Is it time to simplify your employee benefits? Could you save money and improve the employee experience by doing so? The answer might be just what you need to hear!

The Number of Employee Benefits and Services Offered Can Be Overwhelming

As healthcare costs have continued to soar over the past decade, a barrage of point solutions have emerged promising to help employers control their spend, improve employee engagement, increase transparency, and simplify the user experience. While some have delivered on that promise, others have done a much better job of selling than actually delivering on their claims.

Over this time, there has also been an element of employers trying to “keep up with the Joneses” by ensuring their employee benefits plan attracts and retains employees. There is often a belief that more is better, but I’m here to tell you that’s not necessarily correct. In my experience with healthcare, I’ve found the more complicated and confusing benefits and the nuances of healthcare become, the more payers, providers, and point solutions benefit on your behalf (leaving you hanging).

To take this a step further, not only may you be wasting money and valuable resources by offering low-value or under-performing benefits services, you may also run the risk of confusing and overwhelming your employee base.

So, What Can You Do?

As an employer, you should start by consistently evaluating the engagement and return on investment (ROI) associated with your benefits offerings. And, just as important, there should be emphasis placed on the ongoing employee education process and experience.

For example: If you’re purchasing clinical or wellbeing point solutions, you should ask:

• How do those programs coordinate with case and disease management programs?
• How is self-reported data being included in the 360-degree view of the member?
• How is behavioral health prioritized and embedded into the picture?

It’s also important for you to consider when and how you are implementing programs. Be thoughtful when it comes to this so you can better assess the true impact a program is having.  Why do I say this? Well, adding multiple programs at once can make it difficult to establish the performance and ROI of individual programs.

Every time a program is added, an assessment should take place to determine all of the following:

• How will it integrate with other offerings?
• Are you already paying for a similar service that is simply under-performing?
• How will it contribute to the member experience?
• Should other programs be eliminated?

We’ve Studied and Compiled the Best Employee Benefits Practices

Holmes Murphy has studied and compiled best practices across 16 different areas to lower employee benefits costs.

The 16 tactics are drawn from across our consulting and clinical experience and represent a proven approach to lower spend. These 16 items have been selected based on their potential for near- to medium-term savings and their universal applicability.

One of the 16 areas included deals with eliminating low-value or under-performing solutions. A focus across the key clinical tactics deals with how programs work together to complement one another and integrate from an experience and data perspective. Far too often, employers purchase or are offered services that don’t integrate or coordinate with other offerings, and even compete against each other. That doesn’t help anyone.

If you feel you might have some of those very services or want someone to review what you currently do have to ensure you’re getting those most out of your employee benefits offerings, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’re happy to help!