LifeWorks Interview:
Louise O’Grady
Ceridian LifeWorks Director, Account Management
This month, we're featuring a Q & A with Louise O'Grady, Director, LifeWorks Account Management, who discusses the role of the Account Management team, and shares some insight into what these customer-facing professionals are learning from our clients about health and wellness trends and challenges.
The Advisor Resource: Hello Louise. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Tell us a little about yourself.
I joined Ceridian Canada in March 2007 as Director, LifeWorks Account Management, and I am so fortunate to be able to say that I love my job and my team. These are people who are passionate about health and wellness and committed to customer service excellence. It is a privilege to be doing a job that I love with people who are terrific to work with – colleagues and clients.
I view my role as being responsible for the overall satisfaction, retention and growth of our existing LifeWorks customer base through the important work of our Account Management team, which includes both account managers and account support representatives. Before joining Ceridian Canada, I was Vice President and Business Leader of a global services division within the EAP sector working predominantly with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 organizations. Professionally, I was trained as an individual, family and marital therapist. I have a Master’s Degree in Social Work from McGill University.
Advisor: Can you share with us some details about the role of your team?
Our mission is to be the voice of LifeWorks customers, ensuring that the services we deliver meet their organizational health and wellness needs today and as they change and evolve over time. A day in the life of a LifeWorks Account Manager is not without challenges and at times requires the management of complicated and sensitive demands. But, a tough day is also typically punctuated by moments of excitement, a sense of great accomplishment, and the satisfaction of delivering excellent customer service that makes a difference in the lives of our clients and their employees/families.
Our Account Management team is comprised of highly-qualified professionals who understand the EAP and health and wellness industries well. They typically come to the role with HR, business, management or clinical experience and are well-positioned to make educated recommendations as to specific services we provide to help their customer organizations set and achieve goals and address workplace issues.
Our Account Managers are listeners and can translate client needs into action effectively. They are responsible for working with our customers to educate their employee population about the employee/family and management services available – whether that be through orientation sessions, attendance at health fairs, provision of monthly newsletters or through customized communication strategies and tools. They’re also responsible for consulting with customers about program utilization and how best to utilize or profile the program or to access specialized services to address health and wellness goals. Our team supports more than 9,000 LifeWorks commercial clients either directly or through strategic partnerships.
An integral part of our Account Management team is our Administrative Support colleagues. They complete many of the administrative tasks required for a well-running program and a satisfied customer base. They are responsible for our Account Management toll-free line available for commercial customers and brokers, and for managing emails coming into the general Account Management inbox. That means they can receive inquiries, requests, comments or concerns from any client of any size, across all industries, as well as from resellers. These individuals have to be highly-organized, customer-service oriented, capable of managing under the pressure of competing deadlines, and possess an in-depth understanding of all our service levels, tools and offerings. They really are ‘all things to all people’.
Advisor: From your team’s vantage point, you must learn a lot about workplace challenges, and about the common concerns employees are bringing forth.
Yes, we do. It is fascinating to see that despite all the differences in our customer organizations – size, industry, location, and so on – many of the same workplace issues are present, and employers are concerned about many of the same challenges. Our customer organizations want to train their people managers to be skilled leaders and to be able to conduct themselves according to best practice and legislation. Employers want to measure wellness and reduce risk factors in their employee population; they want to offer a high-quality, relevant and confidential support system to assist their workers in effectively balancing personal and professional demands. We know what our customers are seeking because we hold open and transparent needs analysis and goal conversations with them, and we conduct an annual survey.
Of course, specific challenges arise within each individual organization, and we have to work with each client to identify and manage those within their organizational structure, culture, constraints and priorities, but trends and commonalities definitely exist.
Our 2011 survey revealed that our customers have three main priorities in terms of HR goals: employee engagement, performance management, and manager training and development. Our service provides valuable support in all these areas, whether through management consultations, employee effectiveness seminars, training sessions for managers, etc. We also know that our clients have three main interests in terms of imminent solution investments:
- Wellness programs
- Learning & development
- Manager training
Advisor: What are some of the common issues for which employees are accessing your service?
At the end of each year, we produce an annual report for our clients that breaks it all down for them – how many users accessed our services (anonymous, of course), and the issues for which they were seeking support, advice or resources. The amount of detail that can be provided depends of course on taking an approach that ensures confidentiality – if employees don’t absolutely trust that their access of the EAP is completely confidential, they won’t use it.
We are currently in the midst of generating that information for our clients, and we have found the following trends:
While there is great variance in utilization rates between clients, our book of business utilization ranges across the segments from 7% to nearly 12%. The percentage of EAP cases (counselling) to work-life cases (which represents clients accessing childcare, eldercare or our educational resources and supports such as the website, materials for order, etc) is 60/40 – though this also fluctuates by client. The top four presenting problems include:
- Family-related issues (relationship child/teen, separation)
- General mental health (stress, depressive symptoms, anxiety),
- Everyday issues (community services, customer purchases, pets, etc) ,
- Legal Services (family, civil, bankruptcy)
Organizationally, our clients are actively and increasingly engaging us to provide training solutions – whether this be topical lunch and learn sessions for their employee population or more involved, targeted and customized learning solutions.
We are pleased to be able to say that our clients understand the wealth of resources available through their EAP program and are consulting with us around ways to leverage available offerings.
