Category Archives: Employee Health

It’s Open Enrollment Time: What’s Your Plan?

OPEN ENROLLMENT/ Man holding small blackboard on blue sky backgr

The tightest workplace environment ever has created a demand for companies to build robust benefits packages. Employees are looking to engage, have more choices, and looking to their employers to bring vibrancy to an item that most companies have previously simply delivered as part of their employment offerings and for employees, largely seen as dormant and as an entitlement.

Some ideas to bring vibrancy to your plans include looking at the newest dental plans – engaging employees in brushing campaign to promote good dental behavior, adding pet insurance, using digital tools to communicate your offerings and deploying pre-tax plans such as cafeteria Sec 124 and HRA/HSA’s to help them pay for medical expenses on a tax-favored basis.

Rounding out your benefits packages with low-cost plans such as life insurance, vision, dental, and EAP‘s can allow small companies to look BIG, and adding a host of voluntary benefits can make even the smallest employer build a package that rivals the largest.

Did you know? About 75% of companies in California go through their open enrollment in the 4th Quarter. That creates a bottleneck at the carrier for processing employee changes, receiving new ID cards, and billing issues. Not to mention if you decide to make a carrier change, then the underwriting and approval processes are delayed, and normal turnaround times are doubled.

That means it’s time to get an early jump on the market and work closely with your broker to determine the best plan and design for your company’s benefit plans.

Contact the experts at CorpStrat for a consultation and let us bring you into our 21^st Century HR Platform.

The Benefits of Employee Benefits

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Your people are the backbone of your organization’s ability to grow and drive revenue. So how important are quality employee benefits to achieving your company’s goals and objectives? They are extremely crucial.

Employees value a well-rounded selection of benefits, and health insurance, a 401(k) plan, life insurance and dental coverage are a few of the plans that you can consider offering.

The Benefits

Benefits packages offer value to your employees and help you boost productivity and retention in a cost-effective manner. Here are a few of the advantages of offering employee benefits as part of your compensation package.

Talent Attraction and Retention

Employees highly value a good benefits package. Developing a strategic benefits package that targets specific types of employees can help attract the right job candidates to keep your organization running at peak efficiency.

Once you have these top-performing employees at your company, providing a tailored employee benefits package will serve as a barrier to them leaving—a great benefits package can be a huge advantage when looking at retention strategies because it holds more than just monetary value for the employee. A bigger salary at another company likely won’t be as strong a pull for an employee tempted to leave if the other company’s benefits package isn’t as attractive as yours.

Healthy, Productive Employees

When your benefits package includes a combination of health insurance and dental and vision coverage, you will have employees who are able to take a proactive role in managing their health. They will have easy, affordable access to health care, reducing absenteeism due to illness.

When they are on the job, healthy employees are more productive than sick ones. It’s beneficial for your company’s productivity and your employees when they have access to medical coverage and time off when they are sick.

Satisfaction

A good benefits package leads to satisfied employees with higher morale. Employees who find value in their benefits are typically more willing to commit to their company because it helps make them feel valued—which leads to increased productivity and decreased absenteeism.

Efficient Use of Resources

Offering valuable benefits can help lower top employees’ expectations for salary. Many employees are willing to accept good benefits in lieu of a slightly higher salary.

This is an advantage to your budget because the value you present to employees with benefits, especially health insurance plans, can be monetarily equal to a raise in salary for them, while costing you less due to group rates and lower payroll taxes. Employers can avoid the hidden cost of paying extra payroll taxes on higher salary by instead offering benefits to provide similar value to employees.

Thinking Long-term

Even if you think you can save a little money in the short term by skimping on employee benefits, you will eventually face the consequences through a lowered ability to attract high-achieving employees, increased difficulty retaining your top performers, and lowered morale and productivity.

Offering a quality array of employee benefits will pay off through a stronger, more productive workforce with employees committed to your company.

Get Ready for Year End Open Enrollment Season

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Young employee listening to his manager explain open enrollment options

This is the time of the year where companies of all sizes struggle to get quality employee engagement during Open Enrollment period.

Even with technology offering automated benefits management tools, the challenges still persist when it comes to making it easier for employees to sign up for the benefits that are the best for them and/or their families.

To challenge this disconnect, employers and their Human Resources administrators can follow these tips in creating more employee engagement for Open Enrollment season.

Keep the initial communications on Open Enrollment simple

The very first message regarding Open Enrollment should be short and simple. This is not the time to throw everything at them all at once with boatloads of information on the varying offerings Open Enrollment provides.

Provide them with a clear message of the importance of the upcoming Open Enrollment process, varying deadlines, contact information and any upcoming meetings you have planned.

Keep the language simple and clear on the documentation of your benefits packages.

When describing what each plan is and what is covered, make sure to use bullet points in highlighting key details and while comparing and contrasting the available offerings.

Use your means of communication methods

Be mindful of your employee’s different thoughts, feelings, problems and more regarding their offerings. Communicate the differences to them and work with them to recognize and use their preferred means of communication.

While some people prefer their communication method delivered via email, you may have others who need a hard copy brochure to get your message across. They even might need something tangible they can hold in their hands like a poster or flier to bring home to their families to discuss.

Whichever way your employees prefer to receive their Open Enrollment information, make sure to change up the look-and-feel. Try to keep it fresh and engaging with design and layout changes, even as the information stays pretty much the same throughout.

Create engaging messages around the individual and/or their families

Organizations who are successful with higher employee engagement rates during Open Enrollment do a great job of cutting out the noise by highlighting what’s the most important information for an individual and/or their families in the offerings they are choosing from.

For example, employers may dive deep into what the actual costs are for employees on high deductible health plans, or, they might highlight a new voluntary benefit—added to their offering package. Addressing key components that make the benefits so attractive to add with their traditional healthcare selections.

Promoting voluntary benefits to create employee engagement

In 2016, the cost of care hit over $10,000 per person. With more-and-more employers turning to High-Deductible Healthcare plans to help offset the rising costs of healthcare and to keep premiums lower, we are seeing more people struggle to find the coverage they need as a result.

Voluntary Benefits are extremely important for employers to offer because it gives their employees the power to prepare for the worst when it comes to their healthcare. Today, a traditional healthcare plan might not be enough to support a person or their family financially in the event they get really sick.

Above all, it’s important to stay organized, keep a tight schedule and when in doubt, remember the challenge is to communicate 10x better and more frequently to get your message past all the noise.

DNA Genetic Testing and Insurance: Can They Co-Exist?

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Genomics is transforming medicine, and slowly but inevitably will be reshaping insurance. It was only a matter of time…

The secrets once buried deep, hidden in the paired strands of DNA every person carries. The mysteries of the genome (an individual’s complete set of DNA) remained veiled when the Human Genome Project began, which was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the sequence of nucleotides that made up the human DNA. Then in 2003, the international research project completed its mission, sequencing the genome.

This rapidly advancing science in forcing the insurance industry to navigate a multitude of actuarial, ethical, privacy and even reputational concerns.

The fundamental business models for life, disability, critical illness, and long-term care insurers could be at stake, given the growing existential threat of information as more people buy insurance, without disclosing their predisposition to certain diseases.

Genomics just may become the greatest disruptor to the insurance industry, the equivalent to global warming, or cybersecurity risks in the property/casualty space.

The sequencing of the human genome, DNA genetic testing (such as 23andMe), and genome editing are changing the way of how we are detecting diseases early on, treatment and even prevention through precision medicine. However, genetic testing companies are in line to influence everything from how insurance is underwritten and priced to how products are designed.

The Rise of DNA Testing

Take, 23andMe for example, which offers risk reports for multiple diseases, providing the public with intimate genetic information. Those who test positive to a serious predisposed illness could buy more coverage than they need and at an unpriced rate. And, those who test negative, could delay purchasing insurance coverage, or allow their policies to expire.

According to Nabholz, Swiss Re’s head of research and development, life and health “more than 12 million people have taken direct-to-consumer DNA tests, with almost 8 million of those tests occurring since 2016.”

“People who get a genetic test back that is unfavorable, of course, they’re going to seek to protect themselves and their family,” Nabholz goes on to say. “That’s a natural reaction.”

But, insurers will have to move cautiously. The science is relatively immature. The regulatory landscape remains uncertain with at least one state proposing a ban on using genetic information to underwrite life policies.

And then there is the matter of privacy, data ownership, and media coverage concern that would follow the rejection of applicants due to gene mutations or variants. The questions that are unanswered are as frequent as the questions yet asked.

One thing is certain: genetic testing will open doors to longevity, healthcare, prevention, and screening, and will ultimately lead to us leading healthier and longer lives.

Get Informed on Rising Health Care Costs

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Association Based Health Insurance – A Cure For Small Group?

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), employers that do not meet the 50 or more full-time or full-time equivalent employee threshold to be Applicable Large Employers (ALEs), are not required to offer health coverage. Nor do they face penalties. Not surprisingly, as a result, smaller businesses often do not offer coverage.

New regulations proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) want to change that dynamic. And in a thriving economy, where unemployment means retention is key, health insurance is a key driver in employee acquisition and retention.

Up to 11 million Americans working for small businesses or who are sole proprietors and their families lack employer-sponsored insurance. The DOL hopes new rules on HOW healthcare plans are purchased will close the gap of uninsured Americans; without eliminating options available in the healthcare marketplace.

New Rules

The proposed regulations will allow small business health plans—known as Association Health Plans (AHP)—to expand under The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). This may allow the self-employed and other small businesses to band together to form their own associations for the purposes of providing healthcare coverage.

AHPs would be required to accept all applicants and could not deny individuals with pre-existing conditions or charge more for people who are sick. However, they could reduce prescription drug coverage and increase coverage in other categories to compensate for the reduction, the effect of which would be to increase costs for chronic care patients.

The employer members of these plans would need to be in the same trade, industry, line of business, profession, or to have their principal place of business in the same state, or, if in multiple states, in the same metropolitan area.

Under the current regulations, an AHP is considered a single plan only if the association has a purpose or function unrelated to offering healthcare benefits and the employer members have a common economic interest. So, few options exist and all have to comply with the ACA’s “essential benefit rules”.

The end result of these new rules, or so the thinking goes, is that this will make premiums more affordable. The trade-off is that these health insurance plans would be less extensive then what is usually required by health insurance plans offered by the current marketplace. Lots of review and legislation await the proposed offering of new association plans. However, they offer a glimmer of home to the problem of rising health insurance costs.