by Carolyn Kick | Jun 26, 2019 | Partnership Announcements
Last week Launchways collaborated with FinTex to host an educational panel which focused on the HR issues startups face as they scale. FinTex is a nonprofit organization which provides local Financial Technology (“fintech”) startups with the education and resources they need to be successful. Having identified HR issues as a top challenge area for the Chicago fintech community, FinTex enlisted Launchways to host an educational event on the topic.
Launchways is a Chicago-based provider of strategic solutions for Human Resources, Payroll, and Employee Benefits. Launchways specializes in working with growing companies to help them get the people part of the business right. As a member of the vibrant Chicago startup community themselves, Launchways was elated by the opportunity to partner with FinTex to support their mission of educating local fintech leaders.
Launchways assembled a panel of expert HR thought-leaders representing some of the fastest growing companies in the Chicago fintech space. Panelists included:
- Ryan Pollock, Managing Partner, Objective Paradigm
- Carolyn Kwon Montgomery, VP of People, Pangea Money
- Carrie Gibson, Head of Talent Development Diversity & Inclusion, Avant
Launchways was also excited to welcome Jay Rudman, CEO, TopstepTrader, who gave the opening remarks at the event and is an active leader with the FinTex organization.
Launchways CEO, Jim Taylor, introduced the panelists and moderated the discussion throughout.
The topics covered during the panel included:
- Recruiting: high-impact recruiting strategies and tips on how to create seamless hiring processes to build your team as you grow.
- Retention: how to audit your company’s employee retention health and enact effective strategies that engage and retain your key employees.
- Compensation/Equity: how to structure effective compensation packages and better understand how to reward and retain key employees with equity.
Both FinTex and Launchways extend their sincerest gratitude to Convene, who sponsored the event by providing the venue.
by Carolyn Kick | Mar 25, 2019 | Partnership Announcements
Launchways today announced a partnership with CleverRX to offer clients employee prescription drug discounts through the CleverRX Prescription Savings Card. CleverRX is a state-of-the-art pharmacy savings card provider that helps companies provide added value to their employees. Launchways is the first benefits broker in Illinois to offer the CleverRX program to its clients.
Launchways will offer CleverRX Prescription Savings Cards to its employee benefits clients as an added perk of being part of the Launchways benefits brokerage. “We are very excited to offer our clients this innovative solution to the challenge of rising prescription drug costs. Using CleverRX, our clients will be able to access significant savings for themselves and their employees” said Launchways President, Gary Schafer.
CleverRX can save users money regardless of their insurance plan by routing deep discounts on prescription drugs at the point of transaction, while also providing location-based price transparency through its user-friendly app. It can reduce the cost of filling a prescription by as much as 80%, and over 70% of Americans can save money using the card – including employees who opt for high-deductible health plans. As such, CleverRX is a worthwhile addition to any employee benefits package and can be a significant value add for employees. Best of all, CleverRX is completely free to use for companies and employees alike.
Launchways believes in helping our clients empower their employees to become better healthcare consumers. As Jim Taylor, Launchways CEO, noted, “We are proud to be the first benefits broker in Illinois to offer the CleverRX program. We believe in doing what’s best for our clients, and helping them do what is best for their employees, and CleverRX fits perfectly into that vision.”
Why CleverRX? What
Prescription Drugs Cost Employers
Why did Launchways partner with CleverRX, and why should you be excited about this new offering? Prescription drugs are one of the main healthcare expenses for employers, so reducing the cost of prescriptions using CleverRX is an effective way to address this challenge.
Prescription drugs are a major driver of healthcare costs
for patients and for employers. Drug prices increase an average of 4% a year
and specialty drugs, already the most expensive category, increase by
21% per year. Prescription drugs have become the second greatest
healthcare expense for companies and represent roughly a third of total
healthcare costs for employers.
In an age of rising drug prices, and higher co-pays and deductibles, many employers are cutting coverage to manage their costs. But the reality is that you can effectively reduce healthcare costs without sacrificing the quality of your benefits offering. We explored how to address prescription drug costs in a previous article, but one clear way to save is to reduce the cost of drugs directly through a program such as CleverRX.
CleverRx is about more than just saving money for employers. Because CleverRX reduces employees’ healthcare costs, it is a great additional perk for companies to offer their employees. Improving your benefits package is a great way to boost employee morale, engagement, and retention. In 2016, Aflac found that 60% of employees would take a job with lower salary but better benefits, and that 42% of employees said that increasing benefits would help keep them in their jobs. Given that CleverRX is free for you and for your employees, why not offer it to your employees as an added benefit?
From significant savings on prescription drugs to attracting
and retaining top talent, CleverRX can do a whole lot for your company. Ask our
benefits experts how you can integrate the CleverRX Prescription Savings Card
into your benefits package through Launchways.
About Launchways
Launchways provides business leaders with the resources and
guidance they need to build scalable people processes to support long-term
growth. Founded in 2009, Launchways has helped thousands of companies better
approach the people side of their business through strategic solutions for
human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance. For more
information, please visit www.launchways.com.
About CleverRX
CleverRX offers a pharmacy savings card that works for you
by partnering with the healthcare community to bring state-of-the-art,
money-saving tools to patients and employees. CleverRX saves 80% off
prescription drugs and often beats the average copay. It is also completely
free for patients and employers. Now that’s clever! Learn more at www.cleverrx.com.
by Carolyn Kick | Mar 8, 2019 | Partnership Announcements
Launchways is excited to announce a partnership with Chanté
Thurmond, a leading Chicago-based D&I Expert and Executive Talent
Consultant, to create a new series of Diversity & Inclusion training
sessions and offerings scheduled to begin Spring 2019.
The goal is to leverage our mutual expertise to help our clients access
diversity, equity and inclusion resources that will empower their workplace
culture. We will develop webinars and training programs that will help leaders
navigate D&I topics such as: workplace inclusion and accessibility, gender
pay gaps, unconscious bias, employee resource groups, and more.
Launchways CEO Jim Taylor expressed his excitement for the
new D&I initiative, saying “Diversity and inclusion are vital to the long-term
success of any organization. Launchways is dedicated to helping companies
achieve sustainable growth through a strong company culture and effective talent
acquisition and retention. Chanté Thurmond’s expertise and the addition of
D&I consulting to our repertoire is a major step forward in our mission.”
In addition to her consulting work, Chanté Thurmond founded
The Darkest Horse in 2018 to change the national conversation about diversity
and inclusion by inviting business leaders to share their stories. One of her
aims in 2019 is to directly tackle D&I issues in the workplace through her
partnership with Launchways.
Of her work at The Darkest Horse and her partnership with
Launchways, Chanté Thurmond noted “Together, we stand in solidarity to commit
our time, energy and resources to address workplace disparities and workforce
inequities. 2019 marks a year of much-needed partnership, in which we forge onwards
with strategic partners who share our passions, values and goals to help make
workplaces become more inclusive. Jim Taylor and his team at Launchways are the
epitome of strategic partners and multipliers.”
Why You Should Care About Diversity and Inclusion
What is Diversity and Inclusion and how can companies
benefit by paying attention to them?
Diversity covers the area of inclusion, generally defined by
hiring and promoting processes. Diversity trainings have been around for a long
time, and many companies do include guidelines or quotas in their hiring
protocols to increase gender and racial equity on their teams. However,
companies frequently overlook promotion practices and long-term success of
employees of different genders and races. The result is that many diversity
programs function as damage control to protect the organization from
perceptions of bias, and do not result in stronger teams.
This is unfortunate, because physical diversity at every
level of an organization is a key driver of success. Recent
studies show that greater gender and racial diversity each are
directly correlated with increased profitability and value creation. Companies
with the most women and minorities in leadership positions are between 20-30%
more likely to achieve above average financial performance.
That is why inclusion is a necessary counterpart to
diversity. Companies thrive when all employees are full team members with equal
opportunities for advancement and share ownership over the company culture and
mission/vision. Team members need to feel that they belong and can thrive at
the company. Quotas and one-off trainings cannot achieve those results.
Instead, leaders need to put every part of their company under the microscope
to see how they can best serve all employees. Diversity and inclusion
need to become integral parts of the company that are valued and lived by every
day.
This can best be achieved through ongoing training and
strategic policy changes, under the guidance of experienced D&I
consultants. Every organization is different and solutions need to meet each
company’s unique challenges. But with consistent, concerted effort and the right
expertise, leaders can create more vibrant and successful teams.
Launchways is excited to offer the guidance that its clients
need to foster true diversity and inclusiveness through its upcoming training
programs, webinars, and consulting services in partnership with Chanté
Thurmond.
About Launchways
Launchways provides business leaders with the resources and
guidance they need to build scalable people processes to support long-term
growth. Founded in 2009, Launchways has helped thousands of companies better
approach the people side of their business through strategic solutions for
human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance. For more
information, please visit www.launchways.com.
About Chanté Thurmond
Chanté is a fierce advocate of equity & inclusion; gender parity and social justice initiatives. She is on a mission to learn the backstories of underrepresented leaders and share their voice with the world. Her expertise is in Organizational Development, Social Innovation, Health & Well-being and Community Engagement. In a previous life, Chanté’s work centered around cultivating strategic alliances between public and private sector leaders to reduce public health inequities and improve population health outcomes. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from Mount Mercy University and a M.A. from St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN.
