How to Give Your Health Care Offerings a Boost

By Matt Straz

While small businesses (those with fewer than 50 employees) aren’t required to provide health care coverage, many see it as an essential tool to recruit and retain top talent. Unfortunately, with the ever-rising costs of health care, it can be difficult for a growing business to provide adequate health care coverage to all of its employees.

Fortunately, there are various measures you can take to prevent, provide, and inform. Implementing these few steps can help lead your small business on the route to better health care coverage for all:

1. Take preventative measures.

An (apple a day) ongoing wellness program keeps the doctor away. As small businesses grapple with rising health care costs, employers are seeking relief by taking preventative measures.

What better way to help employees maintain a clean bill of health than to implement a wellness program? In fact, MetLife’s 12th Annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study found that 82 percent of employers offer health screening, 75 percent offer fitness programs, and 74 percent offer health management initiatives (e.g., on-site clinic).

Not only can corporate wellness programs help you reduce overall company health care costs, these programs also serve as an attractive benefit to many of today’s health-crazed job seekers. While gym memberships tend to be the most common health perk, more companies are making health and fitness a company-wide endeavor:

• IT consulting company Appirio cut a significant chunk — $280,000, to be exact — from its insurance bill by giving employees Fitbits.
• Gravity Payments, a Seattle-based credit card processing company, has a weekly running club, where team members can be excused from their work for an hour to go on an organized run.

Whether you offer free healthy lunches, bring in treadmill desks, or organize company-wide exercises, just be sure to start moving toward a healthier workplace.

2. Choose the right health care options.

The key to affording and providing health care solutions to your employees is to choose the best options for your company size. When it comes to truly understanding and selecting the right benefits for your business, it’s best to turn to the experts for advice.

Consider working with a licensed broker to ensure you’re choosing the right offerings for your small business. These dedicated benefits experts can help you design effective plans with the right deductibles and premiums for your employees.

Brokers can also help create a more enjoyable open enrollment experience for employees by supporting and advising them during and after enrollment. Smarter offerings means smarter decision-making.

3. Educate employees about their benefits decisions.

You know something is wrong when employees spend more time planning vacations (five hours), researching mortgage loans (five hours), and deciding what car to buy (10 hours) than they do choosing their benefits.

In fact, according to the 2014 Aflac Workforces Report, nearly half of U.S. workers (46 percent) devote 30 minutes or less to the annual task of understanding and signing up for health care benefits.

To help your employees make more informed health care decisions, it’s your job to educate them on the offerings and plan changes — and once a year won’t cut it. Waiting until the last minute to educate employees on health care options may be why 90 percent of employees end up choosing the same benefits year after year.

Instead, develop a health care communications plan that will inform employees and motivate them to take a second look at their options. Here’s how:

• Provide employees with necessary resources and information well before the open enrollment period begins.
• Take benefits meetings up a notch and hold "lunch and learns" and encourage employees to attend.
• Get family members involved in the decision-making process by holding lunchtime or after-work benefit fairs.
• Meet with individual employees to discuss health care options, questions, concerns, etc.