Introducing the Lincoln Absence Advisor Podcast

In this episode, four Lincoln benefit professionals explore today’s leave and disability landscape and show how their knowledge and experience can help provide valuable and useful insights. Today’s participants include Sarah Montgomery, who manages our legal and compliance team, Trish Zuniga, compliance consultant for absence and statutory products, and Kristen Hostetter and Annie Jantz from our absence and disability product team. They discuss the types of topics this podcast will cover – including best practices, benefit coordination, state law differentiators, and much more. 

 © 2022 Lincoln National Corporation. All rights reserved.
AM-LASOE-AUD001   11/22 Z01   LCN-5074592-110122

Transcript

Karen:   0:00
Hi, everyone. I'm Karen Batson, marketing manager for leave and disability at Lincoln Financial Group. Welcome to the Lincoln Absence Advisor podcast. In this podcast series we'll be bringing together Lincoln experts to discuss various absence topics, as well as answer questions from brokers, consultants and employers. Topics will include leave management best practices, the value of disability, the changing PFML landscape and so much more. In this preview episode, we had several Lincoln Financial experts join us by phone to talk about the launch of the podcast. Hear from our compliance partners Sarah Montgomery and Tricia Zuniga, as well as absence product leads Kristin Hostetter and Annie Jantz about their experience, thoughts for the podcast and perspective on the leave landscape today.  Hi, everyone, Let's start by introducing ourselves. So,  Sarah, let's start with you. Do you mind giving us a little background of your expertise, What you do here at Lincoln and what we might hear your voice on on this podcast?  

Sarah:   0:58
Sure, thanks for having me. My name is Sarah Montgomery. I have been with Lincoln Financial Group for two years, and I manage the legal and compliance team that's responsible for monitoring all of our paid and unpaid leave laws as well as providing support to Accommodation Service's products that we offer.  

Karen:   1:17
Thanks there, Trish. You work with Sarah. I want to give us a little bit of your expertise and maybe some of the things you're excited to talk about.

Trish:   1:23
Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Trish Zuniga. I'm a, compliance consultant here at Lincoln Financial Group. So I provide compliance support for the absence management in statutory products. So what that means is, if anybody has any questions on FMLA. USERRA, any of the 120 plus unpaid leave laws that Lincoln administers, and also the new paid family and medical leave laws that are sprouting up in each state almost one every year. I'm your go to person for those questions.

Karen:   1:58
I don't know if we wanted to give your full name for that. You might get a lot of emails now. So, Kristen, want to give us your background, your expertise, your hopes and dreams about this podcast.

Kristin:   2:09
Good morning. Yes, I'm excited to be here. I have been a member of the product team here at Lincoln for the last six years and have worked in the world of absence for closer to 15. Um, there's so much happening in the world of absence management, and it's just really exciting to see things like paid family leave become more commonplace. Such a great benefit for employees that air stretched in so many different ways. But at the same time it can be challenging for employers, you know, when they're trying to comply with all of the different laws. So it'll just be exciting to dig into all of it.

Karen:   2:42
So, you know, I think you and I have worked together the most on all of these different communications that we've put under this Lincoln Absence Advisor name from our Webinars to our to our newsletter. How do you see the podcast being added to kind of these tools that we're providing to communicate and how it will kind of grow in the next year or so.

Kristin:   3:05
You know, podcasts or just another way for us to reach people I know. Personally, I consume almost all of my information through podcasts because they're quick. I can listen to them anywhere. So it'll just be nice for us to see if we can engage more people and and share information in a new way that that might be beneficial.

Karen:   3:23
So, Annie, let's jump to you. You want to give us a little background of your skillset what you have for expertise here at Lincoln and some of the things that you might talk to us about the podcast.

Annie:   3:33
Sure, Yeah, I'm glad, too. Um, so my name is Anne Jantz, and I have been with Lincoln or several years. My background really started with disability, so, long term, short term statutory disability for a number of years, both in the claims organization and then also product in product development. And then more recently I have moved over to the absence side. So I manage the FMLA company paid leave and unpaid state leave, as well as accommodation service's or ADA support for Lincoln's products. So kind of, ah, variety of, um, background in product but they all really intertwined with each other, which is one of the things that I like about this product set because they all touch each other, they all work together. They all kind of coordinate together,

Karen:   4:25
You know, it's I think, also very interesting about your background is some of the work you've done in market intelligence, which gives you a kind of a an interesting point of view and your own research in the trends that might be happening. Um, so it's kind of cool to sometimes hear your perspective, and I'm excited to kind of have those conversations on the podcast.  Do you think that will lend itself to these types of conversations as well?

Annie:   4:45
Yeah, I do. That definitely was. You know, a great experience for me. I spent some time in the market intelligence team, and so definitely, I think it helps. We also did a lot of market trends and looking at what's going on and on what may be on the horizon, what employers are thinking, what other, even outside of just group insurance, what other insurance companies are looking at, which is innovative and different.

Karen:   5:09
I feel like it's some ways the conversations just started when you think about know how popular this topics gonna be as those changes are happening, you know? How long do you think we're gonna be talking about this landscape and have to be figuring out all these changes in challenges?  

Sarah:   5:24
I can start in a let Trish give her opinion on this one, too. Will be talking about paid family medical leave for a long time. It is something that I think when the FMLA the federal FMLA, was enacted over 25 years ago, it provided unpaid leave. And now estates are realizing that they need to provide a paid component. Um, we're still seeing this patchwork develop of a federal mandate to provide an entitlement is now being built on with paid components through the states. Um, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next several years as more states create their own programs and to see whether the federal government steps in at any point and creates a paid component to the family. Um, the federal FMLA. But I still have a feeling that we will see the federal and state leave laws, coexist together and not replace one another.

Trish:   6:18
So we're doing a FMLA webinar and as a FMLA nerd. I went and took a deep dive into the history of FMLA . And what I found fascinating was that the fight for FMLA took nine years, well over nine years for progressive groups and special interest  groups and businesses to lobby for and get this piece of legislation passed. And right now there's a lot of conversation about the United States being one of two developed nations that do not provide for paid leave. and I think we'll see a lot of development, um, to get us to a space where everybody, not just individual states, have paid leave for everybody. So it's going to be a while.

Karen:   7:10
Now, are there any topics that you hope recover? You know, this year?

Annie:   7:14
Yeah. From my perspective, I would definitely like to talk about the connection between FMLA and ADA. I think that that tends to be a pretty big question, and I think that it's it's a really good topic and, you know, even broadening that out, the overlap with all of the different definitions of disability. But you know, FMLA ADA Um, any company that offers their own type of leaving the disability, I think that there's there's a lot there to unwrap and I think that would be a great topic

Trish:   7:47
For me webinars our time bound. You only have an hour to tackle hundreds of questions, and I'm really disappointed when there are interesting questions that we can't get to because of time constraints. So I'm really excited to have the opportunity to dig into those questions and have a longer conversation about absence and statutory disability issues. And how those two coordinate on this podcast.

Kristin:   8:16
You know, I'd love to drive into supervisor and manager training. I think these were the people there are often directly affected by absence, and they're also the first point of contact when an employee needs to take a leave or an absence. So ensuring that they they're trained on the different laws and they have all of the tools necessary to you know to be compliant in their roles is so important. And I think sometimes overlooked. So that's one of the topics I'm excited about.

Karen:   8:44
Well, it was D M E C came out with that survey last year where it was very evident, right that managers and supervisors needed to know more specifically about the ADA and FMLA, and it really kind of proved that point. So it is an interesting topic like what to do with that information? So kind of last question. Um, scale 1 to 5. How excited are you about this podcast?  

Kristin:   9:09
Ooh, it's definitely a five for me. I love podcasts, and I'm excited that we're gonna be able to share information in this format.

Annie:   9:16
Yeah, I'm with Kristen, too. I'm a five, for sure. I think I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I think they're a great way to get information and do it while you're busy,

Sarah:   9:26
Oh, me, definitely a five. I'm looking forward to us. I said a new medium, a new way to connect with people. And a new way as Trish mentioned to really get to circle back to particular questions that we might not be able to get to in a webinar or address and specifically in the Absence Advisor or in our quarterly updates on what's going on with, um, legislative and regulatory developments. Um, you know, we love looking forward to  making as many touch points with people who are interested in this space and share our knowledge as we can.

Trish:   9:58
Well, I wish we had stuck with the 1 to 10 scale so I could use my favorite quote started at ten, stayed at a ten. I'm very excited for this podcast.

Sarah:   10:10
Thank you all for joining us and talking a little bit about your expertise and background, and topics we'll  probably cover in the future. I look forward to having you back and us having those conversations.

Karen:   10:22
To everyone listening. Look for more from these experts and others in upcoming episodes of the Lincoln Absence Adviser. And be sure to subscribe at Apple, Google Play Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts  

Karen:   10:35
In this new environment of paid family medical leave, have you ever wondered where traditional short term disability plans fit in? In our next episode, I sit down with Emily Igrejas, disability product manager to discuss just this very thing. Join us next time on the Lincoln Absence Advisor.