From T. Rowe Price

Healthesystems, which provides pharmaceutical and ancillary benefit services for workers’ compensation insurance companies, employs numerous IT specialists, clinicians, pharmacists and customer service representatives who serve injured workers seeking care.

The employees understand the value of the retirement plan—more than 90% participate. But Healthesystems experienced new benefits challenges when it closed its office during the pandemic and became, for most, a permanently remote company.

“We have people who won’t ever go into the corporate office, and they won’t have the opportunity to meet in person” to learn about their benefits, says Laura Wood, chief people officer for Healthesystems.

T. Rowe Price’s Erin Lane, lead relationship manager, and Sherri Rizzolo, client account manager, both started with the sponsor in early 2021. To support it, they helped revise its educational programs to reach employees at a distance.

Wood says the team is good at supplying answers to questions before she thinks to ask them, which was true with the switch to virtual education. “They said, since you’re not really using this [on-site] learning opportunity, you could take advantage of virtual learning, and [thereby] reduce some of the fees,” Wood says.

“I feel like they’re very much in a partnership with us to make sure our people get the right amount of support so they can retire comfortably,” she continues. “T. Rowe Price has done a lot to make sure the online tools are really targeted to the person and to where they are in their life.”

Lane and Rizzolo say they enjoy working with Healthesystems because the company is so engaged. “One of the first things they asked about is how to stay on top of everything they’re supposed to do from a fiduciary standpoint,” Lane says. “It’s so good that an employer wants to be proactive on the front end to avoid pitfalls on the back end. They are the kind of client Sherri and I love the most—willing to dig in and be open to new ideas, and make sure that not only are the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed, but take it to the next level and make sure they aren’t missing out on any tools.”

—Kimberly Lankford