I think I got people fired . . . again.

[FiberPilot]

I think the main probéem here, darkrose, is that you got it wrong about corporations.

They are not about efficiency.
They are not about making money.

Like any group consisting of several hundred people, they are about power and politics. This is basic human nature, so it is inevitable in a group that big.

I hate it. You hate it. A lot of people hate it. Still, this is how the human psyche and group dynamics work.

If you manage to accept it, it will stress you less.

[Chen]

The gold plan that makes no sense from a consumer point of view seems to be specifically about making money for the corporation. I mean it could also be a coverage plan that provides a peace of mind of not needing to worry about things and does so by having extremely high costs.

I mean, I pay a ton for my healthcare (in Canada) via taxes. I'm pretty healthy and probably would come out way ahead money wise with a high deductable plan and lesser taxes in the US. But I'm ok with the piece of mind this brings me without having to worry about the monetary cost of accidents or other health issues.

[darkrose50]

The gold plan that makes no sense from a consumer point of view seems to be specifically about making money for the corporation. I mean it could also be a coverage plan that provides a peace of mind of not needing to worry about things and does so by having extremely high costs.

I mean, I pay a ton for my healthcare (in Canada) via taxes. I'm pretty healthy and probably would come out way ahead money wise with a high deductable plan and lesser taxes in the US. But I'm ok with the piece of mind this brings me without having to worry about the monetary cost of accidents or other health issues.

By law, in this case, the company is limited to 20% of the premium paid [in a population such as the gold plan] to be used for non-health-care (profit, lights, rent, electricity, water, payroll, and whatnot). What appears to be happening is that sick folks just pick the gold plan, and as a result it is expensive for the gold plan population. If there were less sick folks in the population of the gold plan, then the premium would be cheaper.

[Chen]

As stated, people can be bad at math or averse to risk. They pick a plan that gives them the piece of mind that they're covered for their worsening health or they don't know how to estimate how much things cost. Your company offers such a plan with premiums in mind so that they can profit from it. Since their % profit is capped it seems even MORE in their interest to get the premiums up even higher so they can make more absolute profit on this.

[pendell]

I have an alternate reason for why management is less than sympathetic. To quote from a pre-WWII German General

I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.

I also remind you of the Peter Principle which tells us that everyone gets promoted to the level of their incompetence.

Put these things together, and you'll see that your typical manager in ANY corporation in ANY business is in over their head. They know that things are going wrong, they know that things could be done better, they aren't sure how to make it better or if they even can.

Which brings us to a third point: Fixing a corporation is a bit like steering a ship; it doesn't happen immediately. Because a lot of time a low-ranking manager doesn't have the authority to make changes as they please; the stupidity is dictated by a corporate policy which wasn't stupid when it was first created, but no longer fits the situation for some reason. Or perhaps it wasn't written with your particular circumstances in mind in the first place.

Spotting these problems and fixing them is usually the province of someone way up the chain who fits that brilliant and energetic trope; what your ordinary line manager wants is simply No Trouble. They know that fighting for change is going to cost them social and political capital, they know that if it goes wrong they'll be hung out to dry like so much laundry, and they don't have the mixed blessing of Asperger's to see all the things that are broken and know how to fix them.

Because of this, they usually aren't especially sympathetic to line workers telling them that things are wrong. In the first place, there's the Appeal to Authority fallacy -- because you're under them they aren't quick to assume you know what you're talking about. That's doubly true if they're older and have kids your age -- they've been hearing how they've been doing stuff wrong all their lives from their adolescent children, and it just sort of washes out.

To make real change in a corporation you need three things : 1) Data. Lots and lots of data to make your case. 2) Logic and reason and patience to explain it to people to whom it isn't obvious. 3) This is in third place but it's actually the most important: soft skills to persuade people to make the needed changes.

I was in a leadership meeting yesterday and they told us that soft skills are 90% of a leader's effectiveness; if you have them you can get your way. If you don't than as a manager you're a placeholder.

If you don't want to acquire these social skills, then the obvious solution is to find an advocate who's willing to listen to you. The way corporate bigwigs stand out is by being 'change agents', so there are people who want to make the kind of changes you're thinking of. But again, this is going to require some soft skills even here because you'll probably need to go through your manager to talk to this person, and you want your manager agreeing with your assessments.

Even if a company lives to screw its customers, no company is out to wreck their own bottom line through inefficiency. Good companies have their leadership 'walk the floor' to pick up insights just like the kinds you have . If the company isn't a good one, then the thing to do is either 1) develop the three things I mentioned above (reason + data to support it + the soft skills to make it stick ) or 2) Find some else who can do the soft skills on your behalf.

ETA:

As to your Gold Plan, it looks to me like this is a clear case of Market Segmentation in action. Here's how the concept was explained to me.

Imagine that I'm a company and I'm offering Widgets which cost me $5 to make. How much do I sell it for?

Well, let's say I do a survey and offer it at different price points. 100 people buy the product. 20 people pay $10 for it, 70 pay $25 for it, and 10 people pay $100 for it.

What price do I charge?

Well, the naive answer is "$25". That's what most people are willing to pay.

Ah, but not so fast! What about those 10 people to whom the product is worth $100? Why should we deprive them of the opportunity to give us more money?

So what we do is we offer the widget at two price points: the basic version which is $25, and the "Plus" version which is better in some insignificant way -- maybe a service plan, maybe an extra part -- for which we charge $100.

And so we get an extra $750 in revenue which we otherwise wouldn't get. And naturally the line salespeople will be -- 'encouraged' -- to pitch Widget Pro (that's the $100 version) as hard as possible. There really isn't much improvement over Widget Mk 1 -- the real intent is to find those people who think $100 is a fair price even for the basic product, and get them to pay it.

What about those people who won't pay $25, but only $10? Ah, don't think we'll leave them out. At some point during the year We'll offer coupons ("Special deal! Widget for special one-time price of $10, normally $25!") and pick them up as well.

If this sounds cold-blooded, at some time find a publicly traded company and compare the revenues versus the profits. While any corporation makes a lot of money, they also spend a lot of money. If you're in charge, at some point you find yourself working every possible angle to bump that number up. Because there are always nasty surprises -- a regulatory change, a new technology , a google update to their search engine algorithm -- that can throw your yearly forecast straight into the rubbish bin. You need to make every scrap of profit you can, because even if the doors don't close the shareholders may still tar and feather you before sending you out to find another job.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[darkrose50]

GOALS – Sales goals do not match marketing’s and/or the trainer’s goals.

We have different goals. Training and marketing wants retention. Sales wants to hire people who make sales. I want the "competition" between insurance agents during the Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) to be fair. I want the new temporary agents to have a fighting chance at obtaining a permanent position. I want my department and my company to get stronger.

Essentially listening to the trainers and/or marketing involves spending copious amounts of time on non-sales activities. They want us to wax poetically over bells and whistles that they spent time designing, and are understandably proud of, but are useless to sales, and never close a sale . . . they will NEVER close the sale.

POINT 1 – Wanting to collect information that is already there.

The trainers and/or marketing does not understand the programs that we use and/or the time it takes to take down information. They want us to collect information (names, addresses, dates of birth, and so on) that is already collected and is quickly accessible by a member ID or SSN (I ask for one or the other, and people usually just give the SSN).

POINT 2 – Not properly preparing for accents, or bad connections.

I have saved ~20-minites on calls with bad connections or with folks with thick accents by getting the spellings of things from the information already collected in our system. There is no reason to collect information that we ~80% of the time already have on file, yet that is what they train. I still verify the information, but folks do not have to go through the lengthy process of the spelling of everything over the phone one-letter-at-a-time ("A" for apple, "B" for banana, "C" for cat . . . and so on). So much time is wasted with the procedures that they train new agents on.

POINT 3 – Wanting us to take time collecting information for non-sales calls.

Want to pay your bill? Per the procedure I will (a) spend ~3-5 minutes taking down information that is already in the system, then (b) spend ~3-5 minutes (minimum, this could be 45-minutes near the end of the season) navigating the phone system to get you to a live billing agent.

I bet that 80% of my calls have nothing to do with sales. If during our busy season I spent 8-10 minutes on each of those non-sales calls by taking down all the information, and navigating the phone systems, then I would not get nearly as many sales. Maybe for every 1 sales-call we may have 5-8+ non-sales calls. If I spend I spend 8-10 minutes on each non-sales call, then I would loose sales due to the opportunity costs of lost time.

POINT 4 – Wanting to collect notes on customers in other business units with different systems.

Taking notes in our individual healthcare notes system for a Medicare, Medicaid, or group (employer plan) customers is a waste of time for my department. It will only make the customer angry having to repeat the process twice. Now it is less of a waste of time to do this for our individual healthcare customers calling for non-sales reasons, but it is still a waste of time.

They do not train how to quickly ask yes/no questions to get folks to the correct department. I can ask a quick 2-4 yes/no questions and the customer to the correct department. I get MANY more sales identifying calls that are not for me sooner, rather than later, and create more time to spend on actually selling. There is not a sales metric related to waxing poetically or holding anyone's hand warm-transferring (I am still very polite and helpful, give the customer the correct phone number for the department that they are looking for, and then transfer them).

POINT 5 – Placing a high priority on soft-transferring.

They want us to spend time holding the hands of customers "soft-transferring" them and introducing them to the correct department (folks who call sales and want to pay their bills, ask customer service type questions, or want to buy from a different department). The majority of our calls are not sales related.

This soft-transferring could easily eat up HALF of your day! Could you imagine competing against other folks for a job, when half of your day is spent effectively being unproductive?

POINT 6 – They do not train you on how to professionally manage your time.

They do not train you on what to do if, for example, someone wants to hem-and-haw over selecting a plan for an extended time. Give them a recommendation, give them no more than 5-minutes to make a final decision (after questions), email them your contact information, and let them know to call or email you back when they made up their mind. People will literally want to think out the purchase for a crazy extended amount of time (20-30 minutes, hours even) with the insurance agent there listening to them make up their mind. The training or marketing folks would tell you to spend all the time in the world on every call.

POINT 7 – All these actions quickly add-up time-wise.

If the new folks spend 8-10 minutes jumping though all these hoops, on nigh every call that is a non-sales call, then their sales numbers will be poor. We are in sales. Anyone who listens to the trainers and/or marketing will likely not make enough sales to get hired.

Essentially they do not train for the actual behavior that results in the primary metric that is measured by my department (sales). Now if training and/or marketing were in charge of hiring and metrics for the sales department, then that would be another story.

Conclusion

Time is money. They appear to not care that much about sales per hour. Time management NEVER comes up in training. Time and opportunity costs are a major factor in sales. I would say that time management is a fundamental cornerstone of sales. I cannot stress enough how important it is to use your time wisely when it is the busy season.

The new agents will simply be MUCH slower and MUCH less efficient at collecting sales numbers by following the training as it is. These new folks will think that they are doing the job correctly (I suppose they are in a way), but they will not get hired. These people want a job, and training them how not to get hired rubs me the wrong way.

Frankly they train us as if we were a non-sales customer service department. We have many non-sales customer service departments. They just do not train us on the metrics insurance agents are graded on, and it makes my head hurt. Not caring about sales per hour is a fair point, but will not get folks a job in this department. Again if the marketing and/or training department did the hiring and/or set up how the metrics are graded, then things would be different.

[Rogar Demonblud]

So in other words, as per usual, your real training/education begins after they say you graduate. It might be a better use of your time to put together a 1-2 page Quick Tips Guide to give the newbies on the sales floor the basic info they need to be more productive.

[darkrose50]

So in other words, as per usual, your real training/education begins after they say you graduate. It might be a better use of your time to put together a 1-2 page Quick Tips Guide to give the newbies on the sales floor the basic info they need to be more productive.

This year, so far, we have 5 in my office out of the ~80 total that we will be getting. The other ~95 will be in another city.

[Scarlet Knight]

POINT 5 – Placing a high priority on soft-transferring.

They want us to spend time holding the hands of customers "soft-transferring" them and introducing them to the correct department (folks who call sales and want to pay their bills, ask customer service type questions, or want to buy from a different department). The majority of our calls are not sales related.

This soft-transferring could easily eat up HALF of your day! Could you imagine competing against other folks for a job, when half of your day is spent effectively being unproductive?

I cannot discuss the validity of your other points, but sadly point 5 is a necessary evil. You MUST ALWAYS soft transfer a phone customer if you cannot help them yourself. No matter how much is lost in time or effort. Nothing will lose a client more certainly than a cold transfer to a dead end.

[Evil DM Mark3]

I cannot discuss the validity of your other points, but sadly point 5 is a necessary evil. You MUST ALWAYS soft transfer a phone customer if you cannot help them yourself. No matter how much is lost in time or effort. Nothing will lose a client more certainly than a cold transfer to a dead end.

Oh its by no means an evil. I also work in a phone based job, mostly taking escalated calls. You have no idea how much of MY time it wastes when a customer is cold transferred. The customer 1) has to explain everything from the start, which often includes details that you know I don't need and 2) will almost always add a short diatribe as to why the previous adviser didn't have the courtesy to actually transfer them properly. It may save you 30 seconds, but it costs me 2 minutes. That's the very definition of inefficiency from shortsightedness.

The exception would be if you somehow have long internal queues, but that's not the fault of the transfer.

[caden_varn]

The problem with soft-transferring seems to be a perverse incentive issue. The company benefits from the soft transfer, but the agent doing it is not measured on that. They are measured on sales made, so anything which means spending longer on non-sales calls hurts their metrics. So agents that don't bother get to more calls, make more sales and look good.

if you want people to spend time doing a certain task, you need to make it at least neutral in terms of their metrics. If it is actively detrimental, you need to change the way you assess them to encourage them to do the things you want them to do.

[darkrose50]

The problem with soft-transferring seems to be a perverse incentive issue. The company benefits from the soft transfer, but the agent doing it is not measured on that. They are measured on sales made, so anything which means spending longer on non-sales calls hurts their metrics. So agents that don't bother get to more calls, make more sales and look good.

if you want people to spend time doing a certain task, you need to make it at least neutral in terms of their metrics. If it is actively detrimental, you need to change the way you assess them to encourage them to do the things you want them to do.

I bet ~60% of my calls are people calling to pay their bill. I give them the billing number (and hope that they call it in the future), and cold-transfer them.

A sale takes ~30 minutes (health care application without tax credit application) or ~75 minutes though the government applications (one for tax credit, and one for healthcare).

Basically when it is our busiest (2-3 weeks in the year) you could spend 30-45 minutes soft-transferring someone. This would be committing suicide. This is our GO time. This is when we make a lot of our commissions.

If 8/10 of your inbound calls are non-sales, then you would be screwed if you followed the inane procedure. No commission form warm-transferring to billing. No one is going to win a big screen television warm-transferring to billing. No one is going to win a trip to the Bahamas' warm transferring to billing.

Having someone write rules that does not understand how phones work, or how sales goals work is crazy stupid. I swear to god that they train us exactly the same as customer service. I swear to god that they do not fully understand what it is that we do.

If you are an insurance agent, then you MUST know how to fill out an application. I kid you not that they do not teach this FUNDIMENTAL must have skill. An application is literally a legal document that must be filled out in a certain way (and there are many ways to screw one up). But we had a half-day lesson on body language (we work over the phone). It makes my head hurt. We should have ~2-hours training with refresh training every few days to get the concepts down over the various bits of the application. There should be written directions, and explanations about all the various rules and exceptions. This would be competent behavior. This would require someone who knew what it is that insurance agents actually do.

The only idea that keeps me sane over this is the notion that they want to dumb down the job to such an extreme that no one needs to use their brain. I am uncertain if it is because they don't understand the job, and/or just think that insurance agents are that stupid. They give a rule, and do not explain it.

Let's say that red candy is deadly. Want folks not to eat red candy? Ban the color red on everything. No red fire trucks, no red sports cars, no red shirts, no red anything. This is essentially the level of idiot proofing that they write. They ban the color red (without explaining why), then someone wears red socks and is told not to do that, and gets a slap on the wrist. Then someone brings in red candy that will kill anyone who eats it, and gets into serious trouble. Then the person who got into serious trouble wonders why the person who wore red socks did not get into the same amount of trouble. It is just nuts.

[Chen]

if you want people to spend time doing a certain task, you need to make it at least neutral in terms of their metrics. If it is actively detrimental, you need to change the way you assess them to encourage them to do the things you want them to do.

Or punish them for not doing what you're telling them to. I do agree, rewarding them for not doing what you tell them is stupid.

[Rogar Demonblud]

And is typical of management everywhere. Which is why one of the more common office 'house rules' is to ignore whatever management says and do whatever gets you your bonuses.

[Tvtyrant]

And is typical of management everywhere. Which is why one of the more common office 'house rules' is to ignore whatever management says and do whatever gets you your bonuses.

Like when your entire office runs on agent written shadow software that doubles call efficiency but coporate wants to ban.

[Peelee]

Eh, management is like an IT department. When everything is working right nobody really notices, but when something goes wrong they must be incompetent.

Ironically for this metaphor, when something goes wrong it's the management insisting the IT department must be incompetent.

[Keltest]

We are currently in the process of our annual "associate engagement survey", which is where corporate asks us our opinions on a bunch of stuff so that they can ignore it all and continue to do what they want to do.

And as much as I give management flack, it really is noticeable when your immediate superiors are good at their jobs simply in terms of which problems get resolved and how quickly.

Last year, on the day before thanksgiving, we had a massive thunderstorm, and the roof leaked directly on top of one of the shelves. This was the worst leak ive ever seen in 5 years of working at this store, and something like 70% of my shift was spent operating the bucket brigade, making sure that the entire section of the store wasn't flooded and all our inventory ruined. Which in and of itself was fine(ish), having a big hole with water coming out of it isn't exactly a management problem. But since I cant be in 3 places at once, that meant other functions of my job had to go by the wayside, such as my ability to double as a cashier. Late in the afternoon, as people were getting off work and we were at the busiest, everybody who was free (ie not me) was running a register to get people out in a reasonable time, including the service desk person. The phone starts to ring, and the store manager at the time, instead of just answering it himself since he wasn't on a register, asked the front end lead where I was and if I could answer the phone. Bearing in mind that, at this point, I was up to my eyeballs in running around trying to control this leak from flooding, which the manager knew about, and that he was not specifically engaged in anything.

Evidently, the front end lead had to seriously restrain herself from just decking him on the spot. This was not an especially productive manager at the best of times, but that was pretty exceptionally bad even for him. He has since been retired, and replaced by somebody who, while not exactly the most personable manager, at least responds to problems in a timely and effective manner. In hindsight, its really amazing how much less aggravating things got at work just by not having these things accumulate until the one actually responsible manager found the time to deal with some of them.

[darkrose50]

A good manager can make a job feel good.

I have had:

Manager 1: I liked this guy, he was cool. However his theory was that multitasking was the best thing ever! It is not. It is proven to be inferior. This was a training wheels manager.

Manager 2: This guy was kind of a jerk. His theory was to lie to the customers (not to us) and wanted us just make things up for fun to tell the customers. He was fired for lying about drinking at work around Christmas (evidently okay, but lying about it is not). He thought that my note taking in the program "Notes" was somehow alarming (I guess a somewhat common response, for reasons that are beyond me). This was a training wheels manager.

Manager 3: Her theory was to lie about everything to everyone, and to cover up anything and everything that made her look bad. She also wanted to lay low and avoid addressing any issue at all, ever and always. She tried to get me fired 3-4 (?) times (with supervisor 3). Once she lost weeks of my work (literally weeks), wanted me to stop trying to get IT to get it back (it was her fault, she forgot about a server move, and she wanted to hide this fact), and tried her best to get me fired over it. This was a training wheels manager.

Manager 4: We finally got an experienced manager who was competent. As a bonus he did not lie to our faces. It was refreshing.

Manager 5: We were given an experienced manager with even more experience to get things worked on that need attention. More of the honesty thing. These are good times to be in my department.

Supervisor 1: Great lady. Only wished that she let me study in the beginning. I kid you not I spent two weeks watching a guy surf the interwebs looking at Niki shoes. I would have learned more in less than one day going over my notes.

Supervisor 2: Great guy. Pretty good supervisor. A really smart guy. His theory was to ignore a problem and hope that it goes away. This blew up on me big-time once.

Supervisor 3: Thought that all the sales agents needed to be watched at all times or we would start trashcan fires (she would say this early and often). She tried to get me fired 3-4 (?) times (with manager 3).

Supervisor 4: I liked her, but she was caught up in a management purge.

Supervisor 5: Great guy. Sometimes a little too cautious.

Supervisor 6: Great lady. I appreciate being given the time to do my work. Manager 3 and Supervisor 3 would come by and ask me what I was doing while I was actually working (like writing an email, or finishing up paperwork).

Oh its by no means an evil. I also work in a phone based job, mostly taking escalated calls. You have no idea how much of MY time it wastes when a customer is cold transferred. The customer 1) has to explain everything from the start, which often includes details that you know I don't need and 2) will almost always add a short diatribe as to why the previous adviser didn't have the courtesy to actually transfer them properly. It may save you 30 seconds, but it costs me 2 minutes. That's the very definition of inefficiency from shortsightedness.

The exception would be if you somehow have long internal queues, but that's not the fault of the transfer.

Mostly I am talking about folks calling for department X, who called department Y.

Now if would be different if it was my customer, and I screwed something up.

My department gets up to ~100 people for the busy season. We are specifically for sales. During the busy season spending half of our day on the phone transferring people would cut our bonus check in half.

[Blackhawk748]

Eh, management is like an IT department. When everything is working right nobody really notices, but when something goes wrong they must be incompetent.

Ironically for this metaphor, when something goes wrong it's the management insisting the IT department must be incompetent.

Lol Trust me, I notice when management is there and everything is going well because its gonna stop going well reeaaaalll quick

[Rogar Demonblud]

It is something they specialize in. Where I work, all promotions are now 'acting' for six months so that if they find out you're an idiot, they aren't stuck with you. It's amazing how many people don't make it through those six months, almost as if the qualities sought in a supervisor/manager have nothing to do with the job of being a supervisor/manager.

[Peelee]

It is something they specialize in. Where I work, all promotions are now 'acting' for six months so that if they find out you're an idiot, they aren't stuck with you. It's amazing how many people don't make it through those six months, almost as if the qualities sought in a supervisor/manager have nothing to do with the job of being a supervisor/manager.

I don't see why they'd be stuck with them regardless; does your company not have demotions?

[Keltest]

I don't see why they'd be stuck with them regardless; does your company not have demotions?

In general, constantly promoting and demoting people without some sort of intentional evaluation period is considered bad practice. Depending on how the contracts are written, it can also be difficult to do so without problems.

[Peelee]

In general, constantly promoting and demoting people without some sort of intentional evaluation period is considered bad practice. Depending on how the contracts are written, it can also be difficult to do so without problems.

Kahn-tract? Wassat?

Besides, constant promotion/demotion doesn't really send any other signals than constant acting Xs.

[Blackhawk748]

Kahn-tract? Wassat?

Besides, constant promotion/demotion doesn't really send any other signals than constant acting Xs.

It sounds better to Corporate

[AMFV]

Kahn-tract? Wassat?

Besides, constant promotion/demotion doesn't really send any other signals than constant acting Xs.

Well if they're "acting" or "on probation" it looks intentional if they don't work out.

[Laserlight]

And is typical of management everywhere. Which is why one of the more common office 'house rules' is to ignore whatever management says and do whatever gets you your bonuses.

Economics 101: People Respond To Incentives.

It is absolutely astonishing how many people in business or government have zero grasp of this. It's as if they truly believe "I will write this rule, and POOF, everyone else will automatically, happily, completely comply with what I want" and it never occurs to them that maybe people will instead do what pays them most or gets some other benefit.

I was happy when I was in a technical sales job, where I usually got to ask the client questions about what he needed and then provide the best material to suit his application. And "best" generally included "the least expensive product that will do the job", because if i didn't offer it, the competition would.

[xibefahip]

Hello there! How do you do?

[Altheus]

Economics 101: People Respond To Incentives.

It is absolutely astonishing how many people in business or government have zero grasp of this. It's as if they truly believe "I will write this rule, and POOF, everyone else will automatically, happily, completely comply with what I want" and it never occurs to them that maybe people will instead do what pays them most or gets some other benefit.

I was happy when I was in a technical sales job, where I usually got to ask the client questions about what he needed and then provide the best material to suit his application. And "best" generally included "the least expensive product that will do the job", because if i didn't offer it, the competition would.

It really is not complicated, if you want a specific behaviour displayed at work measure it and reward it (with money) fairly and consistently such that every time this behaviour is displayed money is added to a bonus.

[RandomNPC]

By law, in this case, the company is limited to 20% of the premium paid [in a population such as the gold plan] to be used for non-health-care (profit, lights, rent, electricity, water, payroll, and whatnot). What appears to be happening is that sick folks just pick the gold plan, and as a result it is expensive for the gold plan population. If there were less sick folks in the population of the gold plan, then the premium would be cheaper.

I'd like to call attention to this one.

If all the most expensive clients are in the gold plan, 20% of the premium is higher than it would be if they were healthy.

If the average gold plan member spends $2500 a year you get to charge enough to keep $500 a year for the company.

If the gold plan is flooded with unhealthy people who spend $50,000 average a year, you get to keep $10,000.

(Numbers completely made up because I get depressed looking at real healthcare numbers in America)