Rising costs of healthcare in general, and private medical insurance in particular, is one of the biggest challenges the industry currently faces.
That’s why at this year’s Make A Difference Leaders’ Summit we’ve added a brand new track specifically covering ‘The New Shape of Reward & Benefits’. This track covers the hottest topics of the moment like ‘the future health risks facing a multigenerational workforce’ and ‘what employers can do when pay can’t stretch further’. This must-attend event for anyone with a stake in Employee Health and Wellbeing takes place on Thursday 9th October in London. To see the agenda and register, click here.
Following our coverage on why costs are rising and the new innovative solutions emerging, this feature looks at what any employer can do today with no (or, at least very little, cost).
How many of these are you already doing?
1. Build community at work
In the past, when a healthcare provider was hired by an employer, representatives would usually go into offices to talk to employees face to face about these benefits. As well as hearing from the specialist provider, these were times when employees could also share their experiences, ask for help and open up if they felt intimidated or overwhelmed by the choices.
”We found going into companies like this increased the number of calls the EAP would get, and increased the number of men using the service. When you stand in front of someone talking to them about health they tend to be more attentive and ask questions, and feel less alone in it,” says Karl Bennett, Founder of The Wellbeing Consortium and UK Chair of EAPA.
”Now, talking to employees like this happens less and less. Usually these conversations are done via webinars. But there’s webinar fatigue now. People are generally not attentive and often doing something else while the webinar is on.”
Being mindful of this, employers can consciously create spaces or pockets of time – especially occasionally face to face – when employees get the chance to share their experiences with the health related benefits on offer. This doesn’t have to be a specific session, but can be incorporated into existing sessions, or ERG network discussions on other topics such as financial wellbeing or dealing with chronic illness at work or menopause at work.
2. Make information easily accessible online, any time
The quicker and more easily employees can access resources once they identify a health issue, the more likely that this issue is going to be nipped in the bud early. As we write about constantly here, preventative strategies save money, time, energy and, even, lives.
Digital tools can play a key role here in making benefits more easily and quickly accessible by removing barriers like having to get an appointment with a health professional. The ability to personalise digital care, especially with AI’s constantly improving capabilities, is getting better every day.
Digital tools can also increase engagement because they are usually anonymous and accessible at an employee’s convenience. They give agency to employees to start resourcing themselves before they access ‘deeper’ care, especially on sensitive, potentially shame-inducing subjects like debt, cancer, menopause, addictions or mental health problems.
3. Hold your suppliers accountable
“Employers want to be confident that the support they’re investing in delivers tangible outcomes. Providers can help by sharing anonymised clinical insight on key services,” says Tina Kennedy, Product Director at Simplyhealth.
She explains that Simplyhealth collects clinical efficiency data. This enables Simplyhealth to monitor important health indicators such as clinical improvement scores, absenteeism, presentism, and usage across its customer base. For high utilisation services such as GP and EAP, Simplyhealth is able to share clinical insights with individual clients.
“This is an important way to understand whether a product is delivering meaningful outcomes for the businesses we serve,” she says.
In recent months, Simplyhealth has also shared aggregated and fully anonymised clinical insight with the Government’s Keep Britain Working Review to evidence the positive role health plans are playing in the workplace.
Greater awareness of the collective impact of interventions could improve buy-in and expand coverage of health support amongst UK businesses. So, providers could be more proactive in sharing their anonymised data on an industry-wide basis to benefit the whole discipline by collaborating to show its impact. If your provider is not already doing this – why not ask them to?
Also, if you use a broker, you should have a yearly review of products to ensure you are still getting the best available prices and products for your workforce – hold your broker accountable to deliver this!
4. Make the most of exit interviews
Most employers do exit interviews but, in Bennett’s opinion, most are missing a trick when it comes to feedback on benefits and the reasons for employee unhappiness and, even, ill health:
“Employers always tell me they do exit interviews but when I ask for the data around those interviews they’ll say ‘ah, well, we don’t collect the data on those’! But this doesn’t make sense because exit data is phenomenal information that will guide you around the reasons that people are leaving. At this point they are also much more open about telling you what is working, what isn’t working and what negatively impacts their mental health at work.”
5. Ensure your line managers know how to spot the first signs of stress
The best way to save money on claims and sickness leave is to identify potential issues early and prevent them from developing further. And, generally, line managers are in the best position to spot the early signs – but they need to know what these are. They also need to understand that simply listening and acknowledging an employee’s concerns is a powerful first preventative step.
As well as ensuring they’re trained in the foundations of mental health, to prevent issues (and costs!) escalating managers should be able to take relevant actions. For example, they should have the ability to manage workload, offer flexible working if appropriate, signpost employees to the right support and sign off reasonable adjustments if necessary/appropriate.
6. Give your benefits-buying colleagues the necessary insights to make the best decisions on products
Whether your healthcare benefits are bought by HR, or you have a specific Benefits or Reward expert, Health and Wellbeing professionals can provide them with valuable insight in renewal periods.
One Global Wellbeing Director who is a member of our Leaders Club, for example, collaborates with her benefits colleagues in order to ensure the best strategic decisions are being made. It can often be difficult for benefits specialist because they are handed multiple reports from providers full of data to decipher. Going to them with your analysis and interpretation of the data can lead to cost saving but, more importantly, more impactful provision choices.
“I set up calls with Benefits during renewal periods. I find this helps not falling into the circle of buying the same products automatically from year to year,” she says.
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