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Welcome, welcome, welcome to The Work-Life Equation. This is where we explore strategies for balancing career success and personal well-being. I'm Priya.

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And I'm Paul. Today we're thrilled to welcome Cindy Silva, who has over 20 years of experience in human resources and has played a pivotal role in shaping benefit programs that support employees at all stages of life.

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From family solutions to financial wellness program, Cindy has really helped implement a wide variety of benefits that not only support employee well-being, but also drive business success.

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In this episode, we'll discuss how benefits can truly make a difference in employee’s lives, Cindy's own career journey and what companies should focus on to remain top employers. Cindy, welcome to the show.

00:00:52
Thanks for having me.

00:00:53
You've had an incredible career in HR and benefits. Can you share a bit about your own journey and also talk about, you know, the focus that you've, that you've put on employee benefits?

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Of course, yeah. Thank you. I started with Fidelity right out of college, so about eight days after graduation. And I was supporting their not-for-profit retirement clients and then had the opportunity to move into Fidelity's benefits department where I stayed for about 20 years. And so while I was there, I did retirement plans communications was part of the implementation of the high-deductible health plan. When those became available, I was part of the team that designed, developed and implemented the student loan repayment benefit and then did financial, all the financial benefits. So retirement, disability insurance, life insurance, HSA, FSA, you name it, I did it. Soup to nuts. And then I spent a stint at Fidelity in the associate experience group which I was responsible for the employee engagement survey, rewards and recognition. And then after 28 and a half years, I made the leap over to State Street where I headed up their global benefits department and did a lot of work in, you know, kind of all those same spots, health and welfare, retirement insurance. So yeah, to say I grew up in benefits, it's kind of like the story of me.

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And at State Street you offer a wide variety of benefits from, you know, family solutions and financial, wellness and education programs. What leads a company to invest in this space and in a diverse range of benefits?

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I think, you know, every company in this day and age, we have so many different generations in the workforce that if you are kind of staying static and just going with the table stakes of a health plan, a retirement plan, some of the insurances, you're really going to lose, you're going to lose your audience. Because younger employees are looking for one thing, older employees are looking for something different. You really have to have a wide, diverse offering, but you also have to keep moving with the market and make sure that as things evolve, you're in tune with it and meeting people where they are.

00:03:06
Cindy I think most people understand the benefit of a 401 plan of saving for that. But when you're talking about some really, you know, robust and interesting benefits that you've been able to, to implement, what's the impact that you've seen, you can talk about on employees both, you know, personally and professionally to some of these, these other benefits that you've helped implement?

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Yeah, I mean, something like a student loan repayment benefit. We rolled that out in 2015 back at Fidelity and it still hits the news today, 10 years later. And you know, we had employees coming to us saying, I'm going to be able to afford a because I have this. We had other employees saying, wow, I wish this was in place when I was, you know, when I had my own student loans. But I work for a company that offers this. This is so incredible. They were now able to attract employees that never would have ever thought about financial services but for the fact that they had this benefit. They're like, well, I guess I'll think about that. So it really created a different, more diverse group of employees and, or candidates. And it made people feel good about the, that they were with. And I think that's a lot of it too, is when you take care of your employees, they're going to take care of you. So whether it's something like backup daycare or, you know, even now more so backup elder care, you know, it's just so important to be able to be there and help employees focus on what they're doing for you at work because they don't have to worry about the other stuff because it's taken care of.

00:04:41
And I always say, like, you have to be personally anchored to be professionally successful. So, you know, a lot of these benefits go a long way in helping people be anchored at home. Right. So. But you talk a lot about flexibility when and the importance of flexibility for employees. How do you suggest companies approach that and how do they think about work life balance in general, especially for caregivers?

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I mean, having been a caregiver over this last year, I have a new appreciation. I was a working mom. My boys are 22 and 24 now. But like, I think about those days and wonder, oh my goodness gracious, how did I get through it? And then I think about the benefits and there were so many different things from short term disability. So that I could stay home, you know, after I delivered to having backup childcare. I had the benefit back in 2001 of being probably one of the first people who had a full-time flexible work arrangement. So I worked at home on Tuesdays. I didn't work on Fridays. I condensed my week into the remaining four days. To be clear, I worked probably every Friday. But it didn't matter because I felt very good and very taken care of that I was more than happy to log in and do whatever. And I think that that's the most important part is, you know, what an employer just needs to be like, what can I do? And how can I support my employees? And if you're in the retail environment, sure, there's really probably not a lot of opportunity for your store workers to work from home. But can you get funky? Can you get creative? Could you say, like, let's do four tens. Will that work for you? You know, I think there's just all these different chances and opportunities that may not even cost anything. It's just getting creative and really listening to your employees and understanding what they are looking for and meeting them there.

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Here's a question that's going to go to the uncreative side and that's measuring the return on investment. If you're a company like Fidelity or State Street, you can say, okay, our assets went from X to Y or our savings in the 401 plans went from one to. We understand that. But when you're talking about these other more robust benefits, two-part question, really. How should companies look to go about assessing how effective these programs are? And then how should they also look at the direct benefits that these resources bring to their employee base?

00:07:04
Yeah. So I'll start this out by saying I'm sort of the naysayer when it comes to all the fancy ROIs, because, yeah, in some cases, you're absolutely right. There are hard dollars, there's hard number. You can trace it and track it. And other times it's really about the feeling that you as an employer and when you start to hear from employees, so, you know, I, as, as any company, you know, they would come and say, hey, we need to save some money. What's this $20,000 adoption benefit? And I'm like, for the 10 people who use it a year, we're not talking huge dollars, but what a huge difference in someone's life we made. So like, quite frankly, is there an ROI for that? I don't know. I mean, did they stay? Maybe. Would they have left without it? I doubt it. So Some of those, there isn't a hard cost, but it's really, or hard, you know, hard return. But for the people that you made a difference in their lives, you can tell and you know, for their work circles, you know that, that they're all picking it up and saying, wow, this is something that's really important. Now. There are other things out there that, you know, you can absolutely measure and that's important to be able to show that something has a value. But sometimes when it's just, you know, a value to employees, it's not measurable. And that can be okay too.

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That's such an interesting perspective in terms. Of, you know, finance might not agree with me, but that's, that's my perspective But that is always a tug in a tussle, right? It is about how you make people feel in general. See, you're very passionate about financial literacy and helping employees achieve their financial goals and enabling them to understand them. How do companies integrate financial wellness into the benefits offering and into personal well-being?

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Yeah, I think that there's so many opportunities and I don't think we've really gotten to the full crux of the opportunities that exist. It's funny being at a company like Fidelity, it's financial services, even State Street. And so I used to go to different conferences and my colleagues would say to me, wow, it must be so easy for you. Everybody knows everything about investing. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We have technologists, we have accountants, like to sort of overtly say, like, oh, it's, you know, people in financial services know what they're doing. They don't. Let's, let's be clear. And so it's really important to make sure that we're meeting everybody where they are. Like, we might have a technologist who's amazing at personal finance, just the same way you might have a fund manager who's not. They can rock the picking and choosing of different companies, but when it comes to, you know, their own personal finances, they may not be that great. So it's really being able to create a foundation and set a foundation for people so that they can kind of go and say like, yeah, I don't, I don't know this and making it be okay. The other thing that I think is so incredibly important, particularly in the US is having health care, financial literacy, because that's a whole different vernacular. When you start to get into what's a copay versus a co insurance, how does it impact my deductible? You know, even if you're great at personal finance. Healthcare is just an absolutely different animal. And the more that we can do to help meet people. I know I keep saying the meeting people where they are, but one of my favorite little “Cindy-isms” is it doesn't matter until it matters. So you can tell somebody all day long what a deductible is, but until they're in the midst of medical expenses and having to pay things out of pocket, it doesn't matter. But now here they are and they need to have known, like, wait, I think I heard about that and where can I go to get that information? And it's setting that kind of foundation where they know that they can be supported.

00:10:43
That one there really hit home. Cindy. I've got three daughters and this is the first one who has to have braces put on. I'm not saying she's not going to be the favorite because she's getting the braces on, but the others have missed them so far. Question here. That's kind of both Macro and Microsoft. When you look at the benefits landscape, not just at State street, but among your peers in this space on the macro end, what are some of the offerings that you see? Not just State Street, but colleagues of yours looking to offer more? Then on the micro side, what are the expectations that employees have now, particularly the five years since COVID I guess the third part of that question is how do those two, you know, come together?

00:11:30
I think I'll start with the middle question, which is everybody expects healthcare, retirement, the insurances, what's sometimes interesting. And it kind of goes back to that, you know, basic financial literacy is how many young people would come up to me and say, can I opt out of that short term disability thing because I don't really need it. And I'm like, okay, first off, for the $67 a month that we're paying for you to have it, let's not worry about it. And second off, like, you just don't know what could happen. And let me explain, and who's going to pay for your student loans and your apartment, maybe a car payment and you know, so having that, that stuff has to happen. Then you start to get into like, what are the things that are either going to help attract talent to your company or what are the things that are going to help keep them there. And you never want to have such a great benefits package that people aren't leaving because of it, that they sort of feel trapped because then that's not a good outcome either. But you want to be able to have this Almost the surprise and delight. What are those things that for the population of people that you're either trying to attract or to retain, what, what's of interest? So if you're really looking at right out of college, new to the employment space, and you're in a highly educated industry, something in the student loan space is probably a great idea. If you have an older population that, you know, might be in the sandwich generation or may have kids who have, you know, flown the coop and they're sort of in that what's next? Like, maybe they need more robust caregiving or maybe dog walking, you know, so it's kind of the. Know your audience and understand where, where you can make the impact. And sometimes it's not a lot of money to have these, some of these benefits where, like, I can't scream enough about legal services. I'm passionate about it. I think everyone should have, if you have it in your company, elect it. Because for the low, low price of like 300 a year, you can get your estate plan done. You can have real estate documents reviewed. I cannot tell you how many tickets the Silva brothers needed negotiated on their behalf. One in Missouri, one in New York. So, you know, there, there are these things that, you know, not super expensive, doesn't cost the company a dime. And yet once I've started to talk to people, they're like, I cannot believe how much that saved me this year. It's pretty good.

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And it's interesting because you don't really know how to get through all the benefits that an organization offers. But I'll shift to two macro trends that certainly have impacted how both employees and employers view benefits. One was Covid, and I think it normalized the whole conversation around just the caregiver equation that people have and work and life blended in a way that we hadn't seen before. The second is multiple generations. You sort of alluded to that in a previous conversation. So when you're thinking about employee well being, what kind of advice would you give to organizations as they're navigating these macro trends and changing employee expectations in general?

00:14:41
This might be a controversial response, but the call to return to office to, quote, go back to normal by CEOs, I think it shows a disconnect because quite honestly, very few people were in the office five days pre Covid. I think it just wasn't as prevalent as it became during COVID And so this desire to return to the norm is meeting a lot of resistance. Not because people don't want to go back, but they want to Go back with the agency that they had before, and they're losing that. So I think to the extent that employers can really, and I use the word be flexible, but not like within the, like, how many days do you come in? But really think about, like, what do I need from my employee base, what am I trying to get at? And, and, you know, this newer generation that's coming in, they're not as loyal, which isn't a bad thing. They want a lot more out of their lives. They want to be able to volunteer. They want to be able to have time with friends and family. They don't want to commit because they've seen what happens during down markets and rips and layoffs. And so they're a little hesitant, especially coming out of the pandemic. They're just sort of like, I think, in some ways a little shell shocked. So, you know, I think employers need to rethink the value proposition and rethink what offering some of that flexibility can gain them in the long run. One of the things, especially that I, I used to say at Fidelity was there is the what about me? Generation. And so, and I'm squarely in that. So I feel like I get to call us out because a lot, there's been a lot of innovation and evolution of benefits, seemingly for the younger set. And, and, you know, parental leaves are a prime example. And of course, we're all here, like, I took the six weeks and I liked it. And it's like, you didn't, let's be clear. So let's be happy that the workplace has evolved. But I do think that there is a, you know, group of people who feel like I've put in my time and what am I getting on the back end. And, you know, I have to remind them in all of my roles, I've had these conversations where it's like, right, but you have an amazing retirement plan that's been in place for all this time, and now look at your account balance. And you've got health care that's, you know, really competitive. It's there for you. You're probably using it a little bit more than our younger set. So it's, some of it's having to reset expectations, but also, you know, some of it is, what does this generation need? And what, what do people who perhaps are in the post, you know, 60 or 65, where the workplace benefits weren't necessarily built for them, because the idea was, hey, it's, you know, you're retiring. And a lot of this generation is not retiring. And that's great. I mean, we need them in the workforce and their knowledge, you know, and, and their experience is so important to impart on the younger generation. So it's like, how do we help them? This, this group, you know, maybe it's enhancing our retire, excuse me, our time off policy because they want to travel a little bit more than they did when they were younger and didn't have grown up money like we have now.

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Cindy, I love that answer so much because it's not so much about benefits as it is about leadership. And if you have senior leaders in their 50s and 60s griping about, oh well, I had six weeks and that was good enough, that's sending such a bad message to that younger generation, like, yeah, okay, we have these robust benefits, but does Stacy really want me to take advantage of them or can I really take that? So that's really an amazing response. Take it to the personal if you're okay. I mean, you're such a leader in this space, but we always worry that the cobbler's kids have no shoes. How have you used some of the benefits that have been afforded to you at work in your own sort of personal journey? And have there been times, if you're okay going here, where you've had to rely on, you know, some of these care benefits that you've, you've supported other people in receiving?

00:18:45
Yeah. It's funny, when I left Fidelity a couple of years ago, I actually thought about it as a benefits journey because it was really like, okay, here I am, I've just started Fun fact. I met my husband my second day at Fidelity and so he's sort of been through a lot of this benefits journey with me. He helped me pick my health plan. He told me, so there's this 401k thing and you really need to invest in it. Just put 10% and then, you know, whatever. And so I always joke that I'm worth more dead than alive to him now because of that. But, and so I do think about that. And then, you know, I finished actually I started and then finished my MBA that Fidelity paid for. Then I had my boys short term disability, then I had breast cancer. Health care was super, super important. So all along the way, you know, I really do think about these times that my employers have been there. When my mother-in-law was in hospice last September, State Street had a, has a paid family care leave policy so you can take up to four weeks off in a 12-month period. And so I said I've got to step away. I need to be here, you know, for my husband and, and it was just so great to know that my employers cared enough to have these policies in place and these opportunities. And you know, I really do think, I think it's easy for me because I'm somebody who's so close to them. But I always try to remind employees, friends that before you do anything, if something's happening in your life, chances are your employer offers something in this space. Go to the portal, go to the, you know, wherever you keep your, your company keeps the information. Because there's probably something if nothing, the EAP probably has something within it. But yeah, I mean I, I've, I've used them all. I have a very robust estate plan due to, due to the legal services. I can't promote that enough. When my kids turned 18, they each got their own estate plans. They also got healthcare proxies because the doctors and hospitals, God forbid something happens, won't talk to you as a parent because they're adults. And so I made sure to get that into place. And so any, you know, I've had campaigns where we know when, when your dependents turn 18, send out the campaign like, hey, did you know you need to do this? You know, that's kind of the whole, the world of big data is, is, can be scary, but also it, it has its benefits. And you know, how do we again keep meeting people where they are like, oh, you've got a kid who's turn. How can we educate them about potentially jumping on their own healthcare? What do they do when they turn 18? What happens at 13 when they can't be in daycare and have it go through the dependent care account? These are all opportunities for an employer, for an HR department to be out in front and be that leader for their employees.

00:21:34
The 18 year old is good advice because I certainly need to do the healthcare proxy for. As you were saying, I moved here and I didn't know all of these things, which is like you don't get the hospital wound divulge information cited for myself, but I certainly need to think about it for the kids. It's incredible that you've thought about this so thoughtfully from a employer perspective. As an employee, it's almost overwhelming to navigate the whole space. I think of people looking at their benefits either when they're a new employee or at open enrollment season, which is when HR sort of nudges you to say look at it meaningfully or when there's a life event. But would you advise employees to navigate this at other points how do they get to know more, and how do you encourage them to get to their benefits?

00:22:29
I absolutely think for sure, we know we have their attention at higher. We know we have it at annual enrollment, so the opportunity is there. How do we, you know, give them as much as we possibly can, but also that sort of teach them to fish. So making sure they know where the portal is, making sure that they know how to use it. And then, you know, during the year for things that people have elected or have the opportunity to use. I would never promote legal services, for example, to people who, you know, haven't elected it and can't get it until next annual enrollment. But for the ones who do have it, that's where we start to say, okay, what data do we have? What might be interesting? You know, there are different things where it's like, oh, it's mental health awareness month. Okay, what do we have in that space? How should we be doubling down on our EAP offering? How do we remind people that mental health counseling is covered by the medical plans? Like, it's, you know, using what's happening in the world. And sometimes it's. What's happening in the world is when you have to go out and say, like, hey, if you're feeling stressed because of things, we have this benefit for you. But it goes back to, you know, anytime as you're experiencing your life. And, you know, I use life event sort of in quotes because, yes, the babies and the deaths and the marriages, but I just bought a car. Does my employer do anything? Yep. Turns out we have group, auto and home. You might want to look into that and see if you can get better, you know, better car insurance rates. So there's almost always something there. And we're as employers and as benefit practitioners, always looking for ways to help make it easy. Because I actually believe that employees want to be told what to do. They don't know this is not what they do for a living. And so how do we use AI? How do we use LLMs to give the information to them in a way that meets their needs? I think we're at the cusp of that kind of things very soon.

00:24:23
That's really interesting. If there was one key takeaway that you'd give our audience to remember about the power of employee benefits, what would that be? 

00:24:33
I used to do a, like a meeting when I was at Fidelity for MBA students. So they were, you know, MBA interns who would come in, and I. It was. The idea was, how do you weigh benefits? When or how do you weigh an employer when one cash isn't at issue. So let's say you have two offers on the table. You know, depending on the benefit package and depending on what you take advantage of, anywhere from 1/3 to 50% of your pay package, you could probably be getting in benefits. And so when you put the two side by side, there is such power there. It's just you have to spend a little bit of time with it. And this is kind of where it comes down to, you do need to know some of the words because a very cheap health plan that has an $11,000 deductible, if you're a user of medical, that might not be great, but maybe a not so expensive medical plan that has a very low deductible might be more appealing. The end of the day when you start to work through it, you realize like, wow, the cash is the same. But what I can get in, you know, I think about my early career, the, the cost of my MBA, I'm like, that's a lot. The time that I was out of the office for the kids, you know, breast cancer surgery and treatment, incredibly expensive. And so like, I start to, you know, those are numbers that I kind of know. And I'm like, wow, I. That's a lot that I didn't have to pay for or that I received in a benefit. So I just would really stress that. Don't discount benefits and don't just say like, oh, they have healthcare. They both have healthcare. It's great. It's like, well, let's do a little bit of digging because you might find that one is incredibly either restrictive or very, you know, very open and you know, leads to low cost for you.

00:26:20
Thank you so much, Cindy, for sharing both your insights and experience. It's really inspiring to hear how benefits can transform workplaces and improve employees lives.

00:26:32
And to our listeners, we hope you enjoyed today's episode with Cindy Silva. If you want to learn more about the power benefits in driving business success, stay tuned for future episodes.

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Thank you for joining us on The Work-Life Equation podcast,  brought to you by Bright Horizons. Take care and be kind to yourselves.