K. Graney Podcast with HR VP Shawn Coyne on Benefits

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Hi everyone, it’s Kevin. Today is Monday, November 14th. On November 16th, annual enrollment opens here at EB, the time period each year when we make our benefits choices for the following year. I’ve got our Vice President of Human Resources, Shawn Coyne, on the podcast with me to talk about the benefits we offer employees. So Shawn, welcome. It’s your first podcast, so let’s start with a little background on you.

Thanks Kevin, it’s great to be here. I’ve been at Electric Boat since 2005 when I joined the Legal Department as Assistant General Counsel. In that role I worked a lot with the HR organization and several other organizations including Safety, Security and the Government Affairs teams. I took on my current role as VP of HR in May, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to lead the HR organization.

I’m glad to have you in the HR organization. I think the fact that you’ve been here since 2005; you’ve got a lot of those relationships that really help in that role. Today we get an opportunity to talk about the benefits package we offer our folks. It’s a pretty competitive, comprehensive program. I’m pretty pleased with it personally, and I’m proud we can offer it to our employees, and my family is pleased with it as well. So let’s talk a little bit about that.

I completely agree. The benefit package that we offer to all of our employees is excellent. As you know, well-being is a priority here at Electric Boat. Employees can and should feel confident they have support to care for their and their family’s health throughout their EB careers.

This year, in particular, we have good news to share about the cost of the health plans. Inflation has been a topic that’s on everybody’s mind and it’s impacting everything we do from food, housing, gas, you name it, everything’s been affected by inflation in some pretty remarkable ways. I know a lot of our employees haven’t experienced this before. I remember growing up in the 1970’s and dealing with some pretty bad inflation in those days when I was a kid. Unfortunately, this feels a little too familiar.

Yeah, as you said, I had similar experiences growing up. Costs seem to be going up everywhere, it’s really squeezing everyone’s budgets at home. The good news for everybody is that in this annual enrollment season, our medical plans have only gone up a couple dollars, in some cases just $1 per pay check, and we’ve been able to keep the plan designs and deductibles the same. Other benefits including our dental plan, the vision plan and the variety of voluntary benefit plans have no cost increases in 2023.

I know when you and I talked about this a while back, it was great news, and something that we definitely want to share with everybody. It seems like no matter what you do, historically, in any economic climate, costs for medical benefits always go up. In this case, having minimal changes during such a period of inflation is a huge win for everybody.

I completely agree, Kevin. With everything going on in the economy, for us to be able to do this for our employees is a wonderful thing. I’d also like to remind everybody that there are other opportunities in the benefit structure for people to control cost. One example is our on-site Family Wellness Center here in Groton. You can get primary care, your yearly physical, mental health counselling and physical therapy, all in one location. The Wellness Center is for employees enrolled in an EB UnitedHealthcare medical plan and their eligible dependents over age two. EB has a lot of other options that are out there where employees can go to certified professionals who can help in areas of nutrition, fitness and health coaching.

We also have our own pharmacy, just downstairs from the Wellness Center in Groton, and I use it, it’s a great advantage for us. Tell us a little more about what the pharmacy has to offer. 

We have the Family Pharmacy in Groton and a near-site pharmacy at Quonset Point with heavily discounted over-the-counter pharmacy items for employees and their families. Both locations are staffed by experienced pharmacists who have worked with EB employees for many, many years. They know our benefits and are available to answer questions, and they can also tell you about several prescription drugs that are offered free of charge. Our pharmacies also manage the Dimensions diabetes management program, which provides members with diabetic supplies and medications for free.

The Family Wellness Center and on-site pharmacies are just tremendous opportunities and benefits. They’re convenient, they provide great cost savings and for me, peace of mind—it’s right there, and you can go pick up your prescription or whatever you need very conveniently. We also have other benefits in the areas of health and wellness. Let’s remind folks about where they can find that information.

Sure Kevin, employees can find all the information they need about our benefits on our Human Resources Benefit website. In addition to the benefit information, the site also offers tools that help people out with financial wellness, and I encourage everybody to visit the benefits website at ebenefits411.com. They can learn more there and link directly to many of the programs.

I also want to remind everyone, open enrollment starts on November 16, but also that it ends on December 2.

It’s important to make sure that you take care of that, and don’t get caught out looking in on December 3. So Shawn, thanks for joining me today. I’m glad we could share some good news about the costs of our medical plans for the coming year and remind our folks about the range and quality of the benefits we offer.

Thanks for listening everyone; we’ll talk again soon.

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