Beyond the Paycheck · 2026-04-28 · 23 min
Summary A pharmaceutical company was about to roll out student loan repayment - until they actually looked at the data and realized it was the parents and grandparents carrying the loans, not their employees. That one insight changed everything about how they approached financial wellness. In this episode, Kelsey Willock sits down with Tom Ellis, VP of Total Rewards at Emplify Health, who has spent over 20 years building people programs inside some of the largest health systems in the country - from Tennessee to Maine to Florida and now Wisconsin. Tom is one of those rare total rewards leaders who is equally comfortable talking about data warehouses and frontline employees living paycheck to paycheck. Together, Kelsey and Tom get into why so many elegant benefits programs fall apart when they hit real employee lives, how to build a direct behavioral health partnership that actually works (his prevented eight suicidal ideations in its first year), why HR is so bad at telling its own story, and where the future of benefits is heading when it comes to flexibility and shared accountability. If you design, measure, or communicate benefits programs, Tom's perspective will stay with you.
Other episodes covering the same guests and topics, from across The B2B Podcast Index.
Benefit Personas: Making Rewards Human Across 15,000 Employees71 / 100
From CD changers to FICA: a head of HR on money, AI, and people67 / 100
Money, mind, and movement: supporting the whole employee50 / 100
The Benefit Almost Nobody Uses, and Why It Pays Off75 / 100
The Missing Conversation in Every Open Enrollment69 / 100
