One of the most important stages of health benefits strategy is laying the groundwork for the intentional design of a program. The goal of intentional design is to not only meet the needs of your employees while controlling the costs of the benefits plan, but also achieve alignment to a clearly articulated health benefits strategy and guiding principles important to your company. We work with you collaboratively throughout the entire process in a mutual partnership to achieve the most affordable and high-performing health benefits plan possible. We invite you to call us at 371.751.7049 to discuss how LHD can assist you in the intentional design of the right health benefits plan for your business.
Building a health benefits plan for your workforce is a complex undertaking but is one that LHD excels at because of our passion for leveraging data into a results-oriented array of offerings that improves employee engagement. LHD’s approach redefines what it means to be data-driven for better business decision making in a highly competitive market. You can amplify the engagement and health of your employees with a benefits plan they will love when you let the data guide the process. Employee benefits done right is our specialty, and we’re ready to put our expertise to work for your company. But being data-driven doesn’t mean qualitative research is the be-all-end-all. We also pay attention to qualitative research and data in the health benefits plan design process.
Health benefits plan designs all have to deal with the proverbial elephant in the room, which is the ever-increasing cost factor of healthcare in the US. While the economics of healthcare feel like a constant topic in the halls of the federal government, nothing much seems to change in terms of the all-too-real cost of healthcare.
During the decade before Obamacare was passed in 2010 (the Affordable Care Act or ACA), the average cost of healthcare was increasing by around 6% each and every year. Since the ACA was passed, the annual increase has averaged around 4.3%. Many mistakenly think this decrease means healthcare has become less expensive. What it really means is that the cost of healthcare is still rising every year, but the increase each year has been a smaller increase than it used to be. The point is that healthcare costs are not going to go down. They will continue to go up every year.
We understand that a primary component of any company’s health benefits strategy is to control the cost. Too many companies, however, have only one cost management strategy: cutting benefits or increasing the cost-share to employees. This is not a sustainable strategy over time because employees will become increasingly dissatisfied with their health benefits. This in turn can result in a serious negative impact on recruitment, hiring, and retention. Our recommendation is to look into the data to find ways to design a health benefits package that will work for your employees and your business.
LHD will examine any and all data your company has regarding the current health benefits plan you offer to employees. This data is an invaluable input to the intentional design process, but it’s also only a starting point. We will want to conduct our own research by directly surveying your employees to learn more about their views and opinions regarding the current offerings. We’ve developed an extensive bank of potential survey questions from which we draw depending on the specific context of your company, and the response categories may be varied as well. Below are some example potential questions, both quantitative and qualitative:
The above questions are just a few possibilities from our extensive bank of potential questions we may want to ask of your employees to collect the type of data we need to inform the intentional design process.
Context is important in Intentional Health Benefits Strategy and Design, which is why LHD tracks national and geo-specific data and trends related to employer health benefits. Here are a sampling of such data and trends that may be important consider in plan designs:
According to a recent Artemis Health Survey, “The number of HR and benefits professionals who identified improving employee health and well-being as a top goal doubled from 2019 to 2020. The focus on well-being spans every level of organizations, from top-level HR executives to on-the-ground benefits managers—and employees’ mental health is just as much of a concern for leaders as their physical health.”
In addition, “Forty-six percent of respondents said their ability to improve employee health and well-being was a measure of success in 2020, nearly three times as many as in 2019 (17%).” Trends like these are important because they indicate, in this case, a much more hands-on approach to actively increasing the health of employees and doing so takes a particular kind of approach to health and wellness programming within your benefits plan design.
The host of issues that has arisen as a result of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic will impact health benefits plans for years to come, in part because of lasting mental health impacts as described in a recent HR Executive article.
Other interesting trends we are watching include individual health care exchanges (the evolution of Obamacare); individual coverage healthcare reimbursement arrangements (ICHRAs); personalization of health benefits (what younger workers want versus what older workers want); telehealth offerings (including for mental health); the rise of pricing transparency in healthcare; and many more. LHD stays up-to-date on trends and data in the health benefits industry so you don’t have to.
With the data we collect and the trends we track, LHD can then have an informed discussion with your company about what you wish to accomplish with your health benefits plan. What are your goals and objectives? How will your company culture be reflected in plan design? What are the values and guiding principles that need to influence plan design? What is the overarching strategy that will help you accomplish all of these? It’s important to clarify all this to achieve alignment and design a high-performing health benefits plan to get the results you seek.
One thing we deeply understand at LHD is that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. A cookie cutter approach simply won’t work. Everything we do is customized to the specific context of your business based on real data and benchmarked against your industry in your location, as well as national trends. Call us now at 371.751.7049 to start the conversation about transforming health benefits at your company.