Rick Chelko

Rick Chelko became the president and founder of The Chelko Consulting Group in 2001, a firm which has received many awards and recognition for its growth, community engagement, commitment to employee health and industry involvement.He is recognized as an industry expert in the areas of health care consumerism, benefit design and health promotion. He directly consults on, and delivers, creative life and health benefits solutions to a number of large and mid-sized companies headquartered in Ohio and beyond.

Sample Achievements

• Developed a break-through, patent pending approach to engage and equip plan members to become better healthcare consumers. This approach, called SmartChoice^TM, uses proven computer-based learning and behavior change methodologies to affect employee and spouse decision making regarding their health and healthcare.  Parker Hannifin's use of this approach enabled it to win the Innovation in Benefits Award from the Worldwide Employee Benefits Network (WEB) in April 2005.
• Established a "balanced scorecard" approach to monitoring and managing the key financial and non-financial performance results associated with group health plans. This approach has enabled one notable client to achieve a multi-year reduction in its plan costs.
• Developed a best practice approach to formulating guiding principles and migration strategies for aligning employee benefits programs with a company's current and future business needs.
• Generated $2.0 million in annual Life and Accidental Death plan savings for a large manufacturer through expert claim analysis, plan redesign and carrier negotiations.

Representative Client Experience

American Greetings                                Forest City Enterprises
Chart Industries                                    Health Action Council Ohio
Danaher                                              KeyCorp
Eaton                                                  Novelis
Electrolux NA                                        Parker Hannifin

Previous Work Experience
Rick formerly was Senior Vice President of The James B. Oswald Company. He functioned as Director of the Life and Benefits Division and directly consulted to a number of JBO's most prestigious privately held and publicly traded clients.

Prior to JBO, Rick was a Principal in Ernst & Young LLP's (E&Y)Consulting Services practice handling human resources and people-related business issues associated with their rapidly growing global outsourcing services business. He joined E&Y in 1990 as the Regional Director responsible for starting and building their Health and Welfare Benefits Consulting group. While at E&Y, Rick helped numerous large, global companies successfully address their employee benefits, human resources service delivery and change management issues.

Before that, he was director of group operations for Prudential Insurance Company of America and specialized in the development of managed care delivery systems and related employee benefit programs for large employers.

Education and Professional Certifications
Rick received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from John Carroll University. He also earned the designations of Senior Professional in Human Resources, Chartered Life Underwriter and a Global Benefits Management Certification. Rick is licensed in the State of Ohio for Life, Accident, and Health Insurance. He has been active in many health care coalitions and action councils and a frequent speaker on health care trends and cost management issues.

Rick is a graduate of the 2008 Class of Leadership Cleveland.  He currently serves as Co-President of the steering committee for the Cleveland Chapter of WEB (the Worldwide Employee Benefits Network) and as Chair for the John Carroll University Entrepreneur Association.  Rick's articles and perspectives have appeared in a number of national publications.

Email:   rchelko@chelkogroup.com
Phone:  440-892-2600 ext. 102