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You know what a great benefits program feels like. You also know how hard it is to build one — and how rarely anyone talks honestly about what that actually takes.
Build Your Benefits is the show that fills that gap.
Each episode goes deep inside the thinking of a senior benefits leader at a major enterprise.
How they build their portfolio. How they manage escalating costs. How they drive utilization and measure ROI in a way that holds up in a CFO meeting.
No topic lists. No trend roundups.
One leader, one conversation, thirty minutes.
Brought to you by Multiply Mortgage. New episodes every week.
Aditi Shankar (00:02.819)
Thank you so much for joining us today, Pam. and folks who are just joining today's podcast of Build Your Benefits. today we have an awesome guest, Pam Brown, who is the EVP and head of people and culture at Crunch Fitness. Super excited to have Pam on today's podcast to kind of walk through both her background.
as well as a specific benefits decision and kind of the cost and benefits behind that benefits decision. so Pam, before we jump into you know that specific decision, would love for you to just quickly kind of talk about your background and what brought you to this specific role today.
Pamela J. Brown (00:49.062)
Absolutely, absolutely. So as as you said, I'm the EVP and head of people and culture at Crunch Fitness. we have been in a serious growth mode in the past few years. And last year we made one of the harder calls of my tenure and we changed carriers for our medical insurance. And nobody thanks you for changing benefits carriers.
So here's why, and I will have be happy to share my story for anybody staring the same decision down.
Aditi Shankar (01:24.239)
Awesome. No, thanks, Pam. so kind of to set the scene, you know, as that kind of decision came to you, what was going on in the business when it actually landed on your desk?
Pamela J. Brown (01:36.876)
Absolutely. So as I said, we're in serious growth mode and we nobody ever wants to spend more money on medical insurance. So when I got to Crunch, we were able to make a difference in with by negotiating with our carrier using our new broker, and we were able to get our costs down. Year two, the carrier wanted to make up some of that money and and lift our costs.
So we did a competitive bidding process, and we were able to get the carrier down from 14% to plus 5%, but we had very good experience, and we had other carriers that wanted our business. So the trigger was that the old carrier couldn't give us vote the great deal that it gave us the year before, and we hadn't entered competitive bidding in some time.
And we also had something that we really wanted to do for our part-time community. So the part-timers don't get the same opportunities as the full-timers. And we have a lot of personal trainers that start off as part-time until they can build to full-time. So we also had a desire to instead of counting full-time as 30 hours or 35 or 40, like most companies do, we really wanted to count from 25 hours, 1300 hours a year.
Aditi Shankar (03:03.589)
Got it. Yeah, no, I I love that I love that the the cost or potential cost savings from you know changing our carrier was sort of the impetus for also expanding benefits to folks who had, you know, not necessarily not necessarily received the same amount of benefits prior. So I I kind of like that that was sort of the impetus behind it. I'm curious when you you mentioned kind of the 14% to plus five percent, right? you know, those are when we think about these sorts of decisions, data really goes into it.
What did the numbers tell you and what did they leave out? Were there any kind of qualitative forces behind some of these decisions that you were about to make?
Pamela J. Brown (03:41.57)
So the outer layer of the messages the carrier is gonna give you shows you what they want you to see. So we dug deeper with our broker and kind of peeled back the onion to see that they still had margin and fourteen percent was h on the high side and we didn't agree with those numbers. Our underwriters did not agree with their underwriters' numbers.
And when we let them know we were going to go to competitive bidding, they said we will give you plus five instead of plus fourteen if you lock in right now. And for me, I felt like we could do better in the competitive market. it it is hard on employees and you don't want to do that too many years in a row. But the benefit felt like if we can cover our part-time employees.
And have more people covered by our benefits, it's there's going to be a retention benefit and a culture benefit from doing that. So I had the support of our executive leadership team to go ahead and look. And what really tipped it for us was the idea of covering our trainers. So if there was any kind of cost savings, then we would be able to cover our part-timers.
Aditi Shankar (04:59.035)
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. You mentioned retention benefit and culture benefit. how do you quantify those?
Pamela J. Brown (05:06.968)
So we have in the three years that I've been here, our retention among part timers has improved twenty five percent.
Aditi Shankar (05:14.736)
Wow.
Pamela J. Brown (05:16.568)
So that's something that's easily measurable and it it's definitely making a difference and a lot of that difference came after we changed our benefits. So I'm giving you the the three year improvement, but a lot of it happened in that last year.
Aditi Shankar (05:26.757)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Aditi Shankar (05:32.003)
You usually when I ask that question, people don't have a an exact number or exact metric to back it up. And I love that yours was so simple and easy. Actually, retention improved 25% in this time frame. So I I love to hear it. I love there's an exact metric behind it. I I guess just kind of going back to the the you know decision calculus, could you maybe walk through like the negotiation process that you went through?
You you mentioned obviously you leveraged your your broker. Are there any other teams across the company that you worked with? how did you go about, you know, getting buying for the decision?
Pamela J. Brown (06:07.022)
So I spoke with our CEO, president, CFO, the different constituents on the executive leadership team, and I walked the president through the idea of what it would do for our culture and for retention to cover our personal trainers. And as I walked through the story, the end of the story was once we improve retention, that will also help us improve member experience.
And it will help us improve our EBITDA. And so he he and I agreed that I should lead with the financial benefit to the company. And then there's also the benefit to the people. So I got to balance both of those things. So really win-win for everyone. We ended up instead of going plus five, we did change carriers. And that is painful for some people. with that, so you don't want to disrupt the benefits every single year.
Aditi Shankar (06:39.205)
Mm-hmm.
Pamela J. Brown (07:05.922)
But that year we ended up saving four percent cost on our benefits, which paid for us to cover more employees. And which yes, exactly. Wow is is is the right term. And I brought my broker who has been my broker for over twenty years. She was I was the head of
I was the chief people officer many moons ago for a different company and she was my broker there. And then I was at a larger company in the middle of the organization. And when I came back to being the head of people and culture, I knew I had to bring her in because she's an expert. So you don't just want a broker, you want to make sure you've surrounded yourself with really smart experts that have access to underwriters that know how to peel those numbers back because there's margin that's hidden in the numbers.
and for the for the carrier. So the other carrier basically agreed to match our plan design. So it was the disruption was as little as possible for people. And they also agreed to give us a rate cap guarantee in our second year so that our second year with that carrier would be predictable.
Aditi Shankar (08:23.215)
Wow. seems like it was a lot of strong teamwork between yourself, your broker, and as well as internally to be able to position it correctly. and I think that
Pamela J. Brown (08:31.66)
And internally, the coaching I got from our president, who who's now our CEO, about leading with the business, like leading with the piece of crunch that I want to own would be the way to present it to the executive leadership team. It was one conversation. So we Yeah, so to my delight, it was one conversation because I led with the business the business reasons for the decision and then the
Aditi Shankar (08:50.191)
That it sorry, go ahead. No, no no.
Pamela J. Brown (09:01.07)
positive impact that it would have on our team. All of us individually understood that it's going to be a disruption. And with that, sometimes you have to change doctors or you have to get medicines re pre-approved. but there was enough good news in the story that everybody on the call agreed that we should do this. And then I would say then there's sequencing for manager enablement and
Education and talking with your employees. And one thing that I did that I think is important to mention is I brought that broker again, she's so much more than a broker, she's really our expert and like an extension of our team. I brought her to one of our gyms and I introduced her to a bunch of the part-time employees, and I explained to her that these are the people that we're taking care of.
So before we went through the whole process, she already knew and met with the people that were gonna benefit from this improvement.
Aditi Shankar (10:05.275)
Mm-hmm.
Aditi Shankar (10:08.941)
Yeah, no, I think like bringing it back down to earth and and
You know, especially showing a broker advisor or really anyone like what the real impact of these decisions are incredibly important. what I was saying earlier was I think it's also incr really in impressive that you only had one leadership call around around this pretty significant change. I'm sure many folks in your shoes would be shocked by that. So I I mean, hats off to you and hats off to the folks giving you that that internal advice as well.
I'm curious, and you mentioned kind of like sequencing, manager enablement. you know, obviously you try to minimize the disruption, but you there is a disruption for certain folks who do have certain medical plans, certain doctors. how do you best handle that disruption via manager enablement, via comms? what what is your what is your advice from that like implementation standpoint?
Pamela J. Brown (11:02.872)
So, my advice for any chief people officers or total rewards leaders would be to lead with empathy and a lot of educ first start with a lot of education. So we had for the people with 1300 hours a year or more, which are now considered our full-time, even if it's 25 hours a week, we had five different options for virtual open enrollment education.
For people that are less than 25 hours a week and getting other benefits but not the full suite. We also had the voluntary benefits calls, and we had five of those. And so it's education, education, education, making sure people understand what we have. Then it's also educating on the extra benefits. So one of them that we have is Perk Spot, for example. And that offers lots of different kinds of discounts.
So educating on educating for everyone with everyone in mind, whether they're covered by our medical or not. And then it's also leading with empathy. So there are going to be people that are frustrated because they have to get their prescriptions reapproved. We had a lot of people with the GLP ones that had to get their prescriptions reapproved, and it was more challenging. But the truth of the matter is, even if we had stayed with the same
Carrier, they would have had the same challenges because all of the carriers were changing their protocols. Exactly. So it's being it's being educated yourself as a total rewards leader so that you can also help people understand that yes, this is disruption, there might have been disruption anyway, but also then just helping them through it.
Aditi Shankar (12:33.573)
Policies. Mm-hmm.
Aditi Shankar (12:50.619)
Got it. Yeah, I I think that makes a lot of sense. I know we've been talking about you know, the specific decision around medical, but you brought up voluntary benefits. I'm just curious, how do you think about you know education and enablement around something like medical, dental versus a versus voluntary benefits?
Pamela J. Brown (13:11.182)
So I so we have, as I said, a large part-time population. So I think the voluntary benefits play an incredibly important role. So we have my to I'm smiling because my total rewards and payroll team will try to hold me back a little bit from adding voluntary benefits sometimes because it's a lot of work for the payroll team, but it's well worth it when there's something in our package for everyone.
Aditi Shankar (13:15.52)
huh.
Aditi Shankar (13:39.277)
No, I missed go ahead.
Pamela J. Brown (13:39.582)
And for employ for employees of Crunch Fitness, we also have our gym memberships. But companies can which is an amazing voluntary benefit that all of us get, but companies can also be really creative with their benefits and look for discounts. So obviously fitness is part of my world. They can look for discounts for fitness and they can look for partners that can offer discounts di different
Clothing stores might be willing to partner. Many years ago, Elizabeth Arden had a company store that you could partner with so that there's kind of something for everyone, and it doesn't necessarily have to cost the company a ton of money. So I think HR and Total Rewards leaders can be the hero, bringing fitness to their companies by partnering directly with gyms or companies like Perkspot.
Aditi Shankar (14:34.009)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. looking back on the the the medical decision specifically, you know, what would you have done differently? and what would you have done exactly the same? From my perspective, it sounds like it went swimmingly well, but I'm I'm just curious if there's anything that you've done you would have done differently.
Pamela J. Brown (14:54.158)
So I I this time I can't say that I would have done anything differently. I think it did go swimmingly well. I my family was one of the families that had to change to get a few prescriptions through our through our new carrier. And I would say that having the right broker partner is critical. You want somebody that has advocates that can help your team members.
Aditi Shankar (15:10.682)
Yeah.
Pamela J. Brown (15:22.795)
And ultimately it was maybe a week of being hard and then it was smooth sailing from there. You just don't want to do that disruption every year.
Aditi Shankar (15:33.615)
Yeah.
Pamela J. Brown (15:34.476)
And the rate cap guarantee. So so if I hadn't had the rate cap guarantee, I would say I wish I would have asked for that, but luckily we had.
Aditi Shankar (15:44.952)
makes a lot of sense. you know, we have some listeners who, you know, who join in who aren't necessarily in benefits or not necessarily in total rewards or in the people space. you know, what's something about your work or this work specifically that you wish more people outside of benefits understood?
Pamela J. Brown (16:05.454)
Absolutely. So in my first run as a chief people officer, I didn't know a lot about benefits. And now I'm 20 plus years into HR leadership. And I think that what I what I would like to tell my younger self, if I could, is that the negotiation of benefits is a direct impact to the business, a direct impact to EBITDA, and it's a direct impact to the people.
on your teams. So if our jobs is to balance the company's interests, the people's interests and the profit profitability, it's such an important lever.
Aditi Shankar (16:43.727)
Yeah. I I really like the way that you segmented that, like people, profitability, and company. And I think the decision calculus that you walked through earlier actually perfectly fits into that, right? Because you were targeting retention, you were targeting EBITDA and you were targeting you know, cost and then the best possible culture for your people. So it all it all kind of comes together in a in a really beautiful way. So I I think really, really special to walk through this in this way. yeah, go ahead.
Pamela J. Brown (17:10.136)
I would I would also add that I would also add that I've learned that so we've already talked about the importance of having the right partners. And that's also internally. So finding if you have if you're lucky enough to have a communications team internally or potentially a marketing team that's willing to help you with internal marketing. And so building the partnerships, not just with your outside.
experts because I have wonderful outside experts. It's also building the partnerships with your internal experts. And then I think another thing that helps with education of your team members is finding the people who have influence within the company to tell their friends and tell other people and if you see something you like, we want to hear about it and and promote those benefits.
Aditi Shankar (18:00.261)
That that sounds sounds very smart and I like the the finding those stakeholders who hold who hold value across the company regardless of why, maybe they've been there for a long time, whatever it might be. I think I think it rings true to any type of company that anyone might be at. final question. you know, you you mentioned you've had a storied career, you're you're 20 years into this job, into these various roles.
What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were three years into this job?
Pamela J. Brown (18:35.938)
I think that
Pamela J. Brown (18:40.696)
That's a great question. So I think advice that I would tell myself three years into the job is to
Pamela J. Brown (18:53.102)
Come prepared. So, and now it's easier than ever to do research, although if you're using AI, you have to also make sure that you're looking out for hallucinations and false information. but come prepared. Whatever you're doing, come prepared. And so I have my broker who's more of an expert and a coach and the whole the whole three sixty degrees. That said,
I'm in the HR community and I know a lot of brokers and I check the information that I have. So even if you have your experts, find other experts and build those relationships. Because sometimes I've gone to my I've gone to other people that have that expertise and it gives me good questions to bring back. And then I would if I went to that executive leadership team meeting, that was the one meeting.
very prepared and that's why it was one meeting. I was prepared for all of the objections, potentially. There weren't there weren't as many as I had anticipated. So if you really do your homework, you're also gonna be more confident.
Aditi Shankar (20:03.353)
I think it's excellent advice. I I I think people are so focused on objection handling when it comes to sales. but we often forget that, you know, much of management and much of leadership.
Is objection handling and preparing for what questions might come. So it's something that I tell my team quite often, and it's it's music to my ears that you're saying it in this context as well. Well, thank you so much, Pam. I really appreciate your time today. I love how specific we were able to get on this specific decision, as well as some of the advice pieces, as I just mentioned. It's been it's been lovely to chat with you and learn more about your story and also learn more about your thought processes behind these pretty significant, you know, life-changing decisions for so many folks at
Your company.
Pamela J. Brown (20:47.288)
Thank you.
Aditi Shankar (20:48.412)
Awesome. Thank you.