How work from anywhere complicates employee benefits

During the first several months of the pandemic and the transition to remote work, many people witnessed virtual meeting rookie mistakes including even partially clothed innocent family members cruising unknowingly by in the background. While these instances provide for some hilarious memories amongst coworkers, they also pushed employees to quickly learn and adapt to this new virtual world. Some adapted more quickly and effectively than others, but eventually, most people normalized this new virtual and remote working world.

Working away from the office has its perks, like the ability to focus and remove workplace distractions, such as office drop-ins, impromptu meetings, and office noises. Turning a portion of the home into a workplace has introduced new distractions though, such as household chores, raiding the fridge every 15 minutes, neighborhood noises, and of course video call fatigue.

Related: Remote work has tax risks, talent opportunities

For many people, a perk of all meetings taking place remotely has been the ability to not just work from home, but also relatives’ homes, favorite vacation spots, or even another country, so long as there was strong dependable internet. Some workers have gone so far as to make those favorite vacation spots a new home. Employers, eager to ensure continued productivity and retain valuable employees have rushed in to support working away from the office making it easier than ever before to be productive from anywhere.

The elephant in the room now that employers are considering when, how, and if to bring employees back to the office is how do employee benefits (a key component to attracting and retaining employees), function in this new work-from-anywhere world?

When the pandemic shutdown occurred, changes that were already beginning in the benefits world were necessarily accelerated in order to retain employee benefit plan effectiveness. Keeping benefits sharp, focused and effective in meeting the goal of recruiting and retaining employees have never been more important.

Any company that plans to allow workers to truly work from anywhere moving forward should focus on these key changes to their benefits programs:

1. Ensuring benefit appropriateness

Before your company embraces working from anywhere, carefully consider the complexities and nuances of giving employees free rein of working from the environment of their choosing, without managing their expectations of significant challenges in the benefits your company offers. Benefits are sometimes limited or even very restricted by geography. As an example, if Kaiser is a company’s primary medical plan, moving to a location outside of where Kaiser is offered, leaves an employee with no or very limited medical coverage. Under a PPO plan, a less densely populated area may have a very limited network or perhaps out of network only coverage, exposing both the employer and employee to significantly increased claims costs.

Disability may function entirely differently from state to state due to state-mandated disability coverage. Also, there may be more simple limits to the benefits program like participation in the company wellness program, health fairs, or flu vaccines offered on-site. Understanding these limits and communicating these clearly to the employee who is looking to relocate is extremely important to managing employee expectations and ultimately job satisfaction.

2. Changing communication

Technology-aided attention deficit disorder was here well before COVID, but now it attacks with a sweeping vengeance. Video conference call upon video conference call produces attention fatigue. Most people are guilty of answering emails and texts on these calls while pretending to pay attention. Scientists have provided much data over the years that prove multi-tasking and lack of focus limit the ability for best thinking outcomes and reduce productivity. But most people charge on, ignoring this advice and doing as much at once as possible.

Employers must cut through all of this noise and communicate and develop an understanding of their programs in a fresh, and concise manner, beyond just the obvious of conducting all this virtually. What has been successful this past year is shorter more frequent messaging. Keep presentations and video training shorter in duration, 20 minutes or less, preferably 10 minutes. Provide a higher frequency of communication to reinforce key concepts and messaging and be creative. While it will require a different type of planning, it is possible to host virtual health fairs during open enrollment with exercise, and cooking classes, while peppering in benefits education. And this type of interactive educational program has proven to be very successful.

3. Supporting statutory benefits and regional differences

Unfortunately, there are a lot of differences between states in not just taxes, but also required benefits. State short-term disability is a common difference where some states require employers to provide this and regulate how it is to be provided. If an employee moves to one of these states, like New York or California, an employer will be required to provide the appropriate disability coverage. The statutory disability coverage can also impact any benefits under disability the employee may currently be enrolled in.

Some states do not allow for the tax-deductibility of HSA plans, which can be a bit of a shock for an employee who has relied on these for tax savings and any tax-free employer contributions. In a place like Hawaii, benefit coverage, employee contributions, and plan design are regulated, requiring employers to provide coverage to even part-time employees. For employers new to a geographically diverse workforce, knowing, understanding and executing a wide variety of benefit plans can be overwhelming and it is a maze that must be planned for in advance before giving employees the green light to pack their bags and relocate.

4. Benefits administration

For the few companies who have not embraced technology for enrolling employees in benefits and managing changes to plans, now is the time to just do it. Too long employers have assumed that not every employee will have adequate enough technology access to use the HRIS/Benefits Administration system, but almost every employee does now with the advances that have been made in mobile technology.

For companies that already use an HRIS/Benefits Administration system now is the time to re-examine just how efficient and user-friendly the benefits administration system is. With the complicated virtual world now, and competing priorities, a company’s benefits administration system needs to be clear and easy for employees to understand and use. With the enhancements and improvement of UX (user experience), consider making this tool a magnate for employees as a place to go for learning and development, company community, and company values and culture. Leaning on these tools to fill in the natural office culture and sense of community that occurs when everyone is together in a workplace but is lacking when employees work from anywhere has never been more important.

Managing the many complications and nuances of benefits that work from anywhere requires can be overwhelming. Slow down and take the process step-by-step and consider how in the long run embracing the virtual workplace can result in a more productive, engaged and happy workforce than was ever possible within the confines of an office.

 Doug Ramsthel is executive vice president and partner of Burnham Benefits.