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Welcome to the HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, us, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up and coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new innovative solutions available in the market.
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And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot, stay tuned for details at the end of the show. Hello. Welcome to the HR Tech Spotlight podcast. Today's guest is Guy Benjamin, co CEO and co founder of Healthy, an AI powered platform that makes healthcare easy to navigate. This platform is transforming employee health, helping employees maximize their health insurance, and saving overworked HR teams several hours a week.
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And I saw that Healthy was named as a fast Company world changing Idea honoree in 2022, which is pretty cool. Welcome, Guy.
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Yeah, thanks for having me.
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So, Guy, tell us about your background in the HR tech space.
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Yeah, so I'll tell you a bit about my background. It's kind of like a bit different, not like traditional HR, I would say. I'm from Israel originally. Grew up there like the youngest of four brothers. And then at 18, I kind of joined the military. I went to the Air Force. I was a fighter pilot for about 13 years. So flew F 16s in Israel, and then after that came here to the US. Went to Yale, and then started working at McKinsey, the consulting firm.
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And while I was working at McKinsey, I kind of realized at some point that I have no clue about my health benefits. And every time I have a question, I go to HR. And as much as I love HR, they always try to help. But they could have sent me to either different call centers or intranet or booklets. And it just got me thinking that there has to be a different way. And the more I looked into it, I also noticed at the same time, AI technology was really advancing, but also I would say user or employees expectations are changing, demographics are changing. Nobody wants to be told to call a call center.
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And I thought it was like a really cool opportunity to kind of bring AI and kind of meet employees expectations and meet them where they are. So decided to leave McKinsey, met with investors, raised our first funding, and we raised about $26 million and then started this company, which really helps HR leaders provide a much better solution to their employees so they can access their health and wellness benefits in a very seamless, digital, first and easy way.
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Very cool. So AI is kind of the hot thing right now. Let's talk a bit more about what your platform specifically does and how that AI works with it.
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Yeah. So what our platform does is basically we start with kind of taking all your health plans, your medical, dental, vision. We're agnostic to any carrier. We're agnostic to any type of medical plan or dental vision. And then we also take any point solutions, any ancillary benefits, and we use AI to convert those documents. And I'm sure anybody who ever seen, like, a health plan document, it's hundreds of pages long. It's really hard to kind of understand exactly what you're covered for, obviously.
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So what we know how to do with AI is convert those really long documents from an unstructured data source, which is just a nicer way to say a PDF to a structured and mapped database. And once we do that conversion, we provide every employee what we call kind of like their personal health assistant. Her name is Zoe, and she's also an AI based platform. So think about like a Siri or an Alexa, but for your health benefits.
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So you can go to Zoe with any question about your health benefits. You don't have to go to HR or you don't have to call a call center. You can literally go to Zoe and say, hey, Zoe, my daughter needs a speech therapist. And Zoe will tell you if you're covered for it based on your plan. She'll tell you where can you get it done based on your exact network of doctors and providers. She'll tell you how much it will cost you, specifically based on your deductibles and based on how much each location usually charges.
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And she can book you an appointment very soon. She'll be able to help you understand if you got Bill correctly. She's also proactive, so she'll remind employees that it's time to get the yearly physical or a skin screening or a mammogram for women. So really becoming that personal health assistant where employees can come and ask any question about their benefits so they don't have to go to HR or call a call center or try to look it up.
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She's always there and she's always available.
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That is so interesting. I think benefits are one of those areas that companies have to figure out how to make it easier for their employees because it's expensive, it's challenging, it's confusing, for sure. What kind of feedback are you getting out in the market?
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Yes, it's a good question. So, first of all, it's funny because I do a lot of keynote speakings and conferences, and every time when I speak, I always have people come up to me after and say, hey, where do I sign up? How do I download this? How do I use Zoe? And I always have to remind them, well, we're not signed directly to employees. You have to have your employer sign up and get it for you. Right, but it's really cool to see that I've yet to have somebody tell me, oh, I know what I'm covered for. I don't need help. Right.
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It's really cool to see that. The problem is so it's everywhere. Nobody knows what they're covered for. And even when I talk to in front of HR leaders, I always do this very simple survey at the beginning. They're not always experts about what their health plan actually covers. So think about employees, how confused they are. So we are getting amazing feedback so far. Some people think that Zoe is a real person. They don't understand that it's an AI platform. So we get like these thank you emails and thank you notes.
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But we're really getting a lot of feedback from HR leaders where we save them sometimes 9 hours a. We were just talking to an HR leader that gets hundreds of questions every month, hundreds. And she has to kind of deal with that. And she said, look, I can't really deal with people strategy and onboarding and hiring, and I need to deal with answering these questions. So the fact that we kind of rolled out Zoe for her was a lifesaver.
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We hear a lot from employees saying they feel more empowered. We hear a lot about employees know, I didn't feel comfortable going to HR and asking about our mental health benefits, but now I can just go to Zoe and it's more confidential and it's more private. So we're getting a ton of feedback, really good feedback on those kind of aspects of empowering employees, freeing time, but also reducing cost.
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By using Zoe, by helping employees becoming smarter consumers, you can really reduce the cost of your healthcare as a company, but also the cost of the employees because they can find lower cost options.
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Right. From your perspective, guy, what is the big challenge or problem that you see facing HR departments today?
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I think in this related to the topic we were talking about, it's really the fact that, first of all, HR leaders are not healthcare experts. They shouldn't be. It's not part of their job. Right. The fact that they're getting the question doesn't mean that they should be healthcare experts. So one is the fact that they're getting a lot of questions that they just really don't really know how to answer.
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Think about even during open enrollment, think about how many questions HR leaders are getting from employees who are saying, I don't know which plan to pick. So the fact that they have Zoe, which Zoe also helps there in open enrollment, she helps employees pick the best plan for them and their families, really helps HR leaders with just not having to deal with those questions. The other one is, and I see it from our we have an amazing VP, people that if she had to deal with questions from employees all the time, she wouldn't be able to do the things that she's doing amazingly well, which is our people strategy, hiring onboarding, think about company culture.
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Those are the things that I want my HR leaders to deal with and not with answering mundane questions of am I covered for this or is this in network or out of network? So I really think that those are kind of like the main challenges are around HR time. HR leaders time is limited, and you want to focus on where you can bring the most impact. But the more employees you have, the more questions you get.
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And these are questions that are related to the most important things your employees have, which is their health, so you can't really not answer them. So we're seeing HR leaders needing to kind of research and go back to their broker or their carrier and trying to answer these questions, which I don't think it's a really good use of their time.
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Yeah, I totally agree. When you think about the market and the other options that are out there that you might compete against, what would you say are healthy, differentiators, or your unique point of view in the market?
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Yes, I would say we have a number of key differentiators. The first one is that we're digital first, meaning employees will come to healthy, will come to Zoe, and they will get an answer right away, instantly, digitally. They don't have to call anybody. They don't have to speak to anybody. If they really want to, they can. We have a live expert that can answer any questions, or if they want to talk to a live person, they can. But we're digital first.
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And when you think about demographics today, millennials, gen zers that are becoming more prominent part of the workforce, they're all looking for that Amazon experience, that Uber experience, where it's just on your fingertips, right? Like, you don't have to go anywhere else. So the fact that we're the only platform out there that is really digital first, AI first, I think that's a huge differentiator because most of our competitors will try to connect you to a live, you know, finding your doctors.
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You'll have to go and talk to a live person, which means you have to wait till that live person is available. It means that you're kind of like at the mercy of that person capabilities, right. Because you may have a great call center rep and you may have not a great call center rep. So there's not really consistency. The other thing is that we're the only platform out there that is a one stop shop, meaning you can do everything on Zoe. You can pick a plan during open enrollment, you can find doctors, you can book appointments, you can know what you're covered for, you can know how much things are going to cost.
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So really have that price transparency before you get it done. You have your ID cards, deductibles, talk to doctors, virtual mental health, virtual primary care physicians. And when I look about our competitors, it's mostly piecemooth of what we're doing. So you'll have a company that only helps with open enrollment, or you have a company that only helps with booking appointments, or a company that only does, like, a call center.
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Answering employees question, we're the only one out there that is kind of like an end to end, one stop shop, and we see it every day where we're getting new business, and they're kind of saying, oh, wait, so that means I can remove this and that and this and just have it all in one. Which I think the world of kind of point solutions is kind of like fading away because employees are getting lost. Right. We're giving them so many resources that are in different places, they just want a one place where they can get all their answer. And that's exactly what we're building.
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And I can see how that would be so convenient, because I think you're absolutely right. Everybody is in the instant answer mode. It's like nobody debates things anymore. You have a question, you just Google it, you get the response. Right. With health care and insurance being so complicated, this has got to be a huge thing for companies to offer to an organization where employees can just get the answers instantly instead of going through HR and waiting for them to find the answer for them or having to sort through all that paperwork themselves. For sure.
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Yeah. And think about how important healthcare is to employees. Right. It's the most important they have. Some employees will we did some research, and we were seeing, like, employees will leave a workplace because of better health care. Right. Or they'll stay at a company because they have good health care. And sometimes we don't understand as employers and as HR leaders, that it's not enough that we're giving them the best plan.
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If that plan is not accessible, if our employees are not aware of all their benefits that they have, we're kind of like not getting credit for it, and they'll go somewhere else. When I was working at McKinsey, I didn't know, for example, I was covered for glasses for the first three years of my time there. Right. So it's just a wasted benefit that I had, but I just didn't know about. So it's not just about providing health. It's making it accessible. And that's exactly where Zoe comes in.
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She'll take whatever plan you use today. You don't have to change any. You don't have to change your carrier. You don't have to change any benefit. She'll just take everything that you provide and just make it so much more accessible to your employees.
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Tell me about how the AI works, how you kind of build that. Know, I came from a background once upon a time where I worked at a language translation company, and we were doing machine learning with translations. So I know how it gets smarter as you feed more information and starts to figure it out. Do you use the AI like you guys have a standard database that you start with and then you feed in all the information from the employer.
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And does it get smarter over time?
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So, yes, to your last question, it does get smarter all the time because we keep training Zoya and more and more question, and the more question she gets, the better she gets. Right. The more accurate. So definitely there's a machine learning aspect. Here the other part. Yes, we use many different databases. We also have connectivity to many different platforms behind the scenes that helps us get access to, for example, Cost, right? So we know exactly each location, how much they're going to charge you for every procedure you need. For example, an MRI, one location may charge you $200, while another location will charge you $2,000. And we have access to that data so we can show that to the employee and be smarter consumers. We have access to databases that show in and out of network providers, which are actually even more accurate than the carrier website. Right. So we are constantly updating those every 24 hours to make sure that our in and out of network data is correct.
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We have access to doctors appointments and booking appointments online. So there's a lot of data that goes into the platform to make the user experience seamless, but also successful. Right, but you don't want to send them anywhere else. Like when an employee comes in and they say, well, I have a need where I need to find an MRI. So first thing we'll do is we'll make sure that he or she are covered for an MRI, and to do that, we'll go back to their plan and extract the needed data from there. Okay, you are covered for an MRI. Now let's look at where you can get that MRI. So we'll extract the data for your network and show you all the MRI facilities that are in your network.
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But then the last piece of the puzzle is how much is it going to cost? You want to be a smart consumer. You don't want to go just to your nearest location, which may charge you $1,400 for an MRI if you can drive 1 mile further away and pay $140 for an MRI. And those are the differences in the numbers. Right. It's that apparent. Like it's ten X sometimes, and employees just don't know that because they don't have access to that data.
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So providing them that access, building a platform like we did, that has all the data in it makes a much better user experience.
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What type of companies do you consider to be a perfect fit for your solution?
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Yes, it's a good question where I get asked a lot and I say, if you provide healthcare to your employees, you're a fit for Zoe. Because again, like I said at the beginning, you will probably not find an employee that will tell you, hey, I don't need help understanding my healthcare. That's very rare if happens at all. Right, so if you provide healthcare to your employees and you want them to be smarter consumers, you want healthcare to be more accessible, you want to lower theirs and your cost, and you just want to provide a better employee experience, then you're a target. For us being more tactical.
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We work with companies with 50 employees and 50,000 employees. It really doesn't matter for us because, again, because we're AI based, the solution is very scalable. Zoe can be at the hands of 100 employees or 1000 employees or 10,000 employees. It really doesn't matter.
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What does the typical implementation and rollout look like?
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Yes. So implementation takes about four to six weeks on average. Sometimes will be a bit longer because we have a bit of a backlog, because we're seeing a ton of demand, especially this time of the year where companies are gearing up towards open enrollment. And then implementation is super simple. It's very straightforward. Our goal is to help employees be healthier, but also to help HR reduce stuff off their plate and free up their time. So we actually created an implementation process that is very straightforward and very low lift on the HR side.
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All we need is your health plans and an employee census, and then we're ready to roll. We will build the entire engagement strategy. We have a whole engagement team, like an amazing engagement team that will build in the implementation. What is the engagement strategy for the year? What type of campaigns do we want to create to your employees? Like campaigns around mental health or campaigns around preventive care checkups.
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And those campaigns will help create engagement as well. And those are things that we're very focused on. We're not just providing the platform as is. We're providing a platform and an engagement strategy because we know that if we can't get employees to use Zoe, we can affect their health, we can lower their cost. And those are the things that we're very focused on.
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So I know when companies make an investment in a new HR technology that they're rolling out to employees, one of the things that's really important to them is that the employees actually use it and engage with it. What type of engagement rates do you typically see in the first year with your clients?
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Yes, so I'll go even lower than a year. So we usually see about 40% enrollment in the first 30 days because we make a splash out of it. Right. We want employees to know that their employer cares about their health, and that's why they brought healthy on. So we'll do like a webinar we'll do onsite activities. We'll remind employees that Zoe exists and she's an amazing resource that can help them be healthier but also reduce cost.
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On average, we save an employee anywhere between $1000 to $2,000 a year under out of pocket because we help steer them to lower cost options to telehealth that is free. Our telehealth capabilities are completely free for the employee, so it really saves a lot of money. Right. $1000, $2,000 a year could be another paycheck to some of our customers. So we kind of create that engagement. And then in the implementation process, we'll build that with the employer.
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And it's a very low lift.
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What is the future vision for Healthy in your technology?
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Yeah, so we are constantly updating the platform. We come up with new features every three to four weeks. Our next features that we're working on is we're just about to release a new open enrollment platform to help with picking the best plan for you and your family. We're working on adding an ability to check your billing to make sure that you get billed correctly. And again, the features just get expanding. We keep expanding them.
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And when you think about Vision, it's becoming an end to end, one stop shop platform for all your health and wellness benefits needs. We also added now ancillary benefits, which is really cool and kind of like growing and becoming the biggest platform in the market.
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So what would you say is the biggest hesitation that you see companies have with implementing a solution like yours?
0:19:57
I think the biggest one is always timing, right? We never get a no. It's always kind of like, not now because obviously it's a need. But I think sometimes leaders don't get the urgency of it, right? Because they kind of say, well, I'll just keep answering questions. But they don't understand that it's not just answering questions because what about the questions you're not getting asked because employees are embarrassed to come to you?
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What about the money that you could have saved your employees if you implement this? What about the money you could have saved to your company if you would have implemented Healthy? Right. Like, we're seeing anywhere between five to 15% reduction in healthcare cost. So think about a company with, let's say, 1000 employees. They probably spend anywhere between nine to ten, nine to $11 million on their health care.
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Now, if I can save you 10% out of that, that's more than a million dollars. Now, is it urgent to save a million dollars or not? That's kind of like the question. It's always a matter of timing. And I always say, well, why wait? You can capture the savings right now. You can provide a much better experience to your employees. You can really become the hero by bringing Healthy on because it's a platform that your employees will love, but they've never seen anything like it.
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So it's something that you can really create, like that innovative approach within the company. But again, we're trying to make HR leaders heroes, and it's kind of what we do every day.
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What things should someone think about or take into consideration as they're evaluating the different options that are out there in the benefits space.
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Yeah. So I'm going to go back to what I said. I mean, there's a lot of point solutions there. I would look for something that is as comprehensive as possible, right, as many use cases as possible. I do a lot of also I talk about how to create engagement with apps and platforms. And one use case app never gets a lot of engagement, right. When you think about the apps or the platform, the digital platform that you use on a daily basis or a weekly basis, they have more than one use case.
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So as an HR leader, if you're looking at solutions that they're just bringing piecemeals of it, you're going to see low engagement, that's for sure. So look for that thing that is very there's a lot of use cases to use it. The second thing is user interface, right. If you're looking at a platform that's not intuitive, that doesn't put the user in the center, people will not use it. So you're just kind of wasting money. And then you're going to kind of think about like, why isn't anybody using it? Because it's just not user intuitive, right? If you need to sit with every user and kind of explain to them how to use the platform and we see that a lot with the carrier website where they're very confusing and not easy to use.
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We're user obsessed. We're trying to make the experience as easy, as intuitive as possible. So that's the second thing I would look at. And then the third thing is also, and it goes back to the user, how to put the user in the center and kind of thinking about what are the things that our employees really need and how do we provide that service, what do employees need? Well, they need to know if they're covered for something. They need to know how much things are going to cost. They need to book appointments. They need to talk to doctors. Are we going to now give them a solution for each one of this? Or are we going to try to bring in something that can cover all of their needs across the year and even open enrollment? That's another huge need that we know employees have.
0:23:17
So those are the things I would say and obviously cost, right? And maybe one last thing is also, and it's interesting because sometimes the HR leader and their employees are different, right, different demographics, different population, right? So don't try to solve something that works for you. Try to bring a solution that actually can be a fit to all your employees, the millennials, the gen Zers, everybody.
0:23:46
And sometimes we'll bring a solution. A lot of our competitors are just a better call center and then our customers are kind of surprised that nobody's calling. And it's because, again, demographics are changing. Millennials, gen Zers, they don't want to call their mom, let alone a call center, right? So trying to find solutions that meet your employees where they are.
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Guy, tell me, are there any parting words you want to leave our audience with today?
0:24:14
Yeah, I would say there's something we always talk about or I talk a lot with HR leaders and also CFOs, which is kind of like the cost of doing nothing, right? We can just keep doing things as we do now and not change anything. And what we're just going to see is skyrocketing costs. We're just going to see our cost of healthcare keeps increasing. We're going to see wasted benefits. But at the end of day, we're also going to just keep seeing poor employee experience.
0:24:40
And there's a direct correlation between an employee experience and their satisfaction of their workplace. So I always say, well, let's not do that. Let's not do nothing. Let's try and fix it together. Let's try to help our employees be healthier. Let's try to help them reduce their costs, reduce the burden of healthcare by providing them digital solutions and platforms that can make their experience much better, which is exactly what we're doing.
0:25:06
Excellent. This is all great information. Thanks so much. Guy, can you tell our listeners where to go to learn more about Healthy and connect with you?
0:25:15
Yeah. Find us either online, we're at www.healthee.co. Feel free to reach out to me there on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected]. We're always looking for more companies to partner with and help them transform their employee healthcare experience.
0:25:35
Excellent. Guy Benjamin, thanks so much for being on the podcast today. To our listening audience, I hope you'll check out Healthee and see what they're all about.
0:25:44
Thank you.
0:25:52
Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up and coming HR technology options in the market. If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be considered for a guest spot on this program, please contact me via growthmodemarketing.com or reach out to me, Deanna Shimota, on LinkedIn. And if you found this show informative subscribe, connect with us on social media and leave a review.
0:26:22
This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.