Growing An Employee Financial Wellness Business – with Joelle Vail from BrightPlan

In this episode of the HR business marketing podcast, A Better HR Business, Ben and his guest, Joelle Vail, talk about how holistic financial wellness solutions are driving major changes for employers and employees alike. As HR and business leaders look for ways to support their teams in today’s challenging environment, companies like BrightPlan are setting a new standard for financial wellbeing in the workplace.

Joelle Vail is Chief Revenue Officer at BrightPlan, where she oversees direct sales, partnerships, and client success. She has extensive experience scaling organizations from startup through enterprise growth, helping early-stage companies surpass $100 million in revenue and larger enterprises grow from $100 million to more than $2 billion. Prior to BrightPlan, Joelle served as Chief Operating Officer at Capital Factory and held senior leadership roles at Paychex and Ascentis.

BrightPlan is a financial wellness platform designed to help employers improve employee financial outcomes while increasing the effectiveness of their benefits programs. The platform combines AI-driven financial planning tools with access to experienced financial advisors, delivering personalized guidance across budgeting, debt management, investing, retirement, and wealth planning. By integrating directly with employer benefits, BrightPlan helps employees make more informed financial decisions and encourages greater benefits utilization.

For employers, BrightPlan provides a centralized dashboard with actionable insights into workforce financial health, enabling more strategic benefits planning, stronger employee engagement, and improved retention. The company is also certified for fiduciary excellence, ensuring guidance is objective and aligned with employees’ best interests.

You’ll hear practical strategies for finding consulting clients, running a workplace consulting business, and business growth strategies for consultants. Whether you identify as HR, workplace, L&D, OD, recruitment, or people & culture, you’ll discover real stories and actionable advice to attract clients, win contracts, and grow sustainably.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why financial wellness is a rising priority for employers—and how to frame your consulting offers around their needs
• The role of technology and people-powered solutions in driving workplace engagement and retention
• Joelle Vail’s lessons from partnering with HR leaders and the marketing moves that resonate with decision-makers

Interview – How To Attract HR Consulting Clients With Financial Wellness Solutions – with Joelle Vail from BrightPlan

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About The ‘A Better HR Business’ Podcast

In my HR marketing podcast, I talk with different HR consultants and HR tech companies from around the world to learn about what they do and how they keep their businesses healthy and moving in the right direction.

If you have questions you want to ask me about growing an HR consultancy or marketing for HR tech companies, just let me know or visit the HR marketing services page.

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Enjoy the show!

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Episode Transcript

Episode 311: How To Attract HR Consulting Clients With Financial Wellness Solutions – with Joelle Vail from BrightPlan

Ben [00:00:28]:
Hello, everyone. Great to have you along today. And I’m really looking forward to my conversation with Joelle Vail. Joelle is a fascinating person from a fascinating company, BrightPlan, which is a global holistic tool, financial wellness solution that provides personalized financial coaching to all employees and their households at scale. But before we get into it, Joelle, thank you very much for joining me today.

Joelle Vail [00:00:48]:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited for our conversation.

Ben [00:00:51]:
And you’re a longtime HR industry vet, so you’ll have some great perspectives. I really appreciate you taking the time. I gave the quick snapshot, but in your words, do you want to tell people about BrightPlan? What does it do? And then what are the problems it solves for employers?

Joelle Vail [00:01:04]:
Yeah, sure. So we work through employers to bring their employees the opportunity to find financial wellness in their life, for their entire household around the world. So the opportunity for every individual to understand where their finances are today, how to optimize them, how they walk side by side with their employer in this journey, essentially, whatever life throws at them, we are helping them find stability through those different needs and actions and all of the demands that comes on their dollars. So the growth of wealth happens over time, but it only happens over time when there’s stability. So what we’re looking at in everyone’s situation is what are you handling today and how do we ensure that you are living as high and as optimal as you can today, but also building wealth for future.

Ben [00:01:56]:
But in the employee side of things, is this more around education? So educating employees about the way that money works and how they can be using it better, or is it? Yeah. Tell us more about what exactly is financial wellness?

Joelle Vail [00:02:07]:
I’m glad you’re asking this, because that is a buzzword in the marketplace today is financial wellness. Everyone is using it and attaching it in a different direction. But what we do is a full system. Employers have the opportunity where they can provide to the employee technology. And that is a very intimate experience between the individual and BrightPlan only. So the employer doesn’t see the technology experience between the employee and BrightPlan. That is where all their financial information is stored. They have AI and they have an AI coach inside of the product. They can ask questions too.

And then we layer on a people level where they can have full access to certified financial planners on an unlimited basis. So traditionally that has been for those individuals of high wealth and complexity and so on. But if you think about, everyone’s financial situation is complex because there’s very low literacy from individuals to understand how to optimize it. So we’re layering the technology, the people, and then we do run programs side by side with the employer so that the individuals within the organization can understand benefits better, they can understand events that the employer might be going through. All of that becomes data that we can anonymize and aggregate and give back to the employers.

So the employers understand their employee base at a much higher level. So for an example, they can see when debt is rising. In the US there might be an increase of loans taken against a 401(k), which is something they don’t want. So, so we can proactively figure out a way to talk to the employee base side by side with these programs so that we are able to then bring down the debt and not have them go into a situation where they are taking future wealth away from their opportunity because of their needs.

Ben [00:04:01]:
Today all the tricky stuff like where they just need the money, maybe it’s a lower income bracket or a life event has occurred because it’s probably not just one or two people. If it’s a large workforce, there will be numbers, people going through the ups and downs. How do you handle that tricky aspect?

Joelle Vail [00:04:17]:
There’s always going to be need. And life throws situations at you that you’re not prepared for that increase that need. And for some it can be devastating. So a simple thing like my car broke down, or you know, it’s now $2,000 for me to buy a new refrigerator that has to house the food that I’m going to feed my family with. And that can topple something upside down for people. And what we do is we walk side by side with them with suggested outcomes and we also help them find paths to success. It’s sometimes as simple as connecting them to organizations that will help them, and other times it is helping them over time proactively build emergency savings accounts. So when that $2,000 need comes up, they have an account that they can tap into that’s sitting on the side.

But it can happen in very small increments because lower income individuals can’t put 300, 400, $500 aside every pay period. Sometimes they can put 20 or 30, but the fact is they’re putting it aside for the first time. And they are not as devastated when something does happen.

Ben [00:05:22]:
I think it’s such a brilliant idea because the education system doesn’t really go into money. If you’re choosing the subject of economics in school, then you’ll cover that, but no one really talks about money. And so you’re helping people play catch up, I guess, is that right?

Joelle Vail [00:05:36]:
We’re helping people have an expert next to them. Because if you think about it, what the employer’s done so far is they’ve done amazing things. They’ve partnered and they brought forward pensions to the employees. They have 401(k) accounts in the US. They offer ESPP or equity or things like that, along with their regular compensation. Now, if you put all of that into a situation where you have somebody with low literacy on understanding any of that, the first thing that’s going to happen is they’re going to go to their HR team and say, well, can you help me? What should I be contributing? How should I look at this? How should I invest in the funds that are being offered to me? And an HR person is going to immediately have to defend the company’s risk tolerance and say, I can’t answer that for you.

Ben [00:06:22]:
Exactly. I’ve said that line many times.

Joelle Vail [00:06:23]:
You have this dividend between the employer who’s really equipping the individual with a lot of tools and a lot of benefits, and the individual who is appreciative of it but not understanding it. So two things happen. They don’t maximize it or they abandon it. They try and figure it out on their own. So we’re kind of that in between. Where we’re now able to take what the employer can’t do and walk the employee intimately through it so we can answer questions about where should you place your investments?

We’re not telling buy this stock or any of those things, but we are. So we are giving fiduciary advice and guidance to individuals around the world to say, this is how you maximize. This is what they’re saying: In your situation, with your amount of debt, you may not want to contribute that right away. You might want to bring down your debt first and then your next step is to rise up your contribution in this area. We’re pathing with them. We’re walking side by side given their, their household situation.

Ben [00:07:22]:
And for people listening to this thinking, maybe I could refer in or tell people about BrightPlan. What are the kinds of HR or workplace challenges or problems that employers are thinking about that BrightPlan could help solve? Is it around turnover or about being an employer of choice or something else. How would you guide them?

Joelle Vail [00:07:39]:
Employer of choice for sure. What I will tell you is every HR department does surveys and they try and learn from their employee base what’s most important. Every survey comes back with help me with my finances. It just does. It’s heavily on the rise right now. We are in probably the most expensive living situation that we’ve ever been in. It’s an odd ability to purchase real estate. There’s different government changes that are happening.

There is governments leaning away from helping with retirement and putting it in the hands of individuals. More so around the world than ever. So the conversation’s happening. So a lot of times we’re reached out to because employees have said, I need help and they’ve told the employer, I need more from you around my finances. In return, what we can prove to the employer over time, there’s a higher retention rate that happens within the employee base. So we have actually monitored our businesses over time. We have 35 to 55 higher retention from individuals using the product than individuals that are not. We can show an increase in emergency savings so they are prepared for those life events because it’s when the life event happens that they become unstable.

We can show productivity increases because individuals are spending time right now on handling financial situations or crises where they are not working. And in the situation where we’re in a remote workforce or things like that right now, that’s hard for an employer. You know, they have to try and monitor their employee base in a way that they haven’t before.

Ben [00:09:20]:
You’re also giving me little flashbacks to my first HR manager role where
this is a standalone site, heavily unionized, but I would constantly be dealing with firefighting stuff. And sometimes you have angry employee issues. But I would think that quite a lot of those in the difficult situations where there were maybe not performance management, but there were behavioral issues, whatever, I would say quite a lot of them would have been financial stress.

Just because it does, it affects them that the weight of the world is on their shoulders. So maybe they snap out at their supervisor, stuff like that happened. I genuinely think so, sir. What you’re doing is just so important. I mentioned that you’ve been in the HR industry a long time. You know it inside out. Have you seen any transformational changes over time in terms of talking to the buyers who would be the employers? But have you seen any changes and any thoughts on that?

Joelle Vail [00:10:09]:
I have seen a lot of changes happening. You know, if you add two very important things. We probably had the biggest transformation ever in what human resource or people leaders need to do. When Covid hit, they continue to have a dispersed workforce. They are now trying to whittle back on what are the necessary point solutions and what are not the necessary point solutions. And then overall, I’m seeing a evolution of people moving away from point solutions and being responsible for employee well being overall. So there is this concept of really being responsible for medical, mental and financial and some other people put in spiritual as well, of the employee base so that the employee base can produce at the highest level. And then the other major transformation that’s happening right now across the board is a technology transformation.

AI is something that is extremely interesting for every organization and the ability to add productivity and outreach and knowledge base and capture knowledge base. And I mean, it’s a huge asset, but it disrupts the people population probably at a clip we’ve never seen before. You have people that are now in fear of their job being taken over by AI. So they have to think about that measure. They have to think about workforce reduction. They have to think about rehiring or retooling with a different skill set. Because individuals who are in the jobs now, if they’re expected to use AI to do their job, can they make the jump between how they did it before AI and how they do it after AI? It’s a lot of movement on the HR side. I think we’re seeing the biggest evolution that we’ve ever seen with HR leaders. They’re more important in the company than they’ve ever been before.

Ben [00:12:02]:
Absolutely, yeah. From a sales and marketing perspective, what are you doing to get the word out about BrightPlan?

Joelle Vail [00:12:07]:
Here’s what I’ll tell you. In general, your HR leaders are hungry for solutions that help them every day in their work, perform it more efficiently. What we look at is what are they trying to accomplish and how can we assist them in those motions. So a lot of it is, again, I mentioned workforce stability. That’s a very, very big need. And one thing I will tell you, with all this transformation of HR, the one thing that really hasn’t transformed is their budgets. They are still the ones that don’t get the massive budgets in the organization. So really listening at what they’re trying to accomplish and what their needs are and working in your product, how you can truly help them, I think it’s the biggest thing that anyone who’s trying to sell into HR right now has to realize is with the amount of change that they’re handling if you are not relevant, you will not be looked at at this time.

Ben [00:13:06]:
Yeah, absolutely. You’re trying to get in with the HR buyers, but it’s not just your segment that they’re looking at. It’ll be any aspect of the hiring determination process from learning and development, hiring, assessments, development, the work. So yeah, you’re right. You need to make a really strong case. With inbound and outbound, is it a case of just getting out there and contacting lots of people? I know that BrightPlan does a lot of marketing. So webinars and white papers and things like that. Is there anything works better than other methods?

Joelle Vale [00:13:34]:
The HR team has a trusted advisory group that they work with and they’ve chosen them based off of personal relationships they’ve had over time. Especially in the enterprise space. There are individuals that they trust and they prefer to work with as they’re moving through this change. And your ability to work with those trusted advisors, educate them on what you bring to the table. That saves you a lot of time because when they know what you do and they have an intimacy with the HR buyer, they bring you in when there’s an active initiative.

One of the biggest things that we all struggle with when we’re selling in general or marketing in general, is trying to find an interested purchaser. So if you can work within the network of the HR advisor, which we’ve had a lot of success partnering with that network and then having the network really understand what we do, providing them success in case studies, understanding and a willingness to run programs and pilots with them. The exposure and then the proof points and the data on the back end make it a no brainer when you start looking at them, choosing whether or not to bring it on a grander scale into the organization.

Ben [00:14:47]:
Yeah, definitely. I’ve seen lots of companies use pilots, both in the consulting and the technology space. I will say it’s a great way to get in, especially with a big company because if you can go in and do one location, get some data back and show how it changed, then you just go to the next division or whatever or next location with the same logo and say, we’re already in your company helping you guys, the barriers are down. So much easier that way. And then on the content side of things, I know you do lots of webinars. You could be talking about so much in your space. How do you choose what to talk about?

Joelle Vail [00:15:15]:
We bring on CHROs. We want to talk about what they want to talk about. We have a level of intellect and guidance that we can give in our market. So we’ll work with the CHRO and some of the barriers that they’re trying to overcome right now. A lot of them want to talk about benefit usage. How do I get my employees to understand my benefits more? What’s happening in my space today? How do I get my employer to understand what my ROI is back on? A certain return on investment. I have put this in place for my people, but bottom line, I have to show the movement on the bottom line. So having conversations with CHROs or Chief People Officers about what they want to talk about has really been a lot of our webinar topics.

Ben [00:15:59]:
And then do you partner with other companies, whether that be channels or teaming up with other firms to either get the word out there or to provide different services? What do you do there?

Joelle Vail [00:16:06]:
Here’s one of the things I would say to any vendor right now that’s really trying to work with HR. Your ability to work with their other vendors is probably one of the most critical moves you can make. There is still stigma out there where, you know, I’m the vendor with them. I don’t want to share my data with anybody. I don’t want to. But if an employer says to you I need you to work side by side with another company, you say yes. Because at the end, the way you service your employer is the most important piece that allows you to give the best experience to the employee. Because right now an employee does not want to go to six different places.

It does not want to have different technologies to go into. What they want to do is work together. You do have to understand you’re not the only vendor. And your ability to really partner with the other vendors drives the best experience for both the leader and for the employee.

Ben [00:17:02]:
And if I step away from BrightPlan for a moment and ask you in your sort of revenue generating history, career, etc, for people listening to this thinking, I need to grow our HR technology or HR consulting firm and maybe they’re at some sort of event or networking event. What is the preferred method? Is it just about asking about problems or are you coming with a particular sales pitch, elevator pitch that people talk about? What’s your preferred approach or recommendation?

Joelle Vail [00:17:27]:
When I am talking, you do have to know what you do and you have to know it well. But you know, I always go with the most important thing and it’s so simple. But you have two ears and one mouth. Listen first, listen first, ask questions, understand what’s going on. Again, your ability to learn about the individual that’s in front of you and frankly I still believe. I love Zoom. I love, you know, all different video opportunities that we have. But go and meet people, still sit down with individuals, shake hands and listen and really understand what’s going on in their world.

And then provide your expertise or bring in others that have an expertise. Yes to getting out there and meeting people. Yes to listening first. But don’t pull yourself solution forward unless it’s truly a need and you can help them. Because what somebody’s evaluating quickly is I’ve given you an understanding of what would help me and then whether or not you actually help me. And if you do, you earn the right to do more. I know that’s simple, but it’s probably one of the things we live by every day.

Ben [00:18:37]:
No, I think that’s very good because otherwise you have one tool and use it for every problem that you see around. But when you’re talking to people, two ears, one mouth, so you’re talking to someone, maybe they say, we’re in a pretty tight market. Attraction retention is hard, so we need to stand out and look the best place to be, best place to work type stuff. In which case you can guide your conversation down a different path about, well, now’s the time to step it up a notch and really offer a more comprehensive package. Or you might have the other end where they’re saying, oh man, we’ve just got industrial strife or angry employees and things. The stress levels are so huge. And we’re seeing this in our employee survey data because financial stresses and stuff, we can take metrics at a grand scale, anonymize them and give them in to you as employer information that you can then use for your learning development or whatever it may be. So it’s listening to what their pain points are and then adjusting the angle perhaps of what you offer. Is that a fair summary?

Joelle Vail [00:19:26]:
It’s a very fair summary. And then the opportunity to really challenge them. So if I’m talking to you and you’re giving me a problem and you’re helping me understand the problem more, a lot of times I can challenge you on a different way of thinking because a lot of people, again I mentioned earlier, have not been able to give the intimate conversation down to an employee around finances, but today it’s available to them. And do they understand the gap in retention might be because I can’t see how my employer is going to help me through this situation, or I can’t see how this medical need that I’ve now encountered, I now have a medical condition that I need help with. I can’t see how I can stay with my employer during this time when in reality, if they have a tool where they can ask, they can seek, they can talk to. Our AI helps people through medical diagnosis, helps them understand the financial benefits that an employer could allow and support them through that and they can stay steady with the employer throughout the entire situation so that when are able to come back, they come back strong.

Ben [00:20:33]:
Well, I love what you’re doing, what BrightPlan is doing and helping to help employees remove stresses, remove problems, and then flip it around and help them predict and improve and plan for the future as well. So it’s both sides of that coin. If people want to learn more, what should they do next?

Joelle Vail [00:20:49]:
Yeah, I would love for them to come by our website. It’s www.brightplan.com on the page. If you are an employer, there’s an opportunity for you to learn on an employer level. If you are a partner or an organization where there is, I call them, money events or money intersections. Anyone who is involved in an employer money journey, we can augment what they’re doing. So there’s a partner page for that and learning more about that. And then there’s the employee page. If you really feel like your employer could elevate your experience as an employee, be bold. Understand what something like this can offer and ask your employer to take a look.

Ben [00:21:33]:
So that is www.brightplan.com. Nice and simple. So we’ll have the link in the show notes if you’re on the go, but otherwise, Joelle, really appreciate you sharing your time and your insights. It’s been really interesting. And yeah, I wish you and BrightPlan all the best for the future.

Joelle Vail [00:21:45]:
Thank you so much.

Topics covered: how to attract HR consulting clients, running a workplace consulting business, business growth strategies for consultants, HR consultants, financial wellness solutions.

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