Finding the right broker for your company means getting access to the tools and support you need to be successful during your annual open enrollment period — and throughout the entire year. That could include everything from keeping healthcare costs under control to ensuring that you have the right tools and information needed for each phase of the benefits journey. With human resources teams overworked and struggling to find time to maintain current services, educating staff members on healthcare and other benefits options can easily take a back seat. Here are three ways that a proactive and helpful broker can make your life easier throughout the year.
Communication Calendars
Do you always feel as though you’re running behind in the annual flurry of activity that surrounds open enrollment? With annual healthcare costs rising and shifts in the marketplace, keeping your staff members informed of any changes early is vital to ensuring that your year flows smoothly and without any major hassles. Your current broker should be able to provide you with proactive tools that will help improve efficiency and help address any information gaps, and one of the best tools is an annual communication calendar. Sharing content with your staff around healthcare costs and other enrollment questions shouldn’t be an afterthought. With an annual content calendar, you can address specific topics in a timely manner so your staff feels more equipped to confidently go into the annual enrollment period and make good decisions for themselves and their family.
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Tips and Tools to Help Staff Members Manage Healthcare Costs
Are your healthcare costs spiraling out of control? Most organizations are seeing year over year increases in their overall costs, and some of this can be attributed to the utilization of healthcare plans. When your staff members fully understand what it means to be good consumers of their healthcare plans, you will see benefits in terms of cost savings — as well as a healthier workforce. Tips and tools for wellness can help employees see first-hand the value of protecting their health and making good decisions, which will ultimately impact the long-term costs of your corporate healthcare. With a renewed focus on wellness and tools that can be easily used to define their goals, staff members are more likely to take the time to review alternative options for healthcare. If these less expensive healthcare options are confusing or difficult to comprehend, the likelihood that they will be broadly adopted drops dramatically. With tips and tools coming on a regular basis, staff members gain a level of comfort that helps them boost wellness — and reduce healthcare costs.
Detailed Overview of Benefits Changes
One of the first questions that staff members want to know is how their benefits are changing for the coming year. Will healthcare costs increase overall? Are there additional options that need to be considered? How specifically will any shifts affect their family? While it’s nearly impossible for even the most proactive HR team to personally calculate costs for each family based on their unique circumstances, there are tools that your broker can provide that will help reduce confusion and questions throughout the benefits period.
One of these is a detailed overview of changes to the benefits for the year, including bulleted lists of how each plan helps families stay healthy and reduce overall healthcare costs. One great example is detailing how the cost of a traditional doctor visit will shift based on changes. It is helpful to address your employees’ concerns about how much the costs will be upfront, how much is covered by insurance and what can be shifted to tax-free dollars. Having this information on hand upfront builds confidence in your HR team that they can answer questions and also provides your staff members with the data needed to make decisions for the coming year that will be right for their families.
It’s not unusual to be confused with the overwhelming amount of new information that comes at you on an annual basis. Keeping track of healthcare costs alone can be a lot for your team to handle, much less all the other changes — plus your “day job”! With the support of a proactive insurance partner, you can rest assured that your annual benefits period will flow smoothly, keeping the stress down for your staff and HR team. When you’re ready to kick annual enrollment stress to the curb and keep healthcare costs in check, contact the professionals at Employers Select Insurance Services, Inc. at 916-248-4777. You can always download our complimentary PDF Guide to Industry Terminology” to reduce confusion and be sure your team is confident in their role.
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