Research Scenario: Mission Community Bank

By JPUncategorized

The Situation  |  The Company  |  Company Data  |  The Pitch  |  The Request  |  Sources

Community bank branch

The Situation

Leadership has been pitched an employee wellness program. They want to know whether to buy it.

You’re a Benefits and HR Analyst at Mission Community Bank, a locally owned bank with branches across San Antonio. Last month, the bank’s leadership team sat through a pitch from ThriveLine Wellness, a corporate wellness vendor proposing an employee wellness program for the bank’s roughly 300 employees. Leadership didn’t say yes, and they didn’t say no. They asked HR to look into it. That task has landed on your desk.

Your supervisor, Dana Ortiz, VP of Human Resources, has asked you to write a recommendation report. Your report will go to Dana first, and from there to CEO Mark Whitfield and the leadership team, who will make the final call based substantially on what you find.

The Company

A 300-person community bank with a traditional culture and a retention problem.

Mission Community Bank employs about 300 people across twelve branches in and around San Antonio, plus a small central operations staff. Like most community banks, its workforce is a mix: branch and call-center staff who spend much of the day on their feet or on the phone with customers, alongside loan officers, branch managers, and a smaller group in operations, compliance, and IT who work more conventional desk hours. The bank has a reputation locally for being a stable, if traditional, employer — steady hours, modest but reliable benefits, low drama. It is not a place known for perks.

Leadership has been paying closer attention to retention lately. Turnover, particularly among tellers and call center staff, has been a recurring topic in quarterly meetings, and it’s part of why the ThriveLine pitch got a hearing at all instead of a polite pass.

Company Data

What the bank already knows about its own workforce.

Before you start outside research, Dana has given you what the bank already has on hand.

Source What It Shows
Staff Survey The most recent survey pulse, sent to all staff earlier this year, drew 186 responses out of roughly 300 employees.
Exit Interviews Notes from the past two years surface a consistent handful of themes: burnout and workload near the top, along with pay and inflexible scheduling. Benefits come up only occasionally, and usually as a minor point rather than a primary reason for leaving.
Turnover Annual turnover runs near 24%, concentrated heavily in teller and call center roles rather than spread evenly across the bank.
Sick Days Averages 6.8 days per employee per year.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP) A free, confidential service run by an outside provider that offers employees short-term counseling and referrals for things like stress, mental health, family problems, and financial or legal worries. It’s the closest thing the bank currently has to a wellness benefit. Utilization sits at only about 3%, despite the program being free and available to everyone.
Health Insurance Mission is fully insured: it pays for employees’ health insurance through an outside carrier at a flat premium rate. The bank pays that rate regardless of how healthy its employees are or how much care they use.

None of this data was collected with ThriveLine’s pitch in mind.

The Pitch

What ThriveLine is offering, what it costs, and what it promises.

Vendor Proposal

ThriveLine Wellness — Employee Wellness Program
thriveline logo

ThriveLine’s pitch lays out a program built around three pieces: an annual biometric screening, a digital health-assessment platform, and ongoing coaching and challenges delivered through an app. The cost is $9 per employee per month, plus a one-time $7,500 setup fee and $45 per employee for each biometric screening, on a three-year contract.

To drive participation, ThriveLine recommends that the bank layer in incentives as part of the program: up to $250 per employee per year for completing the health assessment and screening. That amount is not included in the per-employee fee above — it would be a separate cost the bank pays directly. ThriveLine’s account rep also mentioned, almost in passing, that some clients see stronger results by adding a premium surcharge for employees who don’t participate, calling it “the most effective lever we’ve got.”

ThriveLine’s pitch deck claims the program pays for itself and then some: lower healthcare costs from catching health risks early, fewer sick days, better retention and easier recruiting, and a workforce that’s more engaged and productive day to day. The deck backs these claims with national industry statistics rather than anything specific to a fully-insured community bank in Texas — a gap you’ll need to weigh as you dig into outside sources.

The Request

Program or no program — and if a program, which one.

Leadership isn’t committed to spending anything. What they’ve indicated is that they could spend up to $60,000 a year on new employee benefits if something made a strong enough case.

Your report needs to answer two connected questions, not one: is an employee wellness program worth adopting at Mission Community Bank at all, and if so, is ThriveLine the right vendor for it — or would the bank be better served shopping around, since ThriveLine is not the only company offering this kind of program. Dana isn’t handing you criteria for what “worth it” means; that’s yours to define and defend, backed by your research, ending in a clear recommendation.

Sources

Start here. Read critically — figuring out where each source stands, and how much weight it deserves, is part of the job.

Supplemental Video Sources