Benefits are an incredibly important factor of employee retention, attraction and satisfaction. Choosing and implementing a health insurance plan that keeps employees happy and costs manageable is essential to thrive in your industry. Yet for many companies, implementing a better package is a dreaded process that saves little to no money and leaves employees continually unsatisfied.
Despite opportunities for savings and coverage from health insurance brokers, there is still the potential for problems. Sometimes, critical data isn’t considered when a broker crafts a plan, or the individual needs and nuances of your company are overlooked. If you don’t take the time to carefully collect and consider data about your employees, you also may end up working with a broker that doesn’t offer many modifications or customizations.
When you take the time to best understand your employees’ desires for their health insurance, and how they fit with your company budget, there’s no stopping your competitive advantage. When selecting a broker for your health insurance, make sure you avoid these common pitfalls and instead make data-informed decisions that best fit your unique needs.
Mistake #1: Developing Tunnel Vision
Oftentimes, companies have the best intentions in switching brokers. Aims like lowering costs, providing better benefits and determining the best fit for employees keep the best interests of your financial and employee health in mind.
However, you may have grown used to a certain set of offerings from your broker, and are hesitant to branch out beyond what you know. You may just feel like you don’t have the time to re-learn a new plan, since you and your team invested so much into understanding your current plan. Developing tunnel vision and only considering plans with very little differentiating factors will ultimately leave your employees as unsatisfied as they are with their current plan.
To avoid this, work with a broker committed to innovation and the ability to satisfy special requests you may have for coverage.
Mistake #2: Relying Too Much on Your Broker
Human Resource departments are always strapped for time when it comes to benefit administration. While placing the quote creation process fully in a broker’s hands may be tempting, this hurts your opportunities to incorporate your employees into the process and customize areas of your plan.
Resist the temptation to fully rely on an external broker to make all your decisions for you. Without intimate knowledge of your company, a broker is unable to create a plan that truly fits your organization.
Instead, make sure you work with a broker who’s committed to not just understanding your individualized needs, but crafting a plan that encompasses them. Think critically about what you and your employees need from a health insurance program.
To do this, you’ll need plenty of data — and innovative means to capture it.
Mistake #3: Not Collecting and Utilizing Employee Data
Since the reason companies offer benefits is to attract and retain key employees, you need to understand what your current employees actually want from their benefits. You also need to mine data from company leadership and your current broker to fully understand what you’d rather have.
Deliberately design surveys to gain the data and information you need to become as competitive as possible in attracting talent in your industry. For example, ask questions like:
- What do you currently like and dislike about your benefit plan?
- In your ideal benefit plan, what are you looking for?
- What do you most value in a benefit plan?
- In terms of employee retention, what kind of plan would incentivize you to stay with your current position?
In terms of leadership and administration, you’ll need to ask questions like:
- For CEOs: As a company, what is your competitive ranking like in your industry, and how can your benefits improve this?
- For CFOs: How can we increase your company valuation and improve financing access through modifications in benefit expenditures?
- For HR Directors: How can we best integrate benefits with your payroll system and technology?
Work with a broker who’ll help collect and study your company’s data. You’ll get an effective, competitive plan uniquely tailored to your employee’s needs and your financial stipulations.
Mistake #4: Not Evaluating Your Current Spend
Engaging with your employees, accessing their honest feedback and creating a solution where their voice is fairly incorporated is a fundamental part of data collection. But don’t stop there — you need to carefully evaluate your claims spending on both the employer and employee side.
When considering a new broker, make sure you select one that helps you intensely research how these dollars have been spent. They’ll help you dig deep into claims to fully understand deductibles, co-insurance, co-pays, out-of-pocket costs and more. With this data, you can better understand how much of your costs goes towards your benefits — and where you can save money in your new plan.
Better Data Means Better Benefits
At Waypoint Benefit Solutions, we utilize a data-driven, strategic, well-researched process to solve your problems. Waypoint evaluates and creates solutions based around two major sets of data: what your company’s employees and leadership most need and desire from their benefits, and how much your company and employees spend under your current traditional plan. Ultimately, this helps us consider what we can do with your current investment to provide worthwhile benefits, save money and improve your administrative relationships.
Ready to modernize your benefits administration, strengthen your company and attract top talent? We’re here to help. Schedule your introductory call today!