The professionals who sell their products and services to the voluntary benefits market are uniquely qualified to help fill this education and information void, especially as it relates to critical illness insurance. After all, they've helped their customers understand defined contribution plans, health savings accounts and other innovations over the years. Critical illness isn't exactly new, but its importance has become greater due to developments on the health insurance front.

Critical illness insurance is not health insurance, but rather, a financial benefit that helps fill the increasing gaps left by some health insurance plans. In the event of a covered illness or medical condition specified in the plan, the insured will be paid a lump sum to help pay for child care, cover mortgage payments, and supplement daily living expenses and increasing out-of-pocket health care costs.

This latter expense can be substantial, according to a study by the Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School, which cited out-of-pocket medical expenses averaging $13,000 as the reason 55 percent of individuals surveyed filed for bankruptcy with 70 percent of those filers covered by a health insurance program. Critical illness insurance can provide peace of mind and a financial life raft for employees, while fostering good will toward employers who provide such an important benefit at minimal cost.

Expect critical illness insurance to remain at the forefront of the most wanted voluntary benefits into the near future. According to the LIMRA 2013 U.S. Worksite Sales Survey, 60 percent of employers said they already have or plan to increase employee contributions to the cost of coverage. These increases are on top of higher deductibles, copayments and coinsurance employees are paying already. Additionally, the LIMRA study noted that sales of critical illness insurance increased by double digits for the third straight year. In this environment, voluntary benefits like critical illness insurance speak to employees buckling under the pressure of rising health care costs.

Getting employer buy-in

The key to growing this segment of your business is to get employers to buy into the need for education and communication. This is necessary because the tendency of employees is to do nothing when they confront benefits they do not understand. This tendency—inertia—has been turned into a driver to motivate employees to contribute to their retirement in the defined contribution retirement plan area because employers can use auto enrollment and other automatic tools to help employees help themselves. Voluntary benefits, however, have no automatic tools, so it's up to advisors and consultants to provide the spark, the reasons employees should buy critical illness insurance, and the motivation for employers to add it to their benefits packages.

You can begin to educate employers and their workforce about the need for critical illness insurance with a fivestep plan that personally engages employees, helps them understand the benefits, and give them resources where they can find answers to their questions.

Step one: Identify your workforce.

Before you can start to inform employers and teach employees, you must know your audience. Begin with a demographic analysis. This analysis will identify a work population by age, gender and number of dependents. Benefits providers will require this and ZIP code information to determine a group rate for the employer's company. Next, compare the employer's offerings, including critical illness insurance and other voluntary benefits, to benefits offered by peer companies. Identifying the benefits an employer's competitors offer is crucial to recruitment and retention. This research will help employers decide which voluntary benefits they should present to employees.

Step two: Determine which enrollment process will work best.

An employer's enrollment methodology may include the web, a call center, face-to-face workshops or a combination of these delivery methods. It may also include materials in a second language, especially if the majority of a company's workforce speaks English as a second language. Even while emphasizing critical illness insurance, it should be included as part of a total approach with other voluntary benefits.

A passive approach can often be less effective as it invites inertia, despite an employer's investment and best efforts. To this end, focus on active enrollment and decide which active process works best for your dominant employee groups.

Step three: Communicate your message.

Once you have completed a demographic employee analysis and determined which methodologies you will use for enrollment, it's time to communicate and educate. Your clients can do this with posters, email messages, robo-calls, smartphone apps, payroll stuffers, postcards and even text messages. Multiple types of communication delivery methods help address the different ways generations communicate and learn.

It's necessary to consider multiple types of communication platforms to achieve maximum education and communication. Typically, an employer will need to connect with employees who are kinesthetic, auditory or visual. They will need to bridge generation gaps spanning Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y and Millennials. This differentiation is crucial in helping employees find the way they learn best. Older employees might prefer paper, things they can touch—brochures and stuffers—and read with their spouse. Younger generations may prefer the visual and audio communication vehicles they know best, including social media and smartphone applications. Whichever communication devices an employer eventually decides to use, understand that the most effective communication will paint a picture to help employees understand the reality of a bad situation. A personal experience story, like mine, can prove particularly powerful.

A few years back, doctors diagnosed my wife with breast cancer at age 35. We had two young children then, and I had to help her get through treatment, manage the family and make sure things were coordinated around the house. My wife was a stay-at-home mom, so we didn't lose a salary, but she wasn't able to keep the house together as she always had. We had very comprehensive medical coverage, however, she had surgery, six weeks of chemotherapy followed by radiation treatments every day for 12 weeks, and we had to pay for child care expenses throughout.

There were other expenses, too, such as having someone mow the lawn, shop for food, prepare our meals, clean the house and take care of laundry—all the activities my wife was managing along with raising our children. We also decided we wanted our daughter genetically tested to see if she carried the breast cancer gene; the insurance company didn't pay for that $2,500 test. We also had to buy a special bed because my wife couldn't get in and out of the one we had at the time without tremendous pain. I owned my own business and had my senior staff take on some of the extra burden at the office, so I needed to take less salary to cover those costs. All of this cost more than $12,000, and the expenses put a dent in my budget. However, many families who live paycheck to paycheck would not have been so lucky and might have declared bankruptcy.

Since then, I have been a huge proponent of voluntary benefits, particularly critical illness insurance. It would've helped my family a lot back then, but its benefits could mean everything to many employees. When I talk at conferences, more than half of the people in the audience raise their hand to tell me they or a close relative went through a major illness. Almost everyone knows someone who did, and on one thing we can all agree—it's a big deal financially. Not too long ago, people who suffered a heart attack, stroke or were diagnosed with some cancers were not very likely to survive. Today, medical advances have helped ensure more survivors than ever. Employees need to know how critical illness insurance and other benefits can help them financially during times of difficulty.

You can tell these stories to employees in the way they learn best: YouTube or company videos, in a newsletter or even in a personal workshop. People will empathize, because they or someone they know has gone through major illness.

Step 4: Consider enrollment options.

This is where the role of a benefits advisor really comes into play. There are many steps to implementing a voluntary benefits program, and an advisor needs to send out requests for proposals to voluntary benefits carriers and negotiate underwriting offers. After reviewing the offers with the employer, both typically work together to select the best carrier based on rates, coverage, underwriting concessions and the employer/employee profile. Once an insurance carrier and enrollment partner is selected, it's time to put together the tools that will help employees choose their benefits, including a centralized call center, online tutorials, Q&As and print collateral. Consider a wide variety of enrollment communication techniques.

Also know that communication shouldn't end when enrollment does. Ongoing communication keeps employers engaged with their employees throughout their tenure with the company.

Step 5: Make it happen.

With everything in place, the voluntary benefits advisor should doublecheck to ensure that payroll deduction starts as planned, that billing is set up and ready to go for administration, and that customer service has all the information it needs to provide employees fast and efficient service. When it comes to critical illness insurance, your service representatives should know which medical events are covered, when benefits start, the duration of benefits, and the amount of benefit allowed. After all, service after the sale will make the next sale even easier.

Make critical illness insurance the focal point of voluntary benefits

With the cost of the primary benefits like health insurance and retirement plans so high and, in some cases, going higher, voluntary benefits are a wonderfully cost-efficient way to help your clients show their employees they care. But for employers to show they care, they first need to understand the value of low-cost benefits like critical illness, and believe in the need to communicate the benefits to employees.

Once critical illness insurance is part of the total voluntary benefits package, actively enroll employees and drive home the value of the coverage and other voluntary benefits before employees experience a personal story like mine—or worse. Communicate the advantages of offering and owning critical illness insurance by first informing and then educating employees in a way they learn best, using powerful stories of why benefits like these work—and for minimal cost.

Be a hero to your clients. Recommend they consider carrying one of the most cost-efficient benefits in today's increasingly complicated employee benefits market. With employees footing a larger share of health insurance premiums and paying higher deductibles and other health care expenses, critical illness insurance can prove to be the benefits foundation that helps you attract and retain a talented, well-informed and productive workforce.