(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Major support for Carolina Business Review provided by Colonial Life providing benefits to employees to help them protect their family, their finances, and their futures.

High Point University the premier life skills university focused on preparing students for the world as it is going to be.

And Sonoco, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging products.

And provider of packaging services with more than 300 operations in 35 countries - It is no longer a new as we approach the first half of the first quarter, but we are approaching a new norm with the deployment of the vaccine.

I am Chris William and welcome again to the most widely watched and longest running source of Carolina business policy and public affairs.

We'll unpack what's important to know here in the beginning of this first quarter.

And later on, we welcome back the chief executive officer of an important leader in the Carolinas, certainly in the Palmetto state, the CEO of Colonial Life, Tim Arnold joins us again.

We start now.

- [Narrator] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource based building materials providing the foundation upon which our communities improve and grow.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Visit us at SouthCarolinaBlues.com.

The Duke Endowment, a private foundation enriching communities in the Carolinas through higher education, healthcare, rural churches, and children's services.

(upbeat music) On this edition of Carolina Business Review, Jeff Williams of MindPath Care Centers, Carlos Phillips from the Greenville Chamber, and special guest, Tim Arnold president and CEO of Colonial Life.

(upbeat music) - Welcome again to the dialogue.

Carlos nice to see you, Jeff welcome for the first time.

We hope this is not a painful process for you but thanks for joining us to you both.

- To be here.

- Carlos, we'll start with you.

A lot of talk comes and goes, it ebbs and flows, and that's the idea of raising minimum wage.

And now the new Biden administration has included in its Stimulus Bill just moving it flat up to $15 an hour.

Is that a good proposal?

- Well, I think the chamber has come out and with our position on that we recognize that the economic picture has changed a bit since the minimum wage was adjusted back in 2009.

It costs more to live these days.

And recognizing that we've done some math at the Greenville Chamber, and based on cost of living increases and inflation rates we think the minimum wage if it's adjusted federally it should be higher than its current wage.

But our math does not come to $15 an hour.

So that's the first point.

Also we think people should make as much money as possible for their jobs, but our minimum wage we preferred that is best increased at the market level, and that market driven forces influence that.

And we're starting to see that here.

I know in Greenville, we've got private employers from a restaurant tours to hospital health systems and what have you.

They are increasing their minimum wage for their workers.

And it's important for them to do that, particularly if they wanna attract the best talent that they can their positions.

They are recognizing that we have to do better and I think those market driven forces are really going to impact the rise in minimum wage as opposed to a federally mandated increase.

- And this is not meant to be a leading question, Carlos, but your research shows that instead of compelling it to let it organically bubble up through the market economy.

Is that fair to say?

- No, I think just principally the market should drive it.

Our math says that if the federal government mandates a minimum wage increase it should not be at the $15 level.

It should be South of that.

- Yeah.

I wanna ask you one more question and then Jeff I promise we're gonna get you in here because this would be an important dialogue.

Carlos, the tragic death of George Floyd early last summer, late spring, of course refocused energies on racial equity and economic mobility.

There were a lot of corporations that stood up and raised their hand to say that they were going to do things about it.

Both through money, through policy, through advocacy, et cetera, et cetera.

Has there been a loss of momentum or has some of these efforts gone underground and are still working?

What's the general sense of what's going on now?

- Yeah, my sense is that efforts toward racial equity have increased, especially since the George Floyd incident last year.

I know here in Greenville, there's a recognition that we can't boil the ocean, we really can't solve the national issue but we've got enough on our plate here locally to address equity.

So as you know, we formed in partnership with the chamber the Urban League and United Way here in Greenville.

We formed a Racial Equity and Economic Mobility Commission to examine race-based disparities and education, health, income, and the criminal justice system.

But not only to identify those disparities, but more importantly, to address them so that we can eradicate inequities in our community.

So here in Greenville we've taken the bull by the horn and we've got community and business leaders from throughout the Greenville area engaged in this work.

We recognize that it won't be easy but we also recognize, yeah, it's overdue and it's necessary.

- Jeff, how does... And this is not statistical, there's some soft science to this.

Apart from what the public health crisis has been over these last, oh, well almost a year now.

How does racial equity, how does economic mobility now... How does that factor into the mental wellness in the mental health and in general the state of people's minds and feelings about each other and the communities?

- No, it factors in substantially.

And I can tell you that where we are outpatient, mental and behavioral health in your practice.

We like to think of it as mind care, somebody needs that term.

We focus on mind care and for the past year the acuity level of folks coming in for either therapy or a medical management has increased substantially.

And a lot of it is due two major kind of stimuli.

One is obviously the pandemic, but number two is the social quo that we have on issues like we're talking about, racial issues, et cetera.

So it is very meaningful.

People are coming in, they're struggling with these issues, we're helping them through these issues, but it's gonna continue to be that way for a while.

- Have corporations responded inclined with that?

- I think so.

I mean, even ourselves, we're helping people through these issues and at the same time we're helping ourselves through these issues.

We're (indistinct) business ourselves we're looking at these issues and we've taken initiatives to check ourselves just to make sure that we're thinking about these things appropriately and we've contracted with outside help to help us look at that too.

So everybody's looking for help.

It's out there and we're part of the solution but we're also seeking solutions along the way.

- Carlos, are you hearing anything in your constituents, either businesses or the community and the upstate of South Carolina about this?

How mental health, how the state of being in the mind and the relationship?

How are businesses handling it?

How are people handling it?

Are there anecdotal stories or evidence out there?

- Yeah, there are certainly a recognition, Chris, that the past year has taken its toll not just on businesses and the health of businesses, but perhaps more importantly on the health of its employees.

And we have a staff here of about 25, and I think maybe before the pandemic we may have taken for granted a bit the value of of coming into an office and convening, and the teamwork and the socialization of work.

We may have undervalued that prior to the pandemic.

But we haven't been into this for a year now.

I know that I can see with my team.

I mean, we miss each other.

Also, I think it's important to know our spouses and partners they want us to get out of the house and go back to work as well.

So it's taken its toll over personal relationships as well.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- Jeff, were you're gonna say something.

- No, I agree.

I love your comments, Carlos.

I think that's exactly right.

And it's the same thing we've seen in schools.

I mean, we think about sending our kids off to school and be educated, et cetera.

But I think we've underappreciated the essential social dynamics involved in these kids growing up in a social setting and how important that is to their overall development.

And then that's taken a huge toll.

- Jeff what follows with that is, what are the longer lasting effects in how we comprehend what mental wellness is and how we use mental health services?

What is that gonna look like beyond this pandemic?

- Well, it's a great question.

I mean, you have to look at the stats, 50% of lifetime mental illnesses have been gone before the age of 14.

So if you develop issues prior to that point you're gonna have them for your lifetime.

And so it's essential.

And having that resources in the school systems, helping students and families who are experiencing these challenges get, somehow couldn't be more important.

I mean, there's almost no other more important fundamental break that you need to put in place at those young ages than that.

So I think we're gonna see some real long-term effects.

And it's not just in adolescence either, it's certainly also in young adults.

- We're gonna get a view of that from a CEO's chair as well in a moment here in just a second joined by the CEO of Colonial Life.

Joining us now is the chairman of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

But his day job is the chief executive officer of Colonial Life.

And also in the interest of full disclosure, Colonial Life is and has been a supporter of Carolina Business Review.

We welcome to the dialogue again, Tim Arnold.

Tim, nice to see you again and thank you for joining us.

- Chris, thank you.

It's great to be with you again.

- Tim, we would kind of unpack this idea of mental health and wellness comparing the softer science of these things that we're already a little prickly to now how we're all feeling about a whole lot of things.

So let's try and get back to the statistical way about it.

Tim is a CEO, is a team leader of quite a crowd at Colonial Life.

Give us a sense of the state of mind of where your team is now versus maybe where it was.

And how does that loss of connection and collaboration manifest itself.

- Yeah, Chris it's a timely question.

We actually just completed our employee engagement survey which we do annually, and we thought that there might be a slight drop in our results, and actually we saw an improvement and we recognize that there are a number of factors leading to that.

So if you think about the pre-COVID world having an all employee meeting and talking with everyone about your plans and your goals and your results can be a bit challenging, especially for an organization like ours finding space for 1200 people to be in the same room.

And so pre-COVID, we were only doing that quarterly.

And post-COVID we recognize the need to engage people on a more regular basis?

So we actually had 10 all employee meetings last year.

We found ways to connect with people virtually, we found ways to celebrate successes virtually.

And so we actually saw an improvement in our scores.

Now that doesn't mean that everyone likes being at home.

And so we have been gradually returning people back to the office.

And we have about 20% of our team back now.

So what we're hearing is encouraging, I think there's tremendous social value in the work that we do and people recognize it.

In times like COVID insurance companies are really there for those moments to help people get through these very difficult times.

- When you try to describe the statistical analysis that you all did around where people's heads are, if you don't mind me saying that.

Is there a feel you get though when you're either on a Zoom or you're talking to a teammate, do you get the sense about how they're feeling about things?

- Yeah, that's a great question, Chris.

And it really is difficult.

It's sort of like when we all began using email and learning how to understand tone and intent and conversation, and it has its own type of cadence.

We do regular check-ins with people both at a team level and an individual level.

We've encouraged all of our managers to be a lot more frequent and intentional by just checking in on people's mental health.

And so nationally we've seen an uptick in mental health incidents and we see that at our own claim experience.

And we see that to some extent our population, I don't have the data for me to tell you exactly what kind of impact that looks like, but we see it happening and we've tried to do a lot to overcome it.

- We'll open this up and for our panel.

Carlos, Jeff, please.

- No, I mean, I can tell you that we're in the business of providing care and we have 180 providers in North Carolina and South Carolina.

The volume year over year is 35%, 40% higher than the pre-pandemic levels.

- And is there...

I'm sorry, Jeff.

is there a question in there.

That's what we're doing?

- Oh, sorry.

- No, that's okay.

That's all right.

- No, I was just gonna tag on his comment that he wasn't quite sure of that increment in the increase in claims but I can tell you that the growth has been substantial.

- (mumbles) fastest growing companies in North Carolina must (indistinct).

Do you think that has something to do with COVID, or is it just because of the services you offer otherwise.

- Due to COVID, and then the social unrest over the past year.

- Carlos, question for Tim.

- Tim, you talked about how you've transitioned perhaps how you're engaging your folks.

Do you have a couple of tips that you could provide to other employers that have really worked well for you but may help employers as well?

- Thank you for that, Carlos, and congratulations to you and everyone at the Greenville Chamber for being recognized as a five star chamber last year by the United States Chamber.

That's awesome.

I think the thing is working best for us is really staying connected.

Not everyone's comfortable with the videos and Zooms and teams and recognizing that we all get what I call a little bit windshield weary from staring at the screen all day long every day but really staying connected to people has helped us a lot reminding people of the reason that we are here.

If you think about COVID and you think about products like disability insurance, and hospital indemnity insurance, and medical insurance, and unfortunately, even life insurance, what we do has tremendous value in helping people see the value that they are providing to America's workers and their families every day has helped us keep people engaged.

And then I think we've tried to gradually bring people back and we've done a lot around the education about what we're doing to keep the building safe and clean and social distancing and mask wearing when we're not at our desks.

And those kinds of things have been really beneficial and helpful.

- PricewaterhouseCoopers released a study last year that said 15% of respondents said they were more likely to get life insurance now because of COVID.

How do you square that?

What is that?

- Yeah, you're absolutely right, Chris.

And in fact, in January of this year, LIMRA also released a survey saying that that number was 29% who expect to purchase life insurance or more life insurance in 2021.

And if you equate that to the population, it's like 75 million people saying that they wanna buy life insurance or more life insurance.

And so, in our industry we've believed for a long time that most of America's workers are under insured for life and disability and a whole host of other products.

And this has really brought that to light, people recognize that in a pandemic having life insurance is critically important, as well as other types of coverage.

So we're encouraged that people are seeing that need and we and every other company in our industry are ready to help out.

- Jeff, question for Tim.

- Yeah, I'm, curious.

I really appreciate your comments about the employee engagement work that you're doing.

And I'm interested about how you see reopening working in your organization, bringing folks back in, how do you bring people will feel kind of post-vaccine.

Will we we ever get there.

- Yeah, that's a great question, Jeff.

In the fall when we get through the summer spike here in South Carolina.

In the fall we began to really think about how we would accelerate plans for people coming back into the office.

We called it Project to Reunite.

And then as we began getting into the holidays and we saw the spike going back up again we actually pulled back from those plans.

But our plan is post-vaccine we will have more of a hybrid environment.

So some people will continue to work from home and others whose jobs have more of a collaboration orientation, we'll probably ask those folks to come back in at least a few days a week.

I think the days of five days a week for everyone in the office are gone.

And prior to COVID about 25 to 30% of our employees work from home anyway.

And I was really proud of how the rest pivoted.

So on March the 17th, we were all in the office, and on March 23rd, we were all at home.

We were still able to take care of our customers, we were encouraged by that.

But I think the landscape has shifted and I think it will be a hybrid going forward.

- Carlos.

- Yeah, we're in a similar situation there, Tim.

We actually shut down our office on March 17 and we haven't returned completely since then.

We had a flexible work environment prior to that.

So actually I feel like in some ways the pandemic took away a competitive advantage that I had because we were already very flexible.

But even today we only come to the office when it's absolutely necessary.

But the team has really done an effective job of delivering values from home in such a way that we really don't feel rushed to return at this time.

- Is there a question for Tim, Carlos?

- No.

- Okay.

Tim, let me come back to something specific to policy around healthcare and that is South Carolina, and in fact, North Carolina.

Both States have been reticent to accept federal Medicaid dollars.

Do you think this pandemic will somehow convince the General Assembly in South Carolina to relent?

- Yeah, that's a great question, Chris.

And I don't know.

I think what we're hearing is that while some people may be thinking differently about accepting federal aid that it's likely that there won't be enough votes to actually take federal aid.

Here in South Carolina at least, I think that's the perspective that the chamber has on the issue.

- Mm-hmm, okay, all right.

Jeff, question.

- No.

Okay, I've got a list of them, but I don't wanna (mumbles).

Tim, back to you in South Carolina, North Carolina, both have been in session now for a while.

What do you hope is going to come out of the legislative agenda?

Broadband, some type of consumer protection?

What are you guys hoping for?

- Yeah, Chris, thanks for the question.

In fact, the South Carolina chambers a couple of weeks ago released it's legislative agenda.

So, the business community here in South Carolina and as a reminder, the chamber represents more than a thousand businesses in the state of South Carolina.

And we have strong agreement that we believe in South Carolina it's time to pass a Hate Crimes Bill.

We are one of three States that do not currently have a Hate Crimes Bill.

And it's near the top of the list for the South Carolina chamber.

We're also very interested in seeing education reform continue.

I think the General Assembly has taken that on over the last couple of years and we've seen some increases in teacher pay.

But there's more that needs to be done.

In full disclosure, I sit on the board of an organization named Transform South Carolina, and I think they have some great ideas about education reform that they've gotten good coverage across much of the state, but there's more to do there.

And then to your point about broadband, clearly in this environment it's more important than ever.

And again, we've made some progress, but there's a lot more to do.

And that's very near the top of our legislative agenda as well.

- In the issue, wearing your hat is South Carolina Chamber chairman.

And back to the education issue, of course, it's a prickly topic.

We've got families and children on one side and other families and children on the other side.

You've got teachers that should be treated with the idea that they are at risk and probably should get this vaccine immediately if not last week.

How does the chamber, how do you, how does some of your constituents and some of your colleagues and CEOs come down on the fact that school should be in session, should it be in-person, should we go ahead and move forward with that?

- Yeah, the chamber has not adopted an official position on that one, Chris, but I think most of the literature we're seeing and research that we're seeing suggests it's actually more beneficial for children to be in school.

There are a lot of very negative implications for children being at home this much, especially I know you all talk about mental health before.

But we're seeing studies that suggest that mental health is actually a real challenge for children who are at home all the time.

And so, again, I'm not speaking for the chamber on this topic, but I think most business members believe it's better for children to be back in school.

We believe that that's the best way for children to continue to be ready to enter the workforce later on in life.

- And we're almost out of time.

So let me circle back around because one of the issues going on at the South Carolina Chamber is the idea that finding a permanent CEO, Swati Patel is interim CEO.

What's the list look like?

What kind of candidates you're seeing?

Who and maybe not named, but who do you... What profile do you hope is gonna sit in that seat?

We have less than a minute.

- Yeah, thank you, Chris.

So, Swati is doing a great job as our interim CEO, we're really appreciative of her stepping into that role.

We've had tremendous interest, and that's one of the reasons the process is taking a bit longer and then COVID and doing everything by Zoom is also a little bit more of a challenge.

But we've had great interest, not just in the state of South Carolina, but regionally and even nationally.

And so it's probably not a secret, but we're looking for people with chamber experience.

We're looking for people who can help the chamber grow.

We're looking for people who know how to be advocates for the members of the chamber in South Carolina.

And so we're really encouraged by the list of applicants we have and the interest we see in the role.

And we're hopeful that we can make a decision sometime in the next six weeks.

- All right, Tim, thanks for your leadership.

Best of luck going forward.

Jeff, good to have you on the program.

And I'm gonna be thinking about that as mind care now not mind path, but thank you- - We're good, thank you.

- Carlos, always nice to see you.

Take care, stay safe until next week.

I'm Chris William, goodnight.

- [Narrator] Major funding for Carolina Business Review provided by High Point University, Martin Marietta, Colonial Life, The Duke Endowment, Sonoco, Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

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