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Denise is the practice leader of the Employee Communication department in the Seattle office of Milliman. She joined the firm in 2005, after 10 years with Mercer.
Experience
Denise has 15 years of experience in employee communication. Specific areas of expertise include healthcare, retirement, and employee research. She has advised organizations in both the public and private sector, many with significant union presence.
Denise's recent retirement communication projects include:
Conducting focus groups for a public sector client to gather feedback on written materials and demonstrate a newly developed Web site
Assisting a self-insured plan to improve communications to its 100,000+ members
Guiding education, decision making, and strategy development around communication issues raised during bi-weekly union and management meetings
Developing the communication strategy and materials to mitigate negative employee reaction to freezing the defined benefit pension plan and changing the defined contribution plan
Developing a comprehensive strategy and detailed work plan to communicate a DB/DC choice for approximately 8,000 employees (which involved 27 distinct stakeholders, 54 communication activities, four committees, three days of train-the-trainer meetings, 110 employee meetings, and union presence)
Conducting focus groups to gauge current understanding and perceptions, identify communication barriers and build employee/management trust
Developing a survey to evaluate barriers to plan participation and improve employee communication
Denise recently won two national awards for her retirement communication work with Seattle's Swedish Medical Center, Choose Your Path to Retirement.
2007 Silver Quill Award from the Pacific Plains Region of the International Association for Business Communicators
2006-2007 Print Media Award of Distinction
In 2003, Denise won the Dalton Pen Communications Award of Merit in Employee Communication for a Children’s Hospital commuter brochure.
Affiliations
International Association of Business Communicators
Education
BA, Communication, University of Colorado
BA, Psychology, University of Colorado
MA, Interpersonal and Organizational Communication, University of Washington | 