Rethinking health benefits strategy in light of the Great Realization
Here are three key benefits strategies that companies and their benefits consultants can leverage to address new employee requirements, while empowering organizations to contain skyrocketing health care costs.
So, what’s changed? And what will it mean for employers and their benefits advisors as they look to the future?
The pandemic forced a lot of the workforce to pause and evaluate what was working for them and what needed to change. The results show that people want employers to offer more. Employees want their employers to prioritize:
- Wellbeing and purpose
- Flexibility
- Competitive pay
- Good working conditions
- Skills development
And in the battle for talent, employers and benefits advisors will continue to face immense pressure to deliver a whole person health care approach along with benefits that attract strong candidates, satisfy existing employees, and provide increased value. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, self-insured employers have raised health care benefits premium spend by 4% in order to compete in the battle for talent.
Related: The 10 most desired employee benefits in the U.S.
But in this challenging economic climate, most organizations are looking to their advisors for ways to cut costs while strengthening their benefits offerings. Meanwhile, leaders are having to balance cost savings with the desire for more competitive benefits packages.
So, in light of The Great Realization, here are three key benefits strategies that companies and their benefits consultants can leverage to address new employee requirements, while empowering organizations to contain skyrocketing health care costs.
Seeing is believing
Rather than relying on stats or estimated savings, companies will need to roll out solutions in a way that puts the value on full display.
Health care is human, and so is its impact. To make sure organizations can see the potential, teams can identify the pain points facing employees throughout their health care journey. These are the things that create additional costs for the company and headaches for departments. Identifying them can help you build out a solution package tailored towards specific needs — and toward creating meaningful ROI.
For example, you might find that employees are routinely visiting the ER for non-urgent health concerns. This leads to higher out-of-pocket costs and drives up premiums. In this case, a combination of provider search tools, care redirection from a live health care concierge team, and steerage to virtual alternatives might help employees turn to high-value care more often.
A strong health care navigation solution might also help educate employees about their health care needs and influence behavior change. A solution provider should help build a tailored solution that meets employee needs — and shows ROI in key areas.
Once you’ve identified the pain points the solution must address, it’s important that the full scope of the health care navigation solution is clearly identified and explained to key stakeholders. This is especially important if they weren’t involved in the buying process. At this stage, each integration, premium add-on product, and key feature should be detailed for them, along with its cost-savings potential.
Finding the unique solution that works best for a company and its employees starts with identifying the problem.
Outline what “success” looks like
Once you know which elements of a health care navigation solution will drive the most value, it’s time to evaluate how a vendor will work alongside the employer to quantify success. This is also the time to make sure key stakeholders, from the CFO to the benefits manager, are aligned on how success will be measured.
At this stage, it can be helpful to establish a baseline metric for comparison purposes. Take health care cost trends as an example. To understand health spending year-over-year, you could look at the national average and industry peers. If you discover that the company’s costs are higher than the national average, improving this metric could be a good place to start.
As employee populations grow, people’s needs will change, which means success measures will likely require occasional revisiting and adjusting. Be sure to ask the customer support team for regular check-ins and progress reports, if you don’t already have access to a central hub like an HR dashboard.
Our latest data shows that the activation rate for Gen Z and Millennials is 65% to 67%, which is higher compared to previous generations. Numbers like this help us understand whether employees are seeing the value in a solution, and how successfully they’re integrating it into their day-to-day health care decisions. From there, the empooyer and advisor can work with a sales representative to build a package that includes the features employees need most.
After implementation, a customer success team should be able to provide access to regular reporting, progress toward goals, and a game plan for hitting targets. That support should continue throughout the life of the vendor relationship, even as the employee population and its needs change.
Quantify and grow
When implementing a health care navigation solution, it’s vital to give employees the tools they need to change their relationship with their health care benefits. While quantifying that can be a repetitive process, you should see immediate improvement from employees using features like live navigation support and virtual care solutions.
Member engagement is a key driver of success for a health care navigation solution. We’ve seen a construction industry client with 1,000-employees achieve a savings of $363,000 in insurance costs. That’s $356 per employee per year, thanks to high member engagement and satisfaction.
With 80% activation, this group unlocked:
- Over $230,000 in savings from health care concierge support.
- Over $130,000 in savings from telemedicine steerage.
- Over $1,800 in annual savings from medical bill review services.
These metrics help show the power of behavior change to influence rising health care costs. When employees and individual stakeholders see your new solution as their go-to, one-stop shop for health care navigation and engagement, they’ll fundamentally change the way they interact with health care. A truly connected experience built around a core platform minimizes confusion and frustration. It also creates a single source of truth for all your health care and benefits offerings.
Once your health care navigation solution is established as the core of your benefits package, you can work alongside your solution provider to continue solving employee health care navigation problems.
Put what you’ve learned into action
While the Great Realization roars on, lean on the principles we reviewed today to help achieve the benefits sweet spot: improved employee satisfaction and cost savings.
Justin Holland is the CEO and Co-founder of HealthJoy.