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Making Your Employee Benefits Count
Employees undervalue their benefits for many reasons including:
For employees to understand the value and quality of the offerings they receive, employers must educate employees and family members and provide monthly benefits statements that share the true cost of the benefits and show high quality care.
Effectively communicating the ins and outs of health insurance plans and the other resources being offered to your employees will positively impact your organization in five ways:
If you want to retain and attract a loyal base of excellent professionals, then teaching them the value and inner-workings of their benefits is essential. When an employee gains a good understanding of their current health plans and other workforce perks, they becomes comfortable in how they are supposed to function and can utilize these offerings to their full capacity. This understanding and utilization is coupled with a higher appreciation of the perks their current employer is providing and said employee is less likely to look for employment with “better options” elsewhere. Many employees will also develop a deeper appreciation toward their employer, noticing that they care about their employees to have their benefits explained fully and properly. This appreciation is further compounded when employees talk to friends or family only to discover that this kind of benefits education is not common practice, which deepens the employee’s value of their company and the offerings.
When a strong effort is being made by the company to educate employees on the benefits offered, employees feel more confident in choosing selections based on their unique needs or health plans. This support of an employee and their family’s health and well being positively impacts employee morale and job satisfaction. Those two factors lead to a more productive workforce, which can improve profitability and efficiency.
Executives and HR departments have a multitude of extremely important responsibilities; none of which will gain from being sidetracked throughout the year by answering all sorts of one-off compensation questions. Having a strong, on-going education structure in place with a team readily available to assist, will lead to fewer questions, headaches and time-off-task scenarios for all involved parties.
The more a workforce understands their health benefits or general compensation, the better prepared they are to make an informed decision. In most cases, employees will realize that the benefits being provided by their employer are far superior to what is available on the individual market, and unquestionably a better option than rolling the dice by not insuring themselves.
A properly educated workforce can make more informed decisions when health care services or health insurance coverage are needed. This higher understanding can lead to significantly lower claims activity, which can directly impact renewal costs for an employer. Fewer claims equal less of a renewal increase. It’s a financial win for the employer and employee alike.
Fringe Benefit Analysts provides professionally produced guides for open enrollment meetings and for new hires containing all the information employees need to make informed choices regarding benefits, employee health care, behavioral health, pharmacy benefits, specialty care, and group health plans.
These benefits guides are customized to each client and their offering in regards to their compensation packages and health benefits.
When partnering with Fringe Benefit Analysts, employees can provide personal information one time, via a secure website, to populate multiple documents and can then print a number of completed carrier enrollment forms and applications.
After many years in business, we have found that holding general employee meetings during the open enrollment period are vital to employees’ understanding of their health benefits package and other compensation options. In order to assist with these meetings, Fringe Benefit Analysts will prepare all materials, announcements and correspondence to ensure a productive meeting.
In an effort to consolidate information and provide for ease-of-use, Fringe Benefit Analysts builds a customized portal for each of our clients providing quick access to benefit plan summaries, PPACA required documents, web links, provider directories, forms and client-specific documents.