National Benefits Senior Manager, Consulting

This role provides strategic leadership and operational oversight for benefit design, policy, and administration, ensuring all benefit offerings are feasible, compliant, effectively implemented, and aligned with organizational goals. The position serves as the central point of contact for benefit-related guidance and issue resolution, collaborates across stakeholders, Product teams, and clinicians to ensure the care delivered to patients is consistent with benefit design and coverage policies, and interprets regulatory and legislative impacts on benefits. The role also oversees governance forums, benefit documentation, training, communications, staff management, and operational execution of benefit changes, exceptions, and system enhancements, ensuring accurate, efficient, and customer-focused benefit administration across the region

Job Summary:

Manages a team of consultants to ensure the alignment, buy-in, and coordination of diverse stakeholders to drive the implementation of successful business initiatives and projects. Empowers the development and implementation of business initiatives, systems, and/or processes to a desired future state. Manages the development of multiple business strategies and ensures alignment and prioritization of organizational objectives and business initiatives. Manages complex projects or project components for units, manages complex change management plans, and manages team members in performing complex data analyses to drive business initiatives. Directs vendor management as required. Monitors and takes accountability for the compliance of team work activities by ensuring business plans and team members adhere to relevant policies and procedures.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Creates and advocates for developmental opportunities for others; builds collaborative, cross-functional relationships. Solicits and acts on performance feedback; works with leaders and employees to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to drive performance improvement. Pursues professional growth; hires, trains, and develops talent for growth opportunities; strategically evaluates talent for succession planning; sets performance management guidelines and expectations across teams / units. Oversees implementation, adapts, and stays up to date with organizational change, challenges, feedback, best practices, processes, and industry trends; shares best practices within and across teams. Fosters open dialogue amongst team members, engages, motivates, and promotes collaboration within and across teams; motivates teams to meet business objectives. Delegates tasks and decisions as appropriate; provides appropriate support, guidance and scope; encourages development and consideration of options in decision making; fosters access to stakeholders.
• Manages designated units or teams by translating business plans into tactical action items; oversees the completion of work assignments and identifies opportunities for improvement; ensures all policies and procedures are followed; partners with key stakeholders and business leaders to ensure products and / or services meet requirements and expectations while aligning with departmental strategies. Aligns team efforts; builds accountability for and measuring progress in achieving results; assumes responsibility for decision making; fosters direct reports to resolve escalated issues as appropriate. Communicates goals and objectives; incorporates resources, costs, and forecasts into team and unit plans; ensures matrixed resources are fulfilling service or performance requirements across reporting lines. Removes obstacles that impact performance; identifies and addresses improvement opportunities; guides performance and develops contingency plans accordingly; influences teams and units to operate in alignment with operational and business objectives.
• Manages a team of consultants to ensure the alignment, buy-in, and coordination of diverse stakeholders to drive the implementation of successful business initiatives and projects across multiple functional tracks or complex workstreams by ensuring representation and inclusion of appropriate stakeholders; building rapport and partnerships with key and/or lead stakeholder teams, third party vendors, and senior management; working with stakeholders to develop goals and set the prioritization of deliverables; discussing involvement of business processes (e.g. project change management, communication) and facilitating decisions necessary for the delivery of business initiatives; communicating and resolving tough issues with stakeholders while maintaining an independent perspective; and making formal presentations and providing reports to senior and/or executive level audiences.
• Manages team(s) of consultants in the development of requirements for complex business, process, or system solutions which may span multiple business domain(s) by identifying and partnering with stakeholders and cross-functional teams as appropriate; providing guidance in the use of multiple business requirements gathering methodologies to identify business, functional, and non-functional requirements; and monitoring the development and documentation of comprehensive business cases to assess the costs, benefits, and ROI of proposed solutions.
• Empowering the development and implementation of business initiatives, systems, and/or processes to a desired future state by maintaining a comprehensive understanding of how current processes impact business operations across multiple domains; identifying the operational impact of requirements on upstream and downstream solution components; providing options and recommendations to senior management and business stakeholders on how to integrate solutions and deliverables with current systems and business processes across regions or domains; and identifying and validating value gaps and opportunities for process enhancements or efficiencies.
• Managements the development of multiple business strategy and ensures alignment and prioritization of organizational objectives and business initiatives by defining, developing, and evaluating performance metrics, standards, and methods to establish business success; partnering with senior and/or executive stakeholders, often with competing/conflicting objectives, to ensure cohesive and reachable metrics; refining strategic plans and performance metrics as appropriate; and managing complex initiatives or portfolio to ensure delivery of measurable results and alignment with strategic objectives.
• Serves as a lead advocate of continuous learning and professional development by keeping abreast of industry practices, standards, and benchmarks; attending and presenting at roadshows, conferences, and speaking events; overseeing the ongoing enhancement and innovation of clinical consulting practices, standards, and methods across KP; serving as an advocate to ensure continuous learning and improvement is championed as a people strategy; providing training and guidance to stakeholders as appropriate; and providing ongoing coaching to build a continuous improvement mindset and build capabilities that drive results.
• Manages complex projects or project components for units by coordinating stakeholder contacts; assembling team based on project needs and team member strengths; consulting in the development, analysis, and management of project plans; partnering on the coordination of project schedules and resource forecasts; proactively monitoring and identifying project or business initiative risks, issues, and trigger events; developing mitigation plans and strategies; and resolving risks or issues as appropriate.
• Manages complex change management plans associated with business initiatives by leveraging stakeholder relationships to obtain support and buy in for changes; partnering with senior and/or executive management, project/program champions, and business owners to communicate and align improvement initiatives with current and forecasted business objectives; identifying and recommending appropriate change management methods and approaches; and empowering stakeholders to embrace a change management mindset, understand intent and purpose, and foster a culture of change.
• Manages team members in performing complex data analyses to drive business initiatives by recommending appropriate data analysis tools and approach to assess performance; empowering team members to utilize suitable data gathering and analysis methods (e.g., process observation, hard data, etc.); forecasting data requirements and obtaining customer agreements, including customer requirements as appropriate; and forecasting and alleviating risks through data-driven analysis.
• Directs vendor management as required by monitoring vendor performance levels; ensuring service level agreements are met; managing vendor invoices; and partnering with Procurement and/ or Legal to develop service level and/or scope of work agreements as appropriate.
• Monitors and takes accountability for the compliance of team work activities by ensuring business plans and team members adhere to KP, departmental, and/or business line policies and procedures.