

Thinking Outside the System: Redefining Employee Benefits with Suzanne Usaj, Senior Director of Total Rewards at The Wonderful Company
This episode features an interview with Suzanne Usaj, Senior Director of Total Rewards at The Wonderful Company. Suzanne leads strategy and execution for the company’s compensation, benefits and wellness suite of programs, delivering value to over 10,000 employees globally.
In this episode, Kirk and Suzanne discuss The Wonderful Company’s unique approach to health benefits, including their focus on preventive care, direct contracting for specialty care, and the important role of their onsite wellness centers.
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“ When someone really needs help, when they're experiencing a situation that they've never experienced before, which is a lot of the complex conditions in our healthcare system, how do we find specialty partners that may or may not be in those broad networks? But we build our own network and incentivize our members to go to that. So you still maintain a little bit of that benefits philosophy where you feel like you need choice, but you're driving people to be able to help make it easy for them to make high quality, low cost decisions for them and for, like I mentioned, the entire healthcare system.” – Suzanne Usaj
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Episode Timestamps:
*(00:57): Suzanne’s career journey
*(04:41): How The Wonderful Company serves their geographically diverse workforce
*(10:16): How Suzanne works within and outside the system
*(16:04): Connecting employees with suitable providers and streamlining the process
*(21:11): How The Wonderful Company uses data to work upstream
*(27:30): Clinics role in The Wonderful Company's strategy
*(32:52): What’s next in Suzanne’s strategy
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Links:
Connect with Suzanne on LinkedIn