Foster Farms nearly cut their wellbeing program entirely after three vendors in three years left them with admin headaches, plateaued participation, and “same poster, same program” fatigue. Then they switched to Navigate and the story flips from transactional vendor chaos to a true partnership built on trust, cultural alignment, and relentless personalization.

In this episode, Troy Vincent and Jeremy Knipper sit down with Toby Stime, Director of Benefits at Foster Farms, and Jad Khalil, Team Lead Client Success at Navigate and for a look at what actually drives measurable wellbeing results, especially in complex, diverse, frontline workforces.

You’ll hear how they made wellbeing accessible across seven to eight primary languages, why “culture first” unlocked real engagement, and what happened when they moved from surface-level participation to targeted health coaching.

My first look was, why are we spending this money? What benefit are we getting out of this?... My first impression was simply, this is an expensive thing that would be nice to have if it made sense, but it's also a nice line item to be able to take off my budget.

Toby Stime, Director of Benefits at Foster Farms

In this episode, Toby also shares:

The moment that led Foster Farms to reconsider their entire wellbeing approach
The importance of evolving your program to continuously meet your people's real-world needs
Building an employee-centric model and lessons from adding personalized health coaching to their program
Key takeaways from Foster Farms’ experience when evaluating a wellbeing partner

Watch the full episode above, or find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Meet our guest: Toby Stime, Director of Benefits, Foster Farms

Toby has worked in and around employee benefits and workers’ compensation since 1995. He currently serves as the Director of Benefits for Foster Farms, leading the strategy, design, and delivery of employee benefits and wellness programs. Drawing on three decades of experience, he specializes in turning complex regulatory requirements into clear, accessible offerings that genuinely support employees’ lives. His work is grounded in a people‑first philosophy—balancing compliance, practicality, and empathy to create programs that empower individuals and strengthen workplace culture. Outside the office, he brings the same curiosity and care to his family and community.

Transcript

Troy W. Vincent

Welcome back everybody to the People First Podcast. We are grateful that you chose to join us. Today's episode is a little bit different. Our guests almost cut their well-being program from their benefit strategy entirely. Instead, after three vendors and three years,

They came to Navigate and what happened next produced some of the strongest health outcome improvements that we've ever seen at Navigate. The real story is about listening to your client, looking at data, trusting one another for the impact that you're bringing others and...

That's the result. are the results. And we're looking forward to visiting today. Jay, welcome back. First podcast of the year. Ready to dive in, man. You ready?

Jeremy Knipper (01:05.678)

Yeah, I'm excited. We had a great series of podcasts in 2025 with a lot of really cool conversations about well-being. You took away a lot of nuggets on how to support your culture, how to help and care for your people, and how to drive clinical outcomes. And today we've got another exciting episode about driving results from another one of our favorite clients. So everybody buckle up for good nuggets and takeaways.

and get pumped up for some special guests.

Troy W. Vincent (01:37.154)

So I don't know if Jay put that nuggets in there on purpose, but the nuggets is a great transition over to our friend at Foster Farms. Toby, you've got a great story, but before we get to the story, perhaps give our listeners a sense of your role at Foster Farms, maybe your population and the responsibilities you have over there. And hey man, thanks for joining us today. It's gonna be fantastic.

Toby Stime (01:59.612)

Thank you, I'm excited.

honored to be asked and honored to be the Director of Benefits here at Foster Farms. We have an incredibly diverse population. We are focused largely in the western United States. We've about nine and a half thousand employees who speak seven to eight different primary languages and really kind of an age range from from eighteen on up to people in their seventies who've been working here all their lives. It's a really

really interesting group of people, hardworking, dedicated, and it's an honor to plan benefit strategy for them and try to find ways to communicate what we're offering and make sure that it's accessible. So that's who we are.

Troy W. Vincent (02:47.168)

It's fantastic and you know, Also joining us today is Jad Khalil sitting in the sunshine of Florida right now. Jad leads our client success team.

Jad Khalil (03:00.58)

Warm-ish.

Troy W. Vincent (03:14.738)

and oversees our manufacturing vertical, which Foster Farms is part of, and is one of our fastest growing verticals here at Navigate. Jad, welcome to your first podcast with Jeremy and I. What are you thinking? How you doing, man?

Jad Khalil (03:29.859)

Excited to be here. Thank you for the invite. Toby, awesome to do this with you as well. I've had the pleasure with working with Toby and the fossil farms team, say for the past five years, seen a lot of growth, a lot of changes, but yeah, overall excited to be here, listen to the story and help fill in some gaps.

Troy W. Vincent (03:52.834)

I love having John part of this story today because he leads the ground game. And when we talk about the ground game with our clients, we really start to really think about how we listen, how we learn, and how we build trust. Toby, you came from a data-first leadership mindset when you took over the well-being program and the benefits there. You did work with three different vendors in three different years. It's gone from a nice to have to a necessity.

And I'd love for you to be honest with our HR people and our benefits people that are listening right now and say, what was your original perception of the wellbeing program when you first took it over?

Toby Stime (04:33.115)

So I came into.

foster farms as a data analyst. And prior to that, I'd been working at workers comp for a number of years. And workers comp, every dollar that you can save is a dollar you can save. And that makes clients happy. so my first look was, why are we spending this money? What benefit are we getting out of this? How do we make this something that makes sense for us? And so my first impression was simply, this is an expensive

thing that would be nice to have if it made sense, but it's also a nice line item to be able to take off my budget.

Troy W. Vincent (05:13.891)

And, you heard those words, and when you think about relationship versus vendor, maybe talk about the importance of listening and how you maybe help Toby kind of change his perspective and start to kind of change that mindset over there.

Jad Khalil (05:32.73)

Yeah, the cool thing and I think the I'm grateful that I heard these words after the fact, not during, because I think it would have freaked me out a little bit. But when Toby came in, I remember being introduced to Toby and starting to work with him. And I realized quickly that the connection is there. think some people you just kind of know when you meet them and you feel like they think along the same thinking lines that you have. And so I think working with Toby the first year was

Troy W. Vincent (05:39.554)

Thank

Troy W. Vincent (05:46.306)

and starting to work.

Jad Khalil (06:02.401)

all about setting the right expectations, understanding the human factor of his position at Fossil Farms and the people that he leads. And I really think that that alone, the relationship alone that developed helped take care of a lot of this for Toby and helped him see what Navigate does and the things that we can do to help that population. So I'm fortunate to be here and to be able to tell this success story.

Also, I'm fortunate that I was hearing these words after it's happened and then Toby changed his mind.

Troy W. Vincent (06:38.87)

Hey, Toby, I've heard you say to us a couple times, other vendors or particular vendors felt transactional. Express maybe what you meant by that and what you're experiencing.

Toby Stime (06:52.625)

With all of the different vendors we had.

We had administrative hassles. Like I mentioned, we have a really diverse population. It's hard to reach everyone. And we had a lot of presentations, and even vendors who came in and in the first year were not as sensitive to that as I needed them to be. But also, I think people just naturally have a, you find a program that helps, a diabetes program, and you put people into those programs.

give them the information they need. And I think people tend to like that and kind of move along and improve a little bit and then plateau. And then, well, it's the same program all the time. There's nothing different. And I know what to do now is kind of the attitude they have. So they drop out, but you're still paying a fee for each of those people. They're just not getting anything out of it anymore. And we're not getting the results. So that has definitely not been the case with

with Navigate. We're loving the changes in the programs and the options that people have. But that was our experience with previous vendors.

Troy W. Vincent (08:08.829)

Hey, Toby, that's one of the things that I would say that we look to match up when it comes to cultures and folks. A lot of people don't know, John, I know it's at least five different languages that you speak, maybe five plus. But when we think about the importance that you listened and heard about addressing language and literacy and culture, was metrics. We're going to get to the metrics, but...

addressing that language and literacy and cultural aspect first was something important that you drove the Navigate approach there. So maybe touch on that a little bit, John.

Jad Khalil (08:46.789)

Yeah, I love that you mentioned that. it's always been, you know, in any situation, it's very close to my heart. And I put myself in those people's shoes. But also, I always think of my parents. I always think of if I'm working with, you know, with Toby and Toby mentions, hey, we've got a population that speaks Chukis. Although initially, I didn't even know what Chukis was. But my first thought was thinking if my mom or my dad were here and they're of working age, this would be them because...

They do speak a little bit of English, but how much better would the experience be if you are seeing everything in your own native language? And so this was why when the request came in and, we're working with our team to see what we can do, it was almost non-negotiable. We are doing this. It's just, let's go out and figure out what's the best way to do this. What's the most efficient way of doing this, but we are going to reach those people in their languages.

Troy W. Vincent (09:42.176)

Yeah, and that personalization, Jay, is something we've been working on for a long time and being able to kind of make that adaptation when it comes to all that we do. Jay, maybe touch on just the importance of that and kind of as you're moving from a well-being program and getting people driving to them to their doctors and getting that relationship to then moving to more condition management, to a broader health strategy. Maybe touch on that a little bit, Jay, on how we're connecting the dots around that.

Jeremy Knipper (10:11.192)

So personalization is really at the heart of driving some serious outcomes in programming, right? Understanding what a participant needs, who that participant is and where we can best make those interventions that are going to drive results. We do that in the platform by personalizing the program. We're gonna continue to increase our personalization capabilities through segmenting our resource availability.

We introduced claims personalization. we're able to make sure we target the people that need the most help, understand where they are from a readiness to change and present various interactions or interventions with them, whether that be our health coaching, whether it be resources, whether it be third parties that you've already got in place. We just want to get people healthy. So and the best way we can do that is to know who's in trouble and who needs help.

and reach out to them in all the various ways that are going to align with the culture of our clients. I mean, it's really about being flexible and understanding that we don't know how to tell you to do everything. You know your population, you know your culture, you know the results you want to drive. We want to be open to driving your results, not the results that...

Troy W. Vincent (11:32.241)

And Toby, when you really started to focus on culture first, which I really love, culture created the caring mindset of your folks. And then you turned on really highly personalized programming. Maybe touch on that where you started culture, then you went to care, now we're into clinical. Maybe touch on that a little bit.

Toby Stime (11:54.513)

We've had

couple of different leadership changes in the last year and we've been really lucky in the last couple of years, really lucky to have a group of leaders right now who are people focused and it's winning our foundations and our foundations are people and animal welfare and safety and our CEO says things like you we can we can run over on a meeting if all we ever do is talk about safety and people. We'll put budget aside, we'll put all those things

aside and we'll talk about safety and people because they're most critical.

Being free at this level to put people first made such a huge difference for how I view our benefits program. And that really, I think, was the turning point as we were looking at, what are we going to do with this plan? Just talking to Judd and finding out that our focuses are really the same. We're really, this is about, this is how we take care of people.

Troy W. Vincent (12:55.282)

This is about it.

Toby Stime (12:58.443)

that started to make the biggest difference for us, why we were going to keep this and how we were going to structure the program later.

Troy W. Vincent (13:01.715)

is difference for us.

Troy W. Vincent (13:08.354)

In our industry, we talk about engagement, we talk about measurable results. So, Jad, when we kind of moved into more of that health outcome improvements and those engagement improvements and very looked at a very deliberate focus toward ROI, maybe talk about that, of how you work with Tobia and bringing that together.

Jad Khalil (13:34.407)

Yeah, and that's a cool thing too, because Toby, I don't know if you remember, but when we were talking total health and talking about intervention and talking about personalizing to the participant, Toby also had his people in mind. And I think, I don't know if you remember that, Toby, you told me our people are used to the way we do things. So although this is an upgrade, although this is something that we're rolling out, we're excited about.

how can we keep it as similar to what we have as possible? Which was something really awesome that someone is purchasing a brand new product, but the reason for that is because we can keep it looking as consistent as possible because those folks are used to it. So I think that was first, when we were building the program, we tried to keep the main top.

Troy W. Vincent (14:14.142)

looking at baskets and those bottles.

Jad Khalil (14:27.13)

things in mind for people to continue to do what they're doing. So you go in, you're still doing your survey, you're still doing your annual physical, but now you've got a suite of personalized items that are going to be personal to you and your journey. And I think this is where we started to see the changes.

Troy W. Vincent (14:41.314)

to you and your journey. And I think this is where we started to see the changes. If you're watching this, you saw Jeremy smile there for a little bit because he saw the personalization and all the things we're working on when it comes to our personalization, total health and our AI and really getting people to the right resources at the right time. Jay, we talk about turning purpose into proof.

when you think about those health outcomes that you're seeing at foster farms, maybe touch on that because they're significant and especially across our foster farms, but even the clinical credibility that Navigate is getting from our work and looking at that personalization side.

Jeremy Knipper (15:24.298)

I mean, showing results at an organization is a challenging thing. We want to make sure that we get it right. That means data integrity, that means data security and privacy. But at the end of the day, it means showing you real people with behavior change. And how do we measure that? We measure it in a lot of ways. It could be, you know, engagement, could be risk trend analysis, could be claims. But some of the things I think Foster Farm should be particularly proud of

are biometric risk trend changes. Toby, your team has made significant improvements in overall glucose levels, 35%, blood pressure, 19%, total cholesterol risk, 39 % improvement, BMI, 29 % improvement. Those numbers are the kind of things that are really challenging to achieve. I just wanted to spend a little time and say,

Well done. And while we're here, I've got a sneak peek into some of your end of year results. Had our data team run some of them, just some highlights. Cohort biometrics from 24 to 25. We saw additional four to 5 % improvements in LDL, triglycerides, blood pressure, A1C levels. You guys are doing it right. And that means thinking about your people first.

providing the solutions and letting them work at their pace and where they want to be. So you guys are really knocking it out of the park. And I think it's a testament to you and the team and the culture over there.

Toby Stime (17:05.361)

I think that's awesome to hear. That's definitely a team effort that extends to you guys, especially to our team here on the ground. My team, benefits team, is a small group, but we do a lot of outreach to make sure people understand why they want to be part of this. But certainly none of these things happen without all of us working together. So that's awesome. That's exciting to hear.

Troy W. Vincent (17:30.234)

Hey Toby, do any of those results surprise you or any of those that you look at and say, how do you explain that? Anything that comes to mind?

Toby Stime (17:39.309)

I am, it's the glucose risk that that's a big issue for us. have a diabetes is number one and that glucose risk reduction is huge. It's one that I look at. wonder how we're doing that and I'm hoping we can continue in that direction. That's massive.

Troy W. Vincent

So Toby, when you think about what should brokers, HR folks really pay attention to when it comes to evaluating their well-being partner?

Toby Stime (01:04.997)

Okay, for sure.

Toby Stime (01:14.97)

I think it's so important to find a partner that...

aligns with your values, that aligns with your corporate values, what you're trying to do. It might be cost, it might be taking care of people, it might be somewhere in between, but that's the first critical piece. And finding someone who says, want to know who your population is, we want to know how to reach out to them, we want to make sure that they understand what you're doing. I think that's the first thing. And then the second thing is someone who has a program that isn't stagnant, that doesn't just stay the same.

They're looking for ways to reach people, looking for new things to offer to take care of people. Those are the two critical things that I think helped us stay with Navigate and build this partnership. We, as said, we have to make things kind of look the same because people are creatures of habit. they, you know, I'm going to do this in June. I get my poster, I get my postcard, and then I respond. So it kind of has to look the same, but the program can be vast.

vastly different. The offerings that were put in front of us this year were light years from what we had before and really make a difference in how we're, you can see in the results, how we're taking care of people. So those are the things that I'd look for.

So Jad, one of the things that we introduced this past year was health coaching and we replaced a vendor relationship there. Maybe touch on that, on how you went from the personalization to the actual health coaching that's now available with our clinical team. Yeah, absolutely.

Jad Khalil (10:13.782)

Yep, absolutely. And when we internally, when we started learning about Navigate, taking on this health coaching journey and bringing on our own coaches and that program living within Navigate, we had a conversation. I think, again, it's gonna go back to the power of relationship and trust and being authentic. I immediately knew it would be a good fit for foster farms.

But then the conversations I had with Toby and our broker partner as well were, here's what we can do for you. Can you help me understand what you currently have in place? Because you may have something that's successful and we may not wanna mess with it. Up until that point, I was not aware of the details of how Foster Farms is doing their coaching or the condition management that they have in place. And then Toby and team basically...

And Toby, I'll let you speak on that. Basically introduced me to the current setup they have and really agreed that this would be a good fit for them. we kind of added it from there, but Toby, I'll pass it back to you really on when we approached you initially, if you remember when we went out to your site and had the absolute best lunch probably I've ever had. And especially in the middle of a meeting. But that was awesome. And I think this is when we approached you with the idea and

Tell us a little bit about that. How did you receive it? What were you thinking at the time just hearing of that?

Toby Stime (11:43.611)

You know, at the time we were again in kind of a leadership change and

And we were looking for ways to really reach our team members, something that, again, was different, something that made them feel like this is their program. You introduced the health coaching and the deeper questions in the questionnaire. And that was exciting to me. I wondered at that point, how is this going to work? But what stands out for me is that within the next few weeks after that, you

you brought on your health coaching team onto calls and we asked question after question and talked through how this was going to work and how we could integrate it into what we were doing. And after talking to the people who were actually behind the program, I thought there's no way we can't offer this. What a huge positive this is for our team members. And it has been. I hear comments about it from people all the time. At first they were, hey, someone from Navigate called me.

that okay? But it's been such a positive for us that you've got someone you can talk to and there's more to do. We need to get that out to more people. We need more people to understand the benefit of that. But it was the care that you took in answering all the questions that we had that made the difference.

Troy W. Vincent (13:12.108)

Toby, I love that you ask hard questions and you kind of demand real outcomes as we look at that. Jeremy, the coaching team and the product team really focus on that pharmacy led coaching, you know, and really being able to answer those hard questions and getting those real outcomes. Maybe just touch on how that coaching evolved and how that's connected to our personalization.

Jeremy Knipper (13:33.088)

I think the solution to personalization in a lot of ways is a human intervention, right? We can put a lot of technology in place and that's effective and does its job. But there's nothing better than getting in touch with a real life human who can empathize and talk you through a challenge. So our mission from a coaching standpoint is to put as many capabilities in the interaction, whether that be something as

tried and true as lifestyle coaching, something as elevated as condition coaching or even breaking out specific conditions to something as new school and sort of up and coming as having mental health counseling at the tip of your fingers or to do career coaching or even coming this year, specific women's health coaching.

We always want to listen to our clients and our participants' needs because that's what's gonna drive the best outcomes. And putting different kinds of interventions, specifically human interventions, in place is just a win-win for everybody. it's personalization of the passion of ours and coaching is just a natural extension of...

Troy W. Vincent (14:48.257)

Love it when the data proves out the purpose is the proof, right? But it's also a reminder, coaching is that well-being is ultimately about a human connection in those human moments, not just metrics every time. But if you can add those metrics to it too, that's fantastic.

Troy W. Vincent (02:35.256)

Well, Toby, I...

I think of you as one of the best thought leaders in HR and the folks that we work with on the benefits side. So thank you for just not being a client, being a thought leader when it comes to engaging folks, especially in the frontline and diverse populations. We think about being able to shift perception. We love the fact that we're able to work with you on that. We love seeing a turning point in being able to say, you know, what reporting and what metrics are we using to really ask how

we can serve better. And then the results. I know our technology team, our client services team, our data teams all look at what you've done.

for your folks over there at Foster Farms as a wonderful, measurable impact opportunity to help people. And so we love that you're part of our family and we appreciate all the work that you do. And Jad, you know, on our side, you know, the groundwork happens on the dailies. And so we appreciate all the daily work that goes into that. And I just, I really appreciate all you guys do. And you guys know that we have to end the segment with the best day ever.

So we've given you a little bit of time. So, Jad, we're going to you. Best day ever segment. What do you got going on?

Jad Khalil (03:58.734)

I think there's a, there's a quite a few positives happening. I will go with Luna, who I talk about all the time, striving and learning and progressing in her soccer adventure. Toby's got, you know, he's got a kid who's going to play D1 soccer. So

we may have to leverage that one day. She could be a coach by the time Luna's in college and we could use her. no, just watching her growth and just being able to kind of help guide, but also let her figure things out has been awesome. I learned from different people from watching you be a dad and others that are close to me being dads and...

Toby Stime (04:26.288)

Yes.

Absolutely.

Thank

Jad Khalil (04:49.354)

Just watching her take that next step in everything she's doing has been awesome. That's my best or best day ever.

Troy W. Vincent (04:58.508)

Fantastic, Jay, what do you got?

Jeremy Knipper (05:01.646)

I'm going to continue the sports theme because I feel like this could be a sports podcast in another life. For me, we got to watch outdoor hockey on national television under the lights in Tampa. A national audience got to see a really exciting game with an amazing finish and a goalie fight. Watching that game was the best day ever for me. Everybody got to experience a lot of the things I love about hockey.

Toby Stime (05:24.636)

you

thoughts.

Troy W. Vincent (05:33.612)

And if you guys don't know, Jeremy still plays a little hockey on, I think it's Wednesday night here in the great city of Des Moines, so.

Jeremy Knipper (05:38.828)

Yeah, not well. Used to be a whole lot better, but this 46-year-old frame does not hold up like it used to.

Troy W. Vincent (05:47.788)

Hey Toby, about a good thing?

Toby Stime (05:51.085)

So I can't say anything about the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl yet, so I will go with also a kid's story. My wife and I, we have a six-year-old, and we took him out miniature golfing on Sunday afternoon. he's six, so he was doing his best, and I had a couple of holes where I had a hole in one, and after each one, he says, Dad, we did really well on those holes.

And I said, well, I got a one. What did you get? He says, I also got a one. And I said, I'm not sure. I saw you hit the ball a couple extra times. He says, yeah, but you don't have to count the ones until they go in. And I thought, that's kind of how I want to live my life. Right? You count the shot that matters.

Troy W. Vincent (06:35.416)

Fantastic. Fantastic.

I could watch that golf on Sunday. That's fantastic. Yeah, okay, so on mine, I've got to go, I'm going to split this in two ways. One, I'm going to say, Toby, I love the fact that your beloved Sacramento Kings have embraced.

Toby Stime (06:44.028)

It was beautiful.

Troy W. Vincent (06:57.428)

all the Iowans in the NBA, not all of them, but most of them. So from Harrison Barnes to Keegan Murdy to Doug McDermott, I mean, it's like an Iowa team over there in Sacktown. So we love that. So thank you for embracing our Iowans there. And then second, would say we've got over 100 plus folks coming to Des Moines here.

Toby Stime (07:11.14)

Iowa West.

Troy W. Vincent (07:20.758)

for our company kickoff in a few days and I'm excited to see everybody. I'm excited it's gonna be like 45 degrees in Des Moines in February. But just getting everybody together is just one of the most just fun and just measurable impact things we can do for our own culture here at Navigate and we're looking forward to bringing everybody including our friends from Miami that'll be wearing, know, parkas and whatnot. So, but hey guys.

Toby Stime (07:46.844)

the news.

Troy W. Vincent (07:49.375)

Overall, there's always good things and it's nice to be reminded of that. We appreciate all the work that you do, Toby, for all the good that you serve there at Foster Farms. Jay, thanks for all the great tech that helps us get personalized. John, thanks for making the connection to listen and to learn and to have a trusting relationship to make Navigate continue to fight above our weight class in the well-being industry and really do some good. So this has been a great story.

around trust and measurable impact and I'm grateful for that. So Toby, thanks for joining us. Everybody, John, thanks for joining Jay. Continue to like and subscribe to our podcast. If we can do anything better, let us know. We certainly listen.

Toby Stime (08:31.036)

it.

Troy W. Vincent (08:35.404)

For all those HR folks out there, ask harder questions, demand real outcomes, and choose a partner who's an authentic one. And we appreciate you all that you do for others out there. See you later, guys. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

Toby Stime (08:48.602)

Thank you.

Jad Khalil (08:50.262)

See you all. Thank you.