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Don King has been in total rewards and benefits for three decades, most of which he spent managing the explosive growth of a small healthcare company that scaled to a sixty-seven thousand employee Fortune 500 organization. King has led transformation of total rewards through a $10 billion merger, brought on twelve thousand new employees at once, and faced virtually every challenge the benefits industry can offer throughout his career.
Now head of total rewards at Businessolver, King has seen the industry grow, evolve, and adapt to fit every new generation of employees and their needs. He’s seen entirely new lexicons sprout and grow. He’s seen new schools of thought, technology, and business models rise and fall. But one objective has come to his desk year over year.
“Every year, whether you come in flat or under budget, you’re probably going to be asked to come in under 5 percent next year,” King says, laughing. “That’s the reality of corporate and company life. We all have to manage costs, even as we continue to grow. That’s the challenge, and it’s kept me interested and invested for thirty years so far.”
While King has only officially been in his role at Businessolver since August 2024, he’s been working with the company for eight years. In a previous role, King selected Businessolver as the benefits technology provider, and the relationship grew from there.
“I answer to the CHRO as well as both the CEO and CFO, so I need to be able to clearly explain how I unite these competing interests together. That’s why I ask so many questions in the first place.”
Don King
“When our CEO asked me to come here, I jumped at the opportunity,” King remembers. “I already believed in what this company was doing, and now I could help that company grow from a completely different perspective.”
King says his role may read “head of total rewards,” but there’s another word he sees as part and parcel of his job title: storyteller. The leader says an organization that doesn’t invest in telling its own story, both externally and internally, is wasting an incredible amount of potential. Benefits are no exception.
King believes a company with limited or uncompetitive benefits that still manages to connect to its people and to its mission can often wind up better than a company with great benefits that doesn’t understand this alignment. The story needs to reinforce the best aspects of company culture.
At Businessolver, King says strong benefits and a great culture aid him in telling its TR story; in the end, it’s about attracting and retaining the talent needed to fulfill Businessolver’s mission of: “Grow our business. Delight our clients.”
In his role, King wears two hats: HR and finance. The leader has to understand an environment where 90 to 95 percent of his organization’s benefit spend revolves around health insurance. “Every company has health and risk pool challenges,” King explains. “I have to balance that against employee engagement, attraction, retention, and the overall business mission.
“I answer to the CHRO as well as both the CEO and CFO, so I need to be able to clearly explain how I unite these competing interests together,” King continues. “That’s why I ask so many questions in the first place.”
That storytelling, though, is what King loves. Whether he’s communicating with employees or leadership, he aims to bridge the gap between culture and benefits and to show employees that their employer has their best interests at heart.
“Every year, whether you come in flat or under budget, you’re probably going to be asked to come in under 5 percent next year … That’s the challenge, and it’s kept me interested and invested for thirty years so far.”
Don King
At present, King says he’s interested in AI’s ability to adapt to the needs of the next generation of talent. For example, King understands the Gen Z workforce would rather do just about anything than talk on a phone. When they do, it’s typically after hours or on weekends. AI chat support, available 24/7, can guide an employee through a disability claim or similar task without forcing a live conversation.
“It’s about meeting the employees where they are and how they want to be communicated to,” King says. “Our benefits technology solves for that and increases engagement.” He adds, “Technology needs to be harnessed to serve up more solutions for employees in real time. If it makes it more efficient and more accessible, I’m all ears.”
Small examples like these add up to a bigger story, the kind of story that King has mastered and has been telling his entire career.
The Big Three
Don King has seen almost everything in total rewards, and he knows what it takes to connect benefits to organizational success. When evaluating benefit programs and plans, King asks three critical questions:
- What’s our strategy? “Are we competitive, what are our costs, what will provide the most value to our employees? How are we managing this cost, and how do we reconcile that with our culture?”
- How are we communicating the “what” and “why” behind our benefits program? “What’s our elevator pitch? How are we showing our employees that we care? How do we show people through our messaging what we believe and how we’re acting on it?”
- What’s our technology? “Luckily, we have the best technology here at Businessolver, because we’re using our own. But a lot of companies shortchange themselves when it comes to delivering their benefits. They may have a great strategy and a great story, but then they’ll use an off-the-shelf system that doesn’t harness everything a company has to offer. You want to get the most ROI you can and make every dollar the company is spending count.”
