.
“Companies are looking at the proposition that you can offer and extending it to be as wide as possible,” he said.
“I think there will be a continued focus on financial wellbeing and businesses – looking to support their employees as best they can.
“Everybody is aware of the challenges that all individuals within businesses are experiencing at the moment, challenges in attracting and retaining staff, challenges to being remunerated as well as possible.
“And advisers have a role to play in that, in supporting businesses in making sure they are getting the best possible value for their employee benefits and collectively we’re doing the best that we can for employees across the UK.”