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Zurich's Sarah Staggs named to 2014 Benefit Management Honor Roll®

Protecting employees from risks

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Zurich's Sarah Staggs named to 2014 Benefit Management Honor Roll®

Using a strategic yet humanitarian approach to addressing benefits challenges, Sarah Staggs, head of benefits for Zurich North America, has slowed the rate of health care spending at the property/casualty insurer from an annual rate of 20% at the beginning of the decade to just 4% in each of the past four years.

Ms. Staggs also has led a pension risk-reduction strategy that included changes in investments and offering a temporary lump-sum window to a select group of terminated, vested plan participants, resulting in a significant one-time reduction in Zurich's pension liabilities and long-term savings in administrative costs.

For her employee benefits achievements, Ms. Staggs has earned a place on Business Insurance's 2014 Benefit Management Honor Roll®.

By fostering a grassroots wellness campaign led by volunteer “wellness champions,” Ms. Staggs also has enabled Schaumberg, Illinois-based Zurich North America, a unit of Swiss insurer Zurich Insurance Group Ltd., to be named one of the nation's Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles by the Washington-based National Business Group on Health for two consecutive years.

And to help Zurich North America employees achieve financial wellness, Ms. Staggs instituted automatic enrollment in the company's 401(k) plan starting with a 6% payroll contribution so employees could maximize the company's matching contribution of 6%.

She also helps employees maximize their retirement savings by trimming administrative costs for the company's 401(k) plan participants through unbundling and reallocating fees, which enabled their investments to transition to the lowest-cost share classes available from their plan administrator, The Vanguard Group Inc.

“When we define what we do as a company, Zurich's mission is to help our customers understand and protect themselves from risk. And you only have to change one word in that to describe what I feel like our department's mission is: To help our employees understand and protect themselves from risks,” said Ms. Staggs. “Those risks can be health care risks; they can be financial risks; they can be lifestyle risks.”

After identifying the risks facing Zurich North America employees, as well as the organization that keeps them employed, Ms. Staggs developed and implemented a multiyear strategy that continues to evolve as conditions and laws change, such as the passage the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010.

“Sarah was talking about this change a long time ago, before health care reform was enacted,” said Brian Little, head of human resources for Zurich North America and Ms. Staggs' supervisor. “With Sarah's strategic approach to plan design, we will be able to stay on course without being subject to the Cadillac tax and still be able to have robust benefits,” he said, referring to the excise tax on benefits that exceed a certain threshold beginning in 2018.

“Like most companies, you have to sell leadership on the cost benefit for what you're doing, and Sarah's very good on the mathematical end of the equation — helping people understand that if you spend money, you're going to get a return on your investment,” Mr. Little said. “But sometimes the return isn't immediate; it's not next quarter. It may be next year or a couple of years after that. So understanding trends is really important, as is being able to translate that into strategic actions over a longer period of time. Sarah's very good at taking the data that comes out of the various firms that we work with and translating that into opportunities for us to think about.”

“Sarah is always thinking ahead and about potential downstream effects,” agreed Kristin Bajorat, benefits consultant at Zurich North America and a member of Ms. Stagg's team responsible for health and welfare benefits. “Sometimes you go to seminars where they ask how many companies actually have a strategic plan. We're one of the companies that actually has one.”

Ms. Staggs also seeks input from the team she has assembled since joining Zurich North America in 2002, all of whom are subject-matter experts in their own right.

“It's definitely a collaborative partnership. That's what makes Sarah a good leader. She listens to what we have to say and asks us to share our ideas,” Ms. Bajorat said.

Trained as a teacher, Ms. Staggs also encourages members of her benefits team to pursue continuing education and attend benefits management conferences, where they can gain knowledge to help Zurich North America foster its culture of health and wealth. The company's business strategy is “to deliver sustainable, profitable growth” while remaining committed to shareholders, customers, employees and the communities in which they live and work.

“I've been in benefits for a long, long time, but I'm still learning from her,” said Lisa Anderson, the benefits consultant responsible for Zurich North America's defined benefit pension plan. “I'm just so proud of us as a team.”

Ms. Staggs also “is very empathetic when it comes to work/life balance, which for me is critical,” said Dawn Carthan, the benefits consultant responsible for Zurich North America's 401(k) plan administration and the mother of a special-needs child.

“Because we're a large company, even small changes in cost potentially impact revenue,” Mr. Little noted. “At the same time, it's not simply about how much it costs. It's about how you spend your dollars and what kind of value you get from that, because you really want to have competitive benefits. If you don't, then you won't have the talent that you need to be successful as an organization. So even though costs are really important, it's not the only decision-making factor we use. It's more about for every dollar we spend, what do we get in return?”

“In her leadership role, Sarah is responsible for implementing a strategy focused on driving change and meeting the needs of Zurich's employees. This strategy has empowered employees to become better health care consumers by providing them with consumer-centric tools coupled with the appropriate financial incentives. The results of this work are evidenced through the marked reduction in the number of employees displaying high health risks and the market-competitive medical benefits program that has operated at an average cost 15% below industry benchmarks for the past four years,” said Scott Ziemba, health and group benefits consultant at Towers Watson in Chicago who has worked closely with Ms. Staggs in developing and implementing Zurich's strategy.

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