The Issue
A large group, self-insured client had been fairly content with a string of single digit increases to their medical program in recent years, but felt they could do more to improve the health and well-being of their employees. They already had a comprehensive wellness program in place, so they came to us for an analysis and recommendation.
Our Solution
Our strategy team decided to recommend an employee survey as a place to start. Corporate management agreed, and we developed a benefits survey which was distributed to all 348 employees of the company. The survey results, along with utilization data from the medical and wellness programs led us to recommend cutting back on certain under-utilized components of the wellness program and adding a few well-designed enhancements in their place. We chose to recommend increasing the corporate funding level of the HSA plan by $250 per employee, adding a pre-tax commuter benefits program and expanding the voluntary product offering to include a Telemedicine program.
The Result
Cutting back on a wellness initiative may seem to go against today’s benefit environment trend, but every company’s employee population is unique and for this client, it was the right thing to do. The employee population was thrilled with the enhanced benefits and the employer felt the relatively small increase in cost for the extra $250 HSA contribution was a solid investment in the well-being of the company’s employees. On top of all that, the first renewal after these changes were implemented actually came in 2% less than their recent average, saving the company over $75,000.