Author: John Griffin, President, Sterling Capital Brokers
Employee benefits are essential for attracting and retaining top talent. But with the ever-changing landscape of benefits, it can be hard to keep up. What’s more, employees are becoming increasingly demanding when it comes to their benefits. They want more than health insurance and a retirement plan. They want perks that make their lives easier and work-life balance programs that give them time to enjoy their personal lives. As an employer, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to employee benefits. Not only will it help you attract and retain the best talent, but it will also improve morale and increase productivity in the workplace. Here are five easy wins for your employee benefits program that will help you stay ahead of the competition.
Do The Basics Well
There are many potential benefits that can be offered to employees as part of an employee benefits program, and getting the basics right is just the starting point. Most basic plans include health, dental and vision insurance, as well as life insurance, and often some component of coverage for a disability that prevents someone from working.
These benefits form a core component of your compensation plan, and are also an expression of your company culture and values. What do you do when an employee cannot work? How about an unexpected illness or death in the family? How do you support an employee trying to get access to medicine that will ultimately make their lives or the life of a loved one better and healthier?
You answer all of these questions with your core employee benefits plan - and once that is complete, you get an opportunity to consider what else you can do for your employees.
Employee benefits programs can vary greatly in terms of the types and levels of coverage offered. Some programs may offer very comprehensive coverage, while others may offer more limited coverage. Some companies may also offer additional perks and perks such as paid time off, discounts on company products or services, and more.
The key is to find the right mix of benefits that meets the needs of your employees and your business. By offering a well-rounded employee benefit program, you can attract and retain top talent, improve employee morale and productivity, and reduce absenteeism.
Build In Time-Saving Supports
In the few years, there has been a proliferation of online tools and technology that make getting access to services easier than ever. A few short years ago, if I wanted to get urgent care for an illness I would have to schedule a time to speak with my family doctor or go to walk-in clinic. In cases where someone had no family doctor, and where walk-ins were not an option, you may even have to go to the emergency room.
Then help arrived from one of the unlikeliest of places: your employee benefit program. Telemedicine services became wildly popular during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and proved a great tool not only for attracting great talent, but genuinely impacting the lives of employees. It proved so effective getting people regular support for simple illnesses that some jurisdictions launched access to telemedicine services province wide.
This is a perfect example of delivering impactful services through your employee benefits program.
Check Your Tech
Almost all claims can be processed electronically now, but as you consider your service provider, you have to make sure that they offer the technology that makes engaging with a benefits program easier for your members. Some simple questions to validate how well your provider stacks up to the competition:
Can members and their families enroll online, and is the enrollment instantaneously effective? If you can enroll online, but drug cards are not effective for a few days, for instance, it usually means that behind the scenes the technology is using integrations that are old, slow and run in overnight batches...just like we did in the 80s.
Do they have an app? And does it work? Some apps allow you to submit claims, but it is simply another way to get a claim into the hands of a human adjudicator. That is good, but many providers can adjudicate claims automatically now, and that should be the standard you set for your program – why would you accept any less?
Do they have an online marketplace for additional services? Most insurance companies have a wide array of services they can offer plan members, but surprisingly few make it easy to access those services. It costs you nothing, and makes your benefits program stand-out, if plan members can get easy access to additional services through an online marketplace.
Benchmark and Compare
Ever wondered what the competition is offering their employees? It is easier than ever to know what other workplaces are doing with their benefits programs. A key part of making any good decision is having the data on how your plan compares to your peers. You are competing for the same talent, and you should know what they are offering as part of their compensation package.
Benchmarking reports are now a standard part of any good consultant’s annual review. Your program can be compared to your peers and the data can be broken down by a number of different categories. Consultants have the data, but you should drive the agenda when it comes to how the data is presented and what data-points are included:
Size: you can see what employers across a range of employee population sizes offers.
Geography: sometimes knowing what a company across the country offers is important; other time, you want to know what the competitor down the street offers.
Industry: the data can be as specific as your niche product, which may only have two or three peers in a region; or, it can be as broad as any professional services firm.
Good data drives good decisions. Get the best data possible.
Let Employees Leverage Your Size
Many of your employees consume financial services products on their own; but they are just one person or one family. As a company with many more members, you have leverage they cannot have on their own, and there are easy ways for you to let your employees access that leverage.
You likely already have a group retirement savings plan - that's great. But can your employees top-up with voluntary contributions? And if they can, do they know? If your employees are saving on their own, it is very likely that they are paying much higher fees than are available in your retirement program. Across decades of retirement, the savings in fees are often in the tens of thousands of dollars, and massively impactful to someone's ultimate retirement.
Other ways you can leverage your size?
Home and Auto insurance programs, offering rates that are discounted vs those accessed in public.
Optional benefits programs like Critical Illness, additional Life insurance, available at a lower cost and, in some cases, without medical evidence when launched as part of a group plan.
Conclusion
Heading into planning for 2023, a small amount of attention and engagement with your employee benefits program can provide tremendous lift for your employees. It does not take a huge amount of time or effort, and these 5 easy wins can dramatically improve the experience your employees are having with their benefits program.
For more information on Sterling Capital Brokers' services, please visit their website: https://sterlingcapitalbrokers.com/
