Taking Care of Your People Starts With Taking Care of Their Health
Most company leaders can rattle off their biggest expenses without much thought: payroll, obviously. Rent. Maybe technology. But there's a category they often miss, or worse, don't think they can do anything about: health insurance. For many organizations, it's the second-largest expense after wages, and it's growing faster than either of them. Yet most companies treat it like a utility bill. The carrier sends a renewal notice with a 10 or 15 percent increase, and leadership shrugs and passes it along.
That powerlessness is the real problem. Not the costs themselves, but the fact that you've ceded control over a benefit that affects every person on your team. You don't know what your employees are actually spending on care. You can't see whether your wellness programs are moving the needle. You're flying blind, subsidizing coverage you barely understand.
When a company takes direct ownership of what their employees actually spend on care, something shifts. Suddenly you have data. Real, granular data about your specific workforce's health needs. Maybe your team skews younger and healthier than the national average. Maybe you have chronic conditions that suggest preventive programs would pay for themselves. Maybe your employees use a lot of mental health services, which tells you something about your culture and what support matters. This isn't abstract HR anymore. This is your people, legible and knowable.
That visibility changes how you think about benefits. It stops being something you bolt on to attract talent and starts being something you design intentionally, for your actual organization. You move from "we're required to offer health insurance" to "we're investing in our people's health in ways that actually make sense for us."
This is culture work. Taking ownership of employee health says something about how you think about people. It says you see health not as a line item but as something central to dignity and flourishing. When employees see that their employer is paying real attention to their health; that they've moved from generic industry standard to thoughtful, specific care — they notice. It changes how they perceive whether the company genuinely values them, or just says it does.
Not every company is ready for this. But if you're paying seven figures on employee health benefits and you can't explain why, it might be worth asking whether there's a better way. Taking ownership is more work. But it also gives you something most companies don't have: a health benefit program that's actually designed for your people, not just imposed on them.
— The PFTN Team