This video segment is from Restoring Hope, a TV series hosted on WHMB40 and serving the Indianapolis area. Crosswinds Counseling offers counseling services throughout Indiana.
Curtis: Kathleen Turpin from Brotherhood Mutual joins us today. She is the Vice President of Human Resources. Kathleen thank you for being here.
Kathleen: Thank you.
Curtis: For those of us who don’t know Brotherhood very well, give us sort of an overview of your organization.
Kathleen: Yeah, Brotherhood Mutual is a niche market property and casualty insurance company. The way I like to explain that is we’re a niche market because we insure churches and church-related ministries. So we serve over 60,000 ministries across the United States, but we’re headquartered here in Fort Wayne Indiana.
Curtis: Virtually every state too. You’re in 47.
Kathleen: Yeah, all but 3.
Curtis: Church insurance is maybe something a lot of people don’t think of, but that is something I assume is very critical to a lot of ministries around the country.
Kathleen: It is. It’s not just churches. We serve Christian colleges and Christian schools, camps, headquarters – a lot of different ministries. Yeah, a lot of people don’t think about that, but it’s one of those things that is unique.
Curtis: From your perspective, obviously being the head of Human Resources, talk about the investment into people. It’s something I know means a lot to Brotherhood. For you personally, what does that look like in a large and growing organization?
Kathleen: Yeah, well our people are everything. We have almost 600 employees, most of whom are in Fort Wayne although we’re spreading out from here, but it’s all about meeting our employees where they are and we want them to have a good work/life balance. We want them to – we accept them as whole people, so we invest in them in different ways. Obviously, in our benefits and some of the ways we do that, but we have some unique things. For instance, we have a voluntary chapel every Thursday morning that employees can participate [in] and is actually run by employees. So we do some unique things that are just part of who our culture is and who we are, but if our employees aren’t healthy it’s going to be hard for them to serve our ministries. So our mission statement is “advancing the Kingdom by serving the Church.” The only way we can really serve others [is] if we have the employees in a healthy place to actually serve them.
Curtis: Right. I feel it’s like the saying, ‘You can’t give away what you don’t have.’
Kathleen: Right.
Curtis: Tell me a little bit about the partnership with Crosswinds Counseling. You became a corporate partner with the corporate arm of Crosswinds Counseling. What has that looked like? What has that meant to your employees?
Kathleen: Yeah. We’ve really enjoyed it because we’ve used – we’ve provided some level of EAP to our employees and we are strong supporters of treating the whole person. So we want them to [have] the physical health which we provide through medical insurance and other things like that. But also we want the mental health piece taken care of and we wanted to partner with someone who was somewhat like-minded, who understood our faith perspective the same way, and was able to meet people where they’re at. So being able to [work with] Crosswinds has just been an opportunity. We’ve seen a lot of our employees that have felt that freedom because there are so many resources, and so many people, and so many different ways that they can connect with people especially in this Covid world. In the person. Over the phone. Chat. So many different ways. They can do it over text. There are a lot of different ways. So our employees have a lot of opportunities to work with different individuals based on their need and their specific issue. And we provide it to the employees and their whole family.
Curtis: Let’s talk about the faith-based nature of it. You mentioned being like-minded and the root in the Bible and in faith is important, but it’s something that at Crosswinds we don’t try to hit people over the head with. I assume Brotherhood has the same mentality. So how do you walk that line in HR and in Corporate Counseling, and EAP work – where you want to be faith-based and you want to be like-minded but you want to allow people to express that in the way they want to?
Kathleen: Yeah. Well first of all that was part of the benefit of having Crosswinds was that we knew that our employees are going to be at different stages of their faith journey and so one of the things we talk about is the fact that they may have an issue where – the fact that it doesn’t have to be “Christian counseling” per se. And that really spreads [to] all of Brotherhood, it is our mission, it’s who we are, and we find that employees who are passionate about ‘expanding the Kingdom by serving the Church,’ they’re usually the ones that also want that faith integrated. We do find ways, again we don’t have a specific denomination. We’re cross-denominational. So we have lots of different perspectives in our employee base. We just try to meet people where they’re at.
Curtis: What has the experience of working with the Crosswinds Counselors been like? What is that experience of bringing an outside company to do this and partnering with them, and getting counselors to get in to get into the nitty-gritty with employees – what has that looked like for you?
Kathleen: I think it’s been superb for us. A big piece of that is the capacity. There’s a lot of different counseling options. It’s not just one or two people they can choose from. It can be from a Christian Biblical perspective or it doesn’t have to be. It can be groups or it can be individual. So I think we’ve found there’s accessibility to get to the people that we need to, and that’s been helpful.
Curtis: I know sometimes it’s tricky to get feedback from your employees because it is anonymous and you want to respect people’s privacy, but have you received feedback from your employees about the experience of going through counseling with Crosswinds?
Kathleen: Yeah, our employees are very positive on it, and it’s getting utilized. We don’t know who goes. We don’t know any of the details. We do know because of how we are paying for it, that people are utilizing the benefit in the way they’ve never used an EAP before. So I think that is an indicator of people going back and how many times they’re visiting. So we get some of that aggregate information in the way we pay, we know that it is being utilized and people are very positive when they respond back.
Curtis: If someone from a different organization was showing reservations about jumping into this with Crosswinds, what might you say to them to ease any fear or concern they may have?
Kathleen: One of the things I like about Crosswinds is their payment model. Before it’s usually you pay per employee per month or per overall type of payment, and then regardless of whether you have 2 people use it, or 20 people use it, or 200 people use it, you pay the same amount and it was probably closer to having like 10 people use it. And now it is utilized in the way we pay for it is as employees use it, then that’s how we pay for it. That just provides a really good opportunity to feel like it’s really being useful, and it’s a good use of our money. So I would tell people we have Biblical counseling, we have lots of options, and it’s done in a way that’s affordable and makes sense for both the employer and for Crosswinds.
Curtis: That’s awesome. Kathleen thank you so much for taking a few minutes to join us and to speak with us today.