Tag Archive for 'Benefits Education'

Benefits Education for Optimal Benefits ROI

Published by SAsmar on June 23, 2010 in Benefits, Financial Education and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

A new study by UNUM demonstrates the power of effective benefits education.  Employers with highly rated benefits education had job satisfaction rates of 88% vs. 45% for those employers with fair or poor benefits education – a difference of 43 points!  Employers with effective benefits education programs enjoyed increased employee engagement, loyalty, morale and productivity – ultimately driving up the ROI of significant investments in the benefits themselves.

Benefits Education

Benefits education proven effective for increasing employee satisfaction

Here are some highlights from the study:

  • “What you say” is as important as “what you do.”When it comes to workplace satisfaction, the way that you communicate benefits may be just as important as the benefits themselves. In fact, those employers with poor quality benefits packages were able to improve workplace satisfaction ratings by 32 points with highly rated benefits education.
  • Benefits Changes on the Rise; Quality of Benefits Education on the Decline. Roughly half (45%) of employees surveyed reported that they had seen changes in their benefits packages in 2009. And yet, the quality of benefits education declined sharply as 29% of workers gave their benefits education positive ratings in 2009 vs. 39% in 2008.
  • Accommodate various learning styles. 70% of employees surveyed use web-based materials when available. Online videos and interactive tools are a great way to satisfy all three learning styles – visual, auditory and “hands on.”
  • Effective benefits education helps retain talented employees.  In fact, 77% of employees who believed their company had good benefits education said they would stay with their employer even if they were offered the same pay and benefits elsewhere. As the job market improves, employees feel more comfortable looking elsewhere, so communicating the value of benefits is important.

Investments in benefits education can be a low-cost, high-impact way to affect worker satisfaction.  Even when paired with a below par benefits package, effective benefits education can be a cheap means to dramatically improve job satisfaction, employee engagement, loyalty and productivity.  Unlock the value of your benefits package with benefits education.

A $16 Million Benefits Communications Problem: CDHPs

Published by JLarocque on April 5, 2010 in Financial Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

One of the largest issue that our clients face is providing comprehensive and affordable health care for employees and

Benefits Communications

Focused Benefits Education Can Help You Drive CDHP Enrollment

their families.  In light of recent studies, employer interest in Consumer Driven Health Plans or CDHPs has grown tremendously.  In fact, a recent study by NBGH/Towers Watson finds that 54% of companies offer a CDHP and that number is expected to grow to 61% in 2011.

One of the more widely quoted surveys that illustrate cost savings is from health insurer Aetna.  In late 2009, Aetna published the results from a six-year study of its 2.6 million members and 410,000 members of the Aetna HealthFund consumer directed plan.  One key finding from this study showed that employers who offer the Aetna HealthFund as an option experienced savings of $7 million per 10,000 members over a  five year period.

But there is an opportunity for employers to save much more than that.  Aetna also offered this nugget:

“Employers that offered CDH plans as an option but who engaged employees for adoption using strategies identified as best-in-class saved $23 million per 10,000 members over five years.”

Imagine that.  An effective employee engagement plan is worth $16 million in cost savings (per 10,000 members over five years).  For many employers, employee engagement is an after-thought despite the importance to the overall success of the CDHP initiative.  In my discussions with employers, many have a sense that they are not maximizing the cost savings opportunity provided by their CDHP, but too many have no idea how much money they are leaving on the table.

Employee engagement is more of an art than a science.  To capture the kind of savings described above, most experts agree that it requires focused and ongoing employee education.  Sure, you can offer incentives to encourage adoption and promote certain behaviors but at the end of the day, an employee will not choose a plan unless he or she understands how it works.  The typical consumer driven plan is complex and an employee doesn’t need to look at the plan very long to see that it involves taking on more financial responsibility.  After all, that’s the point of a CDHP.

And so, given the absence of time and impression of risk, most employees would just assume stick with what they know and choose the PPO/HMO option.  And that’s the state we find ourselves in with many employers unable to push employee enrollment figures past the single-digit mark.

Benefits Communications for Today’s Employee

Published by JLarocque on March 15, 2010 in Benefits. 0 Comments Tags: , .
Benefits Communications

Traditional Benefits Communications Not Reaching Today's Employee

We used to make this distinction about certain people being “web savvy” but these days it seems we’re all pretty web savvy – perhaps there is just different degrees.  One of my colleagues always uses the example of his 85 year old grandfather forwarding him YouTube clips to illustrate this point.

At GuideSpark we spend much of our time talking to employers about taking a modern approach to benefits communications.  When we meet with an HR professional for the first time to discuss their specific issues, many of them seem to have this sense that the world of communications has somehow passed them by.

Naturally, we start by helping HR professionals think through their current approach.  I’m not sure it has ever taken us more than a couple of minutes to convince someone that thick handbooks, brochures and text heavy Web pages are not getting the job done.  The fact is, if this HR professional didn’t believe this to be true, they wouldn’t have met with us in the first place.

And then, we walk through how to really create a Benefits Communications strategy that aligns with how employees are learning today.  Here are 3 guiding principles that we offer:

  • Utilize web-based multimedia.  According to comScore, U.S. Internet users watched an average of 187 videos per viewer in December 2009.  Employees are conditioned to expect rich media formats when accessing information and they want it available on demand.
  • Leverage communities and shared learning.  Blogs have become a legitimate corporate training ground and in February 2009, social media usage exceeded that of email for the first time.  While not all subjects are appropriate for a shared learning environment, when making decisions, employees often just want to know what others are doing.  Build a community around your benefits and allow them to share information through polls and message boards.
  • Accommodate short attention spans.  Competing for just a few minutes of a busy employee’s time has never been more challenging.  Attention spans are shrinking each day.  A great example of this phenomenon is Twitter.  Twitter limits communications to just 145 characters.  To be effective in communicating to this crowd, you must work to make your benefits communications modular, concise and meaty.

Start with these and we promise you that your Benefits Communications will begin to have the impact that you desire.

Contrasting your FSA Employee Benefit and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit

Published by JLarocque on January 12, 2010 in Benefits, Financial Education and Financial Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

A mainstay of employer Benefits Communications is to preach the virtues of Flexible Spending Accounts.  But is there perhaps a better tax opportunity out there for your dependent care related expenses?

Tax is an important area of focus when it comes to attaining a productive benefits education.  Before digging into the details of this particular tax opportunity, it’s important that you understand the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit.  Tax deductions are taken “off the top” and ultimately reduce your taxable income, and, of course your taxable income is what ultimately drives the amount of taxes owed.  A tax credit on the other hand, is a dollar-for-dollar reduction subtracted from your tax liability.  If you had a $50 tax credit, it’s sort of like the government saying that they are giving you credit for having already paid them $50 in tax.

You may or may not be aware of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit available for work-related dependent care expenses.  This tax credit is calculated by applying a percentage to your total work-related dependent care expenses.  This percentage can be as high as 35% or as low as 20% depending on your adjusted gross income.  Now, there are a couple of rules to be aware of:

  • The work related dependent care expenses that are applied may not exceed $3,000 for one qualifying dependent and $6,000 for two or more
  • AND importantly, you can’t claim expenses for the purposes of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit that you’ve directed into your dependent care FSA

This raises an important question to ask yourself.   Should you apply eligible expenses towards the Dependent Care FSA or Dependent Care Tax Credit?  Well, this of course, will depend on your personal situation.

A good first step is to review the worksheet that the IRS has put together on the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit.  You’ll want to understand eligibility requirements and the amount of the credit, based on your adjusted gross income.  Now, apply that percentage to your projected work-related dependent care expenses for the year (keeping in mind the IRS limits) to come up with your potential tax credit.  You’ll likely want to work with a tax advisor to compare this Tax Credit with what the tax benefits of the Dependent Care FSA Tax Deduction.

It may be the case that you have work related dependent care expenses that exceed the IRS limits for both the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and Dependent Care FSA.  In this case, it may be possible to leverage both of these opportunities.  Because tax laws are complex and evolving, it’s important that you consult your tax advisor to understand how these two opportunities apply to your particular situation.

GuideSpark Announces New Hire Training and Open Enrollment Modules

Published by JLarocque on August 31, 2009 in Benefits, Financial Wellness, Solutions and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Today, GuideSpark announced two new modules for its Benefits Learning Center solution.  These modules automate and streamline New Hire Training and benefits communications for Open Enrollment.  As companies continue to prioritize doing more with less, many employers are looking for more efficient and effective ways to deal with these resource-intensive processes.

Consider for a moment the staff time and dollars go into facilitating New Hire Training and Open Enrollment each year.  Many companies we’ve met with offer half-day New Hire orientations on a near weekly basis.  Not to mention the time and effort that goes into the creation of the stacks of paper that employees receive on their first day.  Open enrollment presents a similar situation.  Each year, HR staff offer a collection of live seminars to explain benefits changes, often preceded by brochures, mailers and the like.  Despite all of this effort, nearly 80% of employers believe that their employees do not have a good understanding of their benefits.

Many employers have asked us how they free up their valuable, and in many cases shrinking HR staff to work on strategic projects while improving rates of benefits understanding among employees.  In addition, finding ways to communicate effectively has become an even higher priority as employers prepare to make difficult announcements about cutting programs and/or asking employees to take on a greater share of health care costs.

Our answers to such questions naturally start with what we know to be true about today’s employees:

  • First, given the trend of increasingly distributed workforces and the importance of family decision makers, on-site seminars fail to provide reach
  • Next, given the explosion of web multimedia and sites like YouTube, employees have become accustomed to rich, short-form content.  The busy professional of today simply does not have the attention span to thumb through lengthy benefits documents.

GuideSpark’s Benefits Learning Center modules embrace these trends to provide a modern and engaging multimedia solution capable of reaching your distributed workforce and their families.  This online solution automates open enrollment and new hire training workflows to free up valuable resources.  Employees have on demand access to a library of multimedia benefits presentations, allowing them to direct and personalize their learning experience.  In addition, these modules offer custom checklists for open enrollment and new hire on boarding, so that employees can conveniently track their progress.

Please take a look at the New Hire Training and Open Enrollment demonstrations on our site to better understand the power of these new modules.

BEWARE: Usual, Customary and Reasonable Charges

Published by JLarocque on August 19, 2009 in Benefits. 1 Comment Tags: , .

I visited my childhood pediatrician until age 28.  Why?  Well, I trusted his judgment and there was just a huge amount of peace of mind that came with dealing with a physician who had first-hand experience with just about every entry in my medical history.  Dr. Blair was never once in the network of doctors offered by my medical plans and therefore I had to pay 20% more for care.  Fortunately for me, it was only 20%.

What you may not know is that each year Americans incur significant unexpected charges when they pursue out-of-network care.  The issue is that your insurer will pay only a percentage of what they deem to be “usual, customary and reasonable” for the services provided.  So, while the insurer will provide 70% coverage of the medical test you had done as promised, it may only be 70% of the “usual, customary and reasonable” or UCR amount of $300 vs. 70% of the $500 your physician has charged for the test.  And yes, that’s right, you are stuck with the difference.  You can imagine how, in the case of major procedures, you may be responsible for thousands of dollars in unexpected medical bills for utilizing that highly recommended surgeon who happens to be out-of-network.

So, if you’re utilizing out-of-network care, experts recommend you take the following steps for ensuring that you aren’t surprised by UCR charges and optimize your plan benefits:

  1. Talk to your doctor and get the charges and procedure codes for your insurer
  2. Provide the codes to the insurer and understand how much they will pay
  3. Negotiate with your doctor, particularly if his/her cost for the procedure is more than the UCR amount.  It is often effective to agree to pay your portion of the services up-front so that they can avoid lengthy waiting periods from your insurance company.
  4. Utilize flexible spending accounts.  Many times the types of procedures or tests that involve large out-of-pocket expenses can be foreseen and planned for.  If this is true in your case, be sure to take advantage of FSA programs that allow you to pay your portion with pre-tax dollars.
  5. If you’re a member of a high deductible health care plan, be sure to tap into your employer provided health savings account or health reimbursement arrangement to pay down the amount that may be due.

This is a great plan in theory but unfortunately you may be challenged to complete steps 1 and 2. While codes and costs are critical to understand up front, they are very hard to get.  The reason is, insurers consider their negotiated rates to be proprietary.  They negotiate with each doctor and facility individually to minimize their costs and therefore it is to their advantage to maintain confidentiality.  However, that does not mean that you should not ask for this information and continue to ask for it until you get it.

The good news is that there is pending legislation for more transparency when it comes to costs.  Earlier this year, UnitedHealth agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle class-action lawsuits brought by the American Medical Association and other groups on behalf of patients and doctors who claimed to be shortchanged for services provided out of network.  Some health care insurers such as Aetna and CIGNA have taken the lead on transparency, publishing the negotiated rates of tens of thousands of physicians in their network.  And with high deductible health care plans becoming more popular, the need for transparency is becoming ever more critical.

For years, patients have avoided asking about the cost of services, physicians don’t volunteer it and members find out what their ultimately responsible for after the fact.  Don’t be surprised by health care costs, be proactive.

I visited my childhood pediatrician until age 28.  Why?  Well, I trusted his judgment and there was just a huge amount of peace of mind that came with dealing with a physician who had first-hand experience with just about every entry in my medical history.  Dr. Blair was never once in the network of doctors offered by my medical plans and therefore I had to pay 20% more for care.  Fortunately for me, it was only 20%.

What you may not know is that each year Americans incur significant unexpected charges when they pursue out-of-network care.  The issue is that your insurer will pay only a percentage of what they deem to be “usual, customary and reasonable” for the services provided.  So, while the insurer will provide 70% coverage of the medical test you had done as promised, it may only be 70% of the “usual, customary and reasonable” or UCR amount of $300 vs. 70% of the $500 your physician has charged for the test.  And yes, that’s right, you are stuck with the difference.  You can imagine how, in the case of major procedures, you may be responsible for thousands of dollars in unexpected medical bills for utilizing that highly recommended surgeon who happens to be out-of-network.

So, if you’re utilizing out-of-network care, experts recommend you take the following steps for ensuring that you aren’t surprised by UCR charges and optimize your plan benefits:

1. Talk to your doctor and get the charges and procedure codes for your insurer

2. Provide the codes to the insurer and understand how much they will pay

3. Negotiate with your doctor, particularly if his/her cost for the procedure is more than the UCR amount.  It is often effective to agree to pay your portion of the services up-front so that they can avoid lengthy waiting periods from your insurance company.

4. Utilize flexible spending accounts.  Many times the types of procedures or tests that involve large out-of-pocket expenses can be foreseen and planned for.  If this is true in your case, be sure to take advantage of FSA programs that allow you to pay your portion with pre-tax dollars.

5. If you’re a member of a high deductible health care plan, be sure to tap into your employer provided health savings account or health reimbursement arrangement to pay down the amount that may be due.

This is a great plan in theory but unfortunately you may be challenged to complete steps 1 and 2. While codes and costs are critical to understand up front, they are very hard to get.  The reason is, insurers consider their negotiated rates to be proprietary.  They negotiate with each doctor and facility individually to minimize their costs and therefore it is to their advantage to maintain confidentiality.  However, that does not mean that you should not ask for this information and continue to ask for it until you get it.

The good news is that there is pending legislation for more transparency when it comes to costs.  Earlier this year, UnitedHealth agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle class-action lawsuits brought by the American Medical Association and other groups on behalf of patients and doctors who claimed to be shortchanged for services provided out of network.  Some health care insurers such as Aetna and CIGNA have taken the lead on transparency, publishing the negotiated rates of tens of thousands of physicians in their network.  And with high deductible health care plans becoming more popular, the need for transparency is becoming ever more critical.

For years, patients have avoided asking about the cost of services, physicians don’t volunteer it and members find out what their ultimately responsible for after the fact.  Don’t be surprised by health care costs, be proactive.

New Solution for Benefits Communications and Financial Wellness

Published by JLarocque on June 17, 2009 in Solutions and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

employee-benefits-open-enrollment-forms_smallToday, GuideSpark announced two core products focused on the issues of corporate benefits education and employee financial wellness.  Over the last 18 months, we’ve had a chance to meet with many employers – from small businesses to large enterprises, from Silicon Valley technology companies to retail chains to government organizations.  Not surprisingly, each of these employers carries a similar burden – how to reduce the cost of benefits while continuing to offer a competitive compensation package.

While many HR professionals concede that their employees have a poor understanding of their benefits package, most underestimate the impact of this situation on their bottom line.  Employees who don’t understand their benefits are more likely to:

  • Make poor election decisions, driving up benefit costs
  • Access benefits information in the most costly way possible – through calls to your human resources staff and call center
  • Be less satisfied with their compensation and more likely to leave

Benefits communications is a critical tool for managing costs in this environment.  Our offerings are targeted at improving the failing rates of benefits understanding among employees today to help employers realize the full value of their considerable investments in benefits.  We move far beyond the standard fare of thick benefits handbooks to provide a comprehensive curriculum of engaging multimedia education for today’s employee.  By providing more modern and more effective benefits communications, employers can cut the cost of benefits, while motivating and retaining employees.