Denise has over 20 years of experience in employee communication. Specific areas of expertise include healthcare, retirement, and employee research, and behavior change. She has advised organizations in both the public and private sector, many with significant union presence.
Throughout her consulting experience, Denise has facilitated public sessions, employee focus groups, and project teams. Her related experience includes:
- Strategy and planning
- Group facilitation
- Participant communications
- Key stakeholder analysis
- Analysis and synthesis of participant data
- Presentation of findings
- Recommendations and action steps
Relevant projects include:
- Developing the strategy and conducting sessions with 90 small business owners (and small business employees without healthcare) to understand the owners appetite and tipping point for offering government-subsidized healthcare as well as the plan designs and costs that would be most appealing to employees.
- Developing an online healthcare decision- making tool for a retail client so associates get a true comparison of the Health Savings Account to other options in terms of total out-of-pocket costs.
- Conducting focus groups to gather feedback on written materials and demonstrate a newly developed website.
- Facilitating focus groups for the state’s Health Insurance Partnership with the intention of improving the enrollment process for brokers and small employers statewide.
- Setting strategy to engage employees around healthcare issues and introduce tools and resources for making active, informed decisions.
- Introducing a consumer-directed health plan to active employees and retirees through a series of newsletters and enrollment materials.
- Setting strategy and conducting research to gather input form small business owners in preparation for the Exchange aimed at increasing participation in a new wellness program for 90,000+ members.
- Creating a website to kick off a new wellness initiative that applies to 300,000 employees, retirees and dependents.
Denise won two national awards for her retirement communication work, Choose Your Path to Retirement, for Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center:
- Silver Quill Award from the Pacific Plains Region of the International Association for Business Communicators
- 2006-2007 Print Media Award of Distinction
