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When Shanda Brown came to Sikich three years ago, she joined a professional services company that had about 800 employees. Today, that number has more than doubled to 1,900. The senior director of total rewards and HR operations has bolted through three promotions in three years.
This is how she did it:
“There have been a lot of challenges around taking a small, boutique organization and turning it into one that offers benefits and compensation that will grow with us,” Brown explains, “and help us attract talent that will take us where we want to go. Most of the organizations I’ve been at previously were larger, so this was a chance to grow something in a new way.”
Brown says her baseline in examining employee benefits was centered on scalability. Sikich added 400 new employees within Brown’s first year alone. But a previous benefits system rollout had not gone as planned and continues to present challenges for employees and administrators alike, she recalls. Sikich is exploring a new system to address current issues and better support the organization’s ongoing growth.
In short, during Brown’s “getting to know you” period, she had to redesign the benefits program and learn the ropes at Sikich at the same time. But she was eager to take on the challenge.
“Communication was essential,” Brown says of the redesign and overhaul. “I talked with as many people across the company as I could, from partners to daily employees who would call me with questions about benefits. I would ask them what they liked about their benefits and what needed to change, and we went from there.”
HR started sending regular emails with pulse surveys and benefits education. Those communications evolved into a Getting to Know Your Sikich Total Rewards program. Quarterly meetings with the CEO highlighted Brown’s redesign and new offerings as well as previously available options.
To date, Brown is especially proud of Sikich’s expansion of its mental health tools. Through a partnership with Headspace Care, Sikich offers coaching, counseling, meditation, and mindfulness services.
“We also expanded those services to our dependents,” Brown explains. “Adolescents from [ages] thirteen to seventeen could utilize those tools. This was especially meaningful during COVID-19, but also now. I know how hard it can be for that age group to secure counseling services.”
The program offers twelve free counseling sessions for employees and dependents as well to improve their overall emotional and mental health. The senior director is especially proud of expanding this benefit to global employees in India.
Sikich also pivoted its health savings account and flexible savings account providers last year and added in a new benefit of a lifestyle spending account. It’s a project Brown had wanted to tackle in previous roles, but Sikich is the first place she’s had the opportunity to evolve the program.
“We started small to see what the adoption rate would be,” Brown explains. “We announced it with the explanation that it could be used for running shoes or healthy meals. We didn’t want to overly restrict the possibilities of what that money could be used for other than a focus on wellness.”
That openness paid off. The adoption rate was 65 percent its first year, and Brown was given the green light to spend more. Brown says the lifestyle spending program is one that she hears about regularly from employees. It might be a new pair of trainers, a great workout at a gym, or a story about how a meal kit came in handy after a busy day.
And things keep evolving. Brown says they keep going back to employees to tweak benefits, offer new ones, and get a reading on where employees need support. The same goes for Brown’s support for her own team.
“I couldn’t have managed any of this without the incredible people on my team,” the senior director explains. “I want to be the kind of leader that I want to work for.”
Brown says she hopes her leadership reflects her own breadth of experience. If there is a job in HR, she has done it at some point in her career. She began as an HR assistant and climbed the ladder all the way to senior leadership. Now, as a motivator, teacher, and coach, she continues to drive total rewards innovation while she guides her team toward success.
“My team started as me and one other person, and now we’re a team of ten,” Brown says. “They’re so important to making all of this work, and I’m so proud of them.”
AssuredPartners (AP) offers a full complement of Employee Benefits services including Brokerage, Consulting, and Administration. We partner with our clients to become extensions of their Health & Welfare teams by touching all aspects of their risk management and total cost of care strategies. Our aim is to understand each client’s unique objectives and culture, providing them with insightful reporting to make data-driven recommendations which leads to long-term cost stability and improved population health. We are committed to providing our clients’ HR teams with increased efficiency by bringing people, processes, and technology into the administration of their plans so they can focus on driving their organizations forward.
