Aubrey Varraux Shapes Benefits for Thousands of Employees

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If you grew up with Aubrey Varraux, she jokes that you won’t be at all surprised that she wound up in a leadership position. The corporate director of benefits and executive compensation at Centra Health had a gift for organizing people from a young age, “directing” other children’s play and cultivating a reputation for knowing what the rest of the neighborhood needed to be doing before they did.

These days, Varraux influences the lives of more than seven thousand employees on behalf of Lynchburg, Virginia–headquartered Centra Health. The corporate benefits director says it’s a good time to be checking in on the benefits world, as employees are engaged in open enrollment and selecting benefits for the 2025 year.

“My prior boss would lovingly call this time of year the Super Bowl for our team,” Varraux says, laughing. “We’ve spent months prepping what next year is going to look like, and now it’s time to put it into action.”

To add an additional challenge for Varraux’s team, Centra Health is transitioning from its entity-owned health plan at the end of 2024. Earlier in the year, her organization issued an RFP and spent months reviewing applications and presentations, kicking off a full implementation of the new plan during the summer months.

“If you’re making parents come back to work before they’re ready, they’re not going to be bringing their best selves to work. I hope we can all continue to expand our thinking on that issue.”

Aubrey Varraux

With a new year on the horizon, the corporate director says she’s proud of the creative mitigation her team has done to offer new benefits for employees. But before they could figure out the how, they had to figure out the what. Varraux’s team partnered with Gallagher Surveys to solicit feedback about what benefits employees wanted, what they didn’t feel they needed, and how Centra could best serve their needs. The survey stayed open for about a month.

“We wanted to get a full understanding of our survey population: who was responding and how demographics, ethnicity, and job title might have an impact on their responses,” Varraux explains. “We worked hard to create an awareness campaign. Our communications team did a great job of getting the word out and helped our employees understand what kind of information we were collecting and how it would be used by the organization.”

Based on the employee response, Varraux and her team responded with a number of benefits changes. For example, Centra started offering employer-paid short-term disability, which aligns with the company’s employee population of more than 80 percent women by providing paid leave options, including maternity leave. They introduced this much needed offering by discontinuing another underutilized, costly benefit.

“With over seven thousand employees, we can’t make every single person completely happy,” Varraux explains. “But we’re working hard to bring the best resources to the biggest number of people that we can.”

In an effort to create more work-life balance—an always hot topic in the healthcare world—Centra reconfigured its plan to allow employees more flexible time off. Employees who don’t celebrate certain holidays can work those days in exchange for different days off that are more meaningful for them.

Varraux says that as she’s become a wife and a mother, her concept of “well-being” has evolved. She aims to expand Centra’s paid parental leave and benefits for new mothers.

“If you’re making parents come back to work before they’re ready, they’re not going to be bringing their best selves to work,” the corporate director explains. “I hope we can all continue to expand our thinking on that issue.”

Additionally, Varraux says she wants to continue to evolve PTO opportunities for employees. As a mother of two young children, she now knows firsthand just how valuable that time can be and how quickly it can fly by.

The corporate director says she’s grateful for her own career journey, which began in lifestyle coaching. While her career path changed drastically, all her experience has eventually come to serve her in some capacity. To those who may just be beginning a career in benefits or have considered making a transition to the space, Varraux says whatever your skill set, it will be put to great use in benefits.

“Be open to opportunities and don’t close yourself off because you don’t think you fit a certain path,” Varraux says. “Be open-minded and seek out mentors who will help you find out what direction you should go in. They’ll tell you about strengths that you might not even know you have.”

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