Summary
Lisa Jacobi, CHRO at COCC, joins host Kelsey Willock Jones on Beyond the Paycheck with a benefits story most HR leaders will recognize: a $40 a month gym reimbursement, fully funded, sitting at 18 percent adoption and quietly serving mostly younger, single, male employees. Her team stopped curating the list of acceptable purchases and moved to lifestyle spending accounts, where the expense is only booked when someone actually uses it. Adoption went to about 95 percent. She also walks through the year COCC announced a bigger profit sharing contribution to a room of 200 people and got silence, which is what pushed the company into paying across three horizons instead of one. Along the way she offers the comparison she keeps in her pocket for skeptical leaders: employees spend more than 2,000 hours a year with their coworkers and about 25 minutes a year with their doctor. Built for CHROs, total rewards teams and benefits leaders who suspect their best-funded program is reaching the wrong half of the company.

Chapters
00:00 Meet Lisa Jacobi and COCC
01:30 Inside a workforce that supports 150 banks
02:43 Selling sneakers at 16 for $4.75 an hour
04:41 What retail taught her about building relationships
06:28 2,000 hours with coworkers, 25 minutes with your doctor
09:03 Why people can be themselves at COCC
11:07 Making the case when the spreadsheet doesn't
14:53 The profit sharing announcement met with crickets
18:31 The healthcare shift she isn't ready for
20:55 The human is in the lead, not in the loop

Takeaways
- An 18 percent adoption rate is a design verdict rather than an engagement problem, so audit who is actually using a benefit before defending its budget.
- Fund optionality instead of curating an approved list, and book the expense only when someone spends it so finance can say yes to covering everyone.
- Pay across three horizons, because the same workforce wants cash now, flexibility soon and compounding later, and not in equal measure.
- A program can be right and still fail if the organization is not ready for it, which is a sequencing problem rather than a content problem.
- People rarely leave over money, so track whether employees feel they can be themselves at work and treat that score as a leading indicator.

Connect with the Guest
Lisa Jacobi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-jacobi-shrm-scp-sphr-0636483/
Company Website: https://www.cocc.com

Sponsor
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• (00:00) - Meet Lisa Jacobi and COCC
• (01:30) - Inside a workforce that supports 150 banks
• (02:43) - Selling sneakers at 16 for $4.75 an hour
• (04:41) - What retail taught her about building relationships
• (06:28) - 2,000 hours with coworkers, 25 minutes with your doctor
• (09:03) - Why people can be themselves at COCC
• (11:07) - Making the case when the spreadsheet doesn't
• (14:52) - The profit sharing announcement met with crickets
• (18:31) - The healthcare shift she isn't ready for
• (20:55) - The human is in the lead, not in the loop