What Two Decades in Executive Search Taught Me About Total Rewards
After twenty years placing leaders, the clearest predictor of a company's long-term health is the quality of its Total Rewards strategy. Here is why, and how that conviction shapes the way we build.
By Jonah Manning
After two decades in executive search, one truth has become crystal clear to me: the quality of a company's Total Rewards strategy is often the single biggest predictor of long-term success, or quiet decline.
The CHRO and VP of Total Rewards are not just "HR people." They are the architects of the employee experience. They sit at the intersection of talent attraction, retention, culture, and financial performance. In many ways, their role is both the linchpin that holds everything together and the moat that protects the organization.
That perspective is exactly why, when I set out to scale our portfolio company VantaUM, I approached it differently than most utilization management providers.
The problem with how UM is usually built
Most UM solutions are built from the TPA or carrier side. They optimize for the administrator's workflow and treat the member and provider as afterthoughts. The result is predictable: delays, frustration, broken continuity of care, and ultimately higher costs from avoidable high-acuity claims.
We took the opposite approach.
We built VantaUM as a true concierge utilization management layer, designed from the member and provider experience first. We invested heavily in making the process feel human again: intake to physician-ready authorization in under two minutes, real clinical continuity instead of a different nurse every time, and zero nickel-and-diming.
Why we work directly with Total Rewards leaders
The bigger strategic bet was this. We wanted to work directly with Total Rewards leaders instead of routing everything through brokers or TPAs.
Self-insured plans give you, the Total Rewards professional, something incredibly powerful: actual control. You can curate the stack. You can choose partners who genuinely improve outcomes instead of just checking compliance boxes. You can build a health solution that is simultaneously more cost-effective and a significantly better experience for your people.
That is what we do at VantaUM. We sit on top of whatever TPA and broker you already have and become the high-touch utilization management seatbelt that protects both the plan and the people using it.
The results are exactly what I hoped to see after two decades of watching great Total Rewards leaders in action: lower friction, better provider relationships, faster decisions, and measurable cost savings, all without forcing a full replacement of the existing ecosystem.
The bar worth hitting
The best Total Rewards strategies I have ever seen were not about squeezing costs. They were about building systems that make people feel genuinely cared for while still being financially responsible.
That is the bar we are trying to hit.
If you are a VP of Total Rewards or CHRO at a self-insured employer, I would welcome the chance to share what we are building. No hard pitch, no deck full of generic slides, just a real conversation about what is actually working, and what is still broken, in the self-funded space.