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February 22, 2021

Harvard Pilgrim focuses on inclusion, support and collaboration

PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED Harvard Pilgrim employees donate their time to the Girl Scouts of Connecticut.
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care CT Headquarters: Hartford Industry: Healthcare Website: www.harvardpilgrim.org Top CT Executive: Beth Roberts, Senior VP See all the BPTW in Connecticut winners.
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Three descriptive words are what make insurer Harvard Pilgrim Health Care a best place to work in the eyes of its employees: inclusive, supportive and collaborative.

To many they are just corporate buzzwords, but at Harvard Pilgrim they are actually put into practice.

Deanna Collins, marketing strategy manager for Harvard Pilgrim in Connecticut, joined the insurer 18 months ago.

“What I appreciate is that feedback is actionable or resolved. Improvement is very important. There is a constant commitment to wanting feedback. Also we are empowered to bring ideas to the table and experiences to our teams,” she said.

Yet for her, the most important word might be supportive. She cited the example of Harvard Pilgrim’s commitment to employees when the pandemic struck. When masks were in short supply, company officials were providing six masks per family.

“The team was concerned about our families as well,” she recalled.

But Harvard Pilgrim’s commitment to employees during COVID-19 has been more than physical protection. It has worked on employee mental health, too. A digital therapy initiative was recently launched.

“We wanted to support people dealing with the challenges of 2020,” said Jonathan Villaire, an employee experience specialist for Harvard Pilgrim. “It is no cost to employees and their dependents. We support employees as whole people.”

Harvard Pilgrim entered the Connecticut market in the summer of 2014 and had 28,072 people enrolled in HMO and indemnity plans in 2019. Its merger with Tufts Health Plan was finalized on Jan. 1, creating one of the nation's largest nonprofit insurers.

Collins said what sets Harvard Pilgrim apart is a commitment to its employees that matches its customer service.

“Harvard Pilgrim cares about each and every stakeholder,” she said, adding a lot of companies will claim that during the hiring process but she has seen the commitment since joining the company in 2019.

“Working across the organization, I see they care about the team members,” Collins said. “It’s tough for organizations to achieve that.”

Making employees caring members of their communities is another important aspect of Harvard Pilgrim’s supportive atmosphere, Villaire said. Through the company’s foundation, each employee can submit an application for a $500 grant for a nonprofit. The Connecticut office has an annual community service day and employees are granted days off to do community service projects.

Internally, the commitment to collaboration is exemplified by crowdsourcing among employees for co-creation of projects. It could be as simple as events for workers. But these are events that go beyond Monday Pilates and Taco Thursday.

Villaire said Harvard Pilgrim launched a crowdsourcing initiative on social and racial injustice and how the company can deal with it. It was not a top-down approach.

“The overarching theme is one of co-creation with employees. We don’t shy away from those difficult conversations. Inclusion is one of our core values. It’s important [to employees] to be a leader and take action,” he explained.

Another element of Harvard Pilgrim’s workplace commitment, Villaire added, is a belief that employees have a choice of where to set up shop.

“We look through the lens of involving employees in creating a meaningful work experience,” he said. “We are constantly looking at making Harvard Pilgrim a place where people choose to spend their talent. I’ve never heard of other companies looking at it that way. We’re selling the experience and engaging our employees.”

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