This is not a ‘flex’
We’ve got to build a better, more adaptable & human-centered safety net
Our lives are increasingly modular. From ride shares to remote work to meal prep boxes and weekly trivia clubs, we each rely on a wide range of on-demand, subscription and routinized behaviors to maximize our time and balance the needs of life, work and family. With the majority of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, the percentage of workers in flexible work arrangements increasing every year, and the astronomical cost of healthcare continuing to rise,
Now is the time to build a more modular safety net.
I have studied portable benefits and flex work trends for over twenty years and made the leap myself to run a fractional / flexible operations team two years ago.
I will never go back.
The trick now is to build interlocking safety net components that can be readily customized to fit the economic segment - instead of a one-size-fits all approach designed before the internet.
While some speak of the ‘gig’ economy; I’m talking about something much more profound and more deeply rooted. Almost all knowledge work can be done remotely. There is nothing magical about the 40 - 50 hour work week. Collaboration tools, LLM models, and smarter automation are forever changing our concept of productivity. What can quickly be done by machines will soon be taken for granted, and the creative spark that comes from human intervention will be what sets firms apart. How we work has fundamentally changed and we’re not going back.
Generation “Alpha” prefers texting over phone calls, images over words, and value and benefits over straight cash. Flexible work arrangements that build skills, create connection & communicate respect will have their pick of talent.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to declare employment “dead,” I do heartily agree with Deborah Perry Piscione and Josh Drean that the traditional, life-long, single career 9-5 is outdated. As is the employer-based safety net that grew out of the first half of the 20th century.
What we need now are community-based solutions that allow Americans to take their health and wellbeing into their own hands, share risk & gain benefits in sustainable and flexible ways. We need self-organizing groups and smart contracts.
Through our growing portfolio of clients, carrier partners, and related investors,
we are de-risking what it means to launch a new safety net product.
Yet, we ourselves must jump through hoop after hoop to gain our own coverage.
Bramble & Bird Consulting is a team of 4 women with 75 years of professional experience across insurance, healthcare, govtech, fintech and cyber security. We’re located on the east coast, west coast and midwest, supporting clients headquartered in Illinois, New York, Georgia, and Colorado, with offices in the UK. Sometimes, one of us will be fully dedicated to a single client’s major release. Sometimes, we spread our time across two or three launches based on need and budget. It works great. The client gets just the right amount of support. The team learns from each experience. When one person is out, another one can cover for her. We have more interesting, impactful, and informed work than ever before, with an extensive network for expert advisors and consultants who can be engaged per client, per project, as needed.
Because we know the insurance system, we have health insurance & benefits. Most like us do not.
That’s why we’re intent on building a system for the future with:
1) Better benefits that provide more real value for today’s risks, like Tuned and Ric.
2) Better ways to enroll in group health insurance without having to bend yourself into a pretzel (or join a PEO).
3) More ways to gain access to the kind of benefits your community needs. For example, Flora, which our all-female team might have more need of than your average tech startup.
