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Valerie “Val” Francis was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, but at eighteen she moved to Western Massachusetts to live with her mother. A year later her mother passed, and Francis, now on her own, was forced to rely on the nonprofits and organizations within her adopted community. Now, Francis says, it’s time for her to give back to that community.
“They helped me when I was a teenager. They helped my family during Hurricane Katrina when I had family members that had to come here and stay with us temporarily. It’s hard to put into words how special it is for me to be able to give back to a community that’s already given so much to me,” Francis says.
She’s committed to more than just her immediate community. To Francis, vice president of employee benefits with HUB International, the community she serves now includes HUB’s clients, her team, and women leaders.
In her multifaceted role at HUB, Francis supports HUB’s current clients and its future ones. “I handle the strategy and overall implementation and education,” Francis explains. Working with a team that can be as large as fifty employees, the VP helps clients strategize and meet their needs while vetting payroll providers, adopting new technology, staying compliant, and assessing and managing risk. “It’s all webbed into employee benefits,” she says.
Francis relies on HUB’s carriers to ensure that her clients are getting the best rates and creative benefits. “We have maintained great relationships and earned trust and respect amongst all of the carriers, whether medical, national, or even local,” she explains.
As states establish and offer their own disability plans, Francis ensures those clients implementing a state disability plan are well-versed and educated about benefits. For clients that have already implemented a plan, she teaches them how it works with their current benefits.
Francis engages with HUB’s community of clients through its human service forum, facilitating a supervisory series tailored to employees transitioning into management and for new hires. “That’s my way of also staying in tune with the community. It’s one thing that I do for leadership,” she says.
Part of HUB’s strategic planning is its proprietary tool called persona analysis reporting. “It has been a game changer for us,” Francis shares. Persona, as she calls it, retrieves a census from a client and overlays that information over a different set of data, then generates a report analysis that provides a variety of information beyond employee benefits.
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For example, it teases out those employees who are at zero to one year or zero to two years of service and divides that population by age group. “Those at zero to one years or zero to two years are new. Employees at two to five years can be transitioning and focused on growth,” the VP says. Arguably the most important information persona reveals is that on those employees in a group Francis calls “the forgotten middle.” Francis points out employees in this stage of their career have been with the company for ten or more years, and are the cultural anchors of the business.
Employees in the forgotten middle possess substantial knowledge regarding workflow, but can experience low engagement. “We know that burnout can happen. When that happens, it’s hard for someone to move, but their movement is needed,” Francis says. Persona also identifies a group of employees who have been with the company for ten or more years by their age group. “These employees, even if they’re not in management, would be considered founders. That’s important, because it helps you understand succession planning,” the VP explains.
This is just the tip of the persona iceberg. It also divides employee pools by generation, so management can identify which employees might be financially fragile, like those with college debt, or those unconcerned about benefits because they’re still on their parents’ plans. “Persona tells a story,” Francis remarks.
Being the community-minded individual she is, Francis insists an employee’s success at work is rooted in their psychological safety. With DEIB efforts being scrutinized, if not brazenly attacked, by politicians and certain media outlets, many corporations have eliminated DEIB efforts. Not Francis. “Everything I do ties directly into DEIB,” she states.
Businesses want their employees to perform at their best, to stretch themselves, do the right thing, and subordinate their personal agendas for the good of the company. To achieve this, employees must feel vested. “They have to really buy into everything and in order for that to happen, DEIB has to happen. Employees have to feel recognized. They have to feel valued. They have to feel safe,” Francis says. “That translates into high-performing employees that are going to stick around. They’re tied into the culture.”
DEIB not only improves retention—it also improves recruitment. “It’s hard to have a conversation these days in an interview or when you’re recruiting that you don’t have to answer a question about your company culture,” Francis states. “That’s where I come in and help my clients understand and make sure their culture, values, and mission all align.”
Even those companies that have removed diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging from their vocabularies are trying to make their employees feel like they belong and are psychologically safe.
Outside HUB, Francis engages with another community: that of women leaders. She regularly speaks on a variety of panels and serves on a board with Nicole Polite & Co. creating events centered around women’s empowerment and helping them advance their careers, and creating a safe place for women to assemble. Francis says, “I have two daughters, both in their twenties. I see how important female mentors have been to them, and how they’ve been helped just by people practicing that same value and understanding how important it is for us to help each other.”
At time of press, Valerie Francis was no longer with HUB International
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