Case study EnLink Midstream

The challenge

EnLink Midstream is an integrated oil and gas company in the midstream sector with 1,500 employees. The company has an aging workforce and realized it could not sustain the double-digit increases to the cost of its medical plans.

A large portion of EnLink’s employees live in rural areas and receive most of their medical care at the ER and urgent care clinics. Obesity is also a major issue for employees, who experience high rates of heart disease, as well as hip and knee replacements, resulting in higher costs and disability claims.

To make its health plan sustainable, EnLink needed to:

• Lower health plan costs, while maintaining a competitive benefits package to attract and retain talent in the highly competitive midstream industry
• Get employees to take better care of themselves

Overcoming challenges

Kelli Sewell, Director of Human Resources at EnLink Midstream, realized she needed to do something to stem costs. She also knew that convincing the company’s executives to move to a CDHP was going to be an uphill battle, given the need to have a competitive benefits package to both attract and retain talent.

This was compounded by the fact that EnLink was growing rapidly and was on an acquisition spree, and Kelli served as the organization’s one and only benefits employee. It was clear – she needed help.

That’s when Sewell decided to play chess instead of checkers and brought on a strategic solution that would not only help her with day-to-day plan administration, but would also help her lay the groundwork for moving employees to a CDHP.

Simplifying healthcare with Alight Healthcare Navigation Solutions™

She paved the way for success by implementing Alight Healthcare Navigation Solutions several years before making the move to a CDHP. From 2011 to 2015, EnLink employees built a relationship with their Health Pro (Melanie) and became familiar with the healthcare navigation consumer tools. All this helped ease the transition to the CDHP in 2016, since employees already had a trusted go-to resource to help with comparing costs and identifying highly-rated physicians.

The results

By simplifying healthcare for employees and providing them with the tools to ease the transition to a CDHP, EnLink lowered healthcare costs and helped its employees make better healthcare decisions. By creating a CDHP that was the most “affordable” option for employees, EnLink achieved 35 percent enrollment in their HSA program in the first year, far surpassing typical first-year enrollment numbers of 10 percent. Not an easy feat, given two-thirds of them work in Field Operations (a group that the HR team thought would be hesitant to make the switch).