As renewal time rolls back around, many business owners may have found themselves frustrated once again at how much money they were spending on high-cost, low-quality benefits. Even though another year of overly expensive benefits may be the last thing business owners want to pay for, many feel like they have no choice but to stick with their contract for the next twelve months. The truth, however, is that breaking your contract early could be one of the best decisions you could make for your business this year.

While carriers aren’t allowed to break the contracts they have with benefits recipients, the reverse isn’t true. If you’re unhappy with your current benefits plan, you can break your contract and work with an advisor who can help you take control of your plan and cut costs. By examining your options now rather than waiting until your renewal, you can save tens of thousands of dollars over the course of just one year while creating a healthier, happier workforce.

A Change That Pays For Itself

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that benefits costs are expected to hit $15,000 per employee in 2019. Given that this is the sixth year in a row that costs have risen 5 percent or more, you can expect to continue paying more and more for benefits over the years if you don’t make a change.

Even if you incur costs when breaking your existing contract early, consider how much you could save in one year alone by choosing an innovative adviser who cares about building a better benefits plan for you. Between efforts to reduce direct costs (such as by encouraging employees to go to outpatient surgery centers instead of expensive hospitals) and the residual effects that result from high-quality, low-cost benefits (such as lowering costs associated with replacing employees), the savings you can get from a new and improved benefits plan can add up to tens of thousands of dollars in just a year.

The savings you glean in just months from a more cost-effective benefits plan can then be used to improve your business. Think about how updated technology, building renovations, or new equipment could help your company grow. You could also give that money back to your employees in the form of bonuses or higher wages. There are countless opportunities for growth hiding in your benefits plan, and there’s no need to wait another year to unlock them.

The Value Of Satisfied Employees

Your employees drive your business forward, and your ability to help them stay physically, mentally, and financially well is a crucial tool for your company. If you’re considering waiting another year to make big changes to your benefits plan, ask yourself how your benefits plan could positively or negatively affect your workers (and, in turn, your business).

An expensive plan that offers comparatively low-quality benefits can send employees searching for an employer who can provide them with better options. According to numbers released by the Center for American Progress, this can result in a total cost of $50,000 if you lose just five mid-level employees in a year. Think also about how likely your employees are to require healthcare for themselves or their family this year. Does the nature of their job make them more susceptible to injuries that would require surgery? Are any of them expecting a new baby? An improved benefits plan can ease the strain of a stressful time in your employees’ lives, increasing their satisfaction with their job while helping them get back to work sooner.

A Resolution That Gives Back

Just one year of an improved benefits plan can have a drastic impact on your business. By taking control of your plan, you can save your business tens of thousands of dollars while creating a better experience for your employees.

Contact me today to learn more about how leaving your old benefits plan behind can make this year your best one yet.

Even though your employees pay for and receive their benefits, traditional benefits plans often leave them with little to no control over their own plans. Large insurance companies can make workers feel like their options for treatment are restricted, and when employees do have a wider range of choices, they may not feel like they know enough about their plan to make informed decisions.

Giving your employees the power of choice can dramatically increase their satisfaction in the workplace, making it more likely that they’ll continue working for you. Your workers deserve to have control over their benefits, and giving it to them is one way to take care of them as an employer.

Here are three ways to give your employees more control over their benefits plan:

Educated Options

Giving your employees more control over their benefits isn’t enough to increase their satisfaction with their plan – they need to feel confident that they’re making the right choices. Educating your employees on their benefits options can help them make the best possible decisions rather than feeling like they’re choosing blindly.

Consider the following tools to help your employees become more educated about their benefits plan:

• One-on-one adviser meetings – Giving your workers the opportunity to meet individually with your adviser allows them to ask questions in a no-pressure, confidential setting, ensuring that they feel comfortable getting the answers they need to make informed choices.
• Easily accessible information – Consider putting information about your employees’ benefits at their fingertips. Many companies are now using digital options such as online portals and apps to allow their workers to review details about their plans whenever they want.
• Open communication – Being transparent with your employees about their plans is crucial to helping them make choices that benefit themselves and the business as a whole. Open communication builds important trust between you and your employees, letting them know that the information you provide them about their plan will help them make choices that positively impact them.

Education is empowerment when it comes to your benefits plan, and your employees deserve to feel secure in the decisions they make about their healthcare.

Financial Incentives

Making your employees feel pressured into making a certain choice about their plan can have a negative impact on their overall feelings about their benefits. Working with a great adviser that helps you save money on your plan can, in turn, provide positive incentives for your workers to make choices that impact them and you.

For example, consider the financial impact of an employee choosing an outpatient surgery center for knee surgery instead of the popular (and expensive) hospital that offers lower-quality care. Getting the operation done at the outpatient center might cost $15,000 instead of the $32,000 the hospital would charge, so offering a $3,000 bonus to the employee in question would still leave you with $14,000 in savings.

This method still gives them the opportunity to choose the more expensive option. However, even if they opt for the pricier selection, they aren’t punished – they simply lose out on a bonus. This way, your workers have true options available to them rather than feeling cornered into making a decision.

A-La Carte Benefits

Many employees under traditional benefits plan are paying for benefits they don’t use. Maybe their benefits are already covered by their spouse’s plan, or maybe specific benefits (such as vision) don’t apply to them. In any other industry, paying for unused services would seem ridiculous, but in benefits, this practice usually goes unchecked.

Instead, consider offering your employees the option of “a-la carte” benefits. Give them a set amount of money that can only be used for benefits and doesn’t go into their paycheck if there are funds left over. Then, allow them to go on a benefits “shopping spree” to allocate the money toward the benefits they actually need. Your employees will feel better knowing that the money they’re spending is being properly used rather than going to waste.

Putting The Power In The Right Hands

Your employees are the ones receiving and paying for their benefits, and they deserve to be the ones  making the important choices about their plan. By giving your workers the education, incentive, and freedom they need to make the best decisions for their healthcare, you’re making an important investment that will make your employees happier while helping your entire business.

Contact me today to learn more about how to give your employees more control over their benefits plan.

When business owners start searching for benefits brokers, many are (rightfully) focused on cost. They see their healthcare costs rising every year with no improvement in the quality of their benefits, and, desperate to save money, they decide to work with a broker who charges less for their services than competing advisers. This decision may seem financially wise in the short-term, but over time, this choice can result in missed opportunities to save money.

If you want to achieve significant savings on your benefits plan, here’s why you should look beyond your adviser’s sticker price:

More For Your Money

Benefits brokers are traditionally viewed as a necessity rather than an opportunity. Most business owners’ interactions with brokers are limited, meeting with them only when it’s time to renew their plan and signing yet another expensive contract.

Your adviser can offer you so much more than traditional brokers would have you believe. Rather than acting as a bare-bones middle-man between you and your insurance company, a great adviser can work with you to provide:

• Employee education – Your adviser can help teach your employees how to use their benefits plant to maximize their quality of care while minimizing costs to them and you.
• Supply chain management – By analyzing the healthcare supply chain at every level, your adviser can find every available opportunity to create savings for you.
• Year-round support – Your interactions with a benefits adviser don’t stop once your contract is renewed. Instead, they work with you throughout the year to adjust your plan based on the changes in your business.

A great benefits adviser may charge more than traditional brokers, but those costs will likely reflect the valuable services they offer.

Price vs. Cost

Imagine that you find and decide to work with an adviser whose sticker price is four times as high as their competitors’. You elect to work with the more “expensive” adviser, while another company in your industry selects the “less expensive” broker. Your adviser gets to know your business inside and out, strategizing with your C-suite to identify your company’s needs and examining the areas in which you may be overpaying for healthcare goods and services. They help you create direct savings, which are then funneled back into the company to help purchase new equipment and increase employee wages. Your production increases, and your employees (who are now paid more, receive better care, and feel valued by their employer) are happier at work, decreasing your turnover rates.

Your competitor, on the other hand, finds that their savings don’t go beyond what they’re paying their broker. They and their employees continue to pay more for their benefits plan year after year. They retain surface-level interactions with their broker, who continues to provide surface-level services. Funds that could have been spent on their employees or other areas of their business are instead spent on overinflated healthcare prices, and their frustrated workers start searching for other employers who could offer them better compensation for their expertise.

By looking beyond the sticker price of your adviser, you can create a chain of positive impacts that radiate throughout your business for years to come.

Service That Pays For Itself

As you meet with brokers and advisers to discuss prices and services, consider not only the services they offer, but also if the amount they save you could be even greater than what they charge. Your adviser should be working with your best interests in mind, and they should assure you of their intentions with a performance guarantee. If your savings potential aligns with their earning potential, you can remain sure that they’ll be doing everything possible to search for opportunities to save you money.

The savings you acquire from a great adviser can go beyond justifying their cost – they can essentially pay for the adviser’s services on their own. The initial price tag can encompass a variety of tools and expertise that can create savings that other brokers wouldn’t even bother to look for.

A Cost That Creates Savings

Like your plan itself, your benefits adviser shouldn’t be treated as a one-off expense. Your adviser is an investment for your business, and spending a bit more to choose the right one can lead to better service, better savings, and a better overall business. Don’t let high adviser charges steer you toward lower-quality broker services – your company deserves the very best.

Contact me today to learn more about how investing more into a great adviser can help your business grow.

Although your company’s benefits plan most directly impacts your employees, many workers are surprisingly uninformed about the details of their own plans. For small businesses, this lack of education can be the difference between big savings and big (and unnecessary) spending. If your adviser doesn’t prioritize employee education, however, your workers may continue to be kept in the dark about their own benefits – and the consequences could cost your business thousands of dollars.

When choosing an adviser for your benefits plan, here’s why you should always work with one who focuses on educating your employees about their own plan:

Rejecting The Norm

Many standards that would be considered outrageous in other industries are perfectly acceptable in the healthcare industry. For example, not only are annual increases of up to 5 percent considered “good” when applied to benefits, but employers also place their employees in charge of much of that spending. To top it off, those same employees are rarely properly informed about the best way to spend that money.

Imagine how this practice would apply to having your employee purchase a new work vehicle. They understand the basic idea of what they should look for, but don’t know a lot about cars. So, not having the tools or education they need to make the best choice, they spend a lot of money on a vehicle that looks sleek and polished, but needs repairs that they didn’t even know to look for. In fact, if they’d been a bit more educated, they could have paid a lot less for similar car in better condition at a smaller dealership outside of town.

The idea of sending your employee out on such an expensive errand with such little information sounds absurd, but employers make this exact mistake when they have their employees shop around for healthcare without knowing what they should be looking for. The more your employees understand about cost-effective healthcare, the more likely they are to make optimal choices for themselves and your business.

Empowerment Through Education

Many employees want to know more about how to make their plan do more for them, but don’t know where to start. One of my favorite anecdotes from my time as a broker was when an employee asked me, “Can I insure my husband and my boyfriend?” I laughed and told her that she could insure one of them, but not both. This story has always stuck out to me as both a humorous moment in my career and a reminder of why employee education is so important.

Like the woman in my story, your employees need to understand the capabilities and limits of their benefits plan to be able to truly make it work for them. Educating your employees about their benefits plan empowers them to:

• Make informed choices about the healthcare they receive
• Find their perfect balance of cost and care quality
• Speak up or ask questions if they have concerns about their benefits plan

Empowered employees are satisfied employees, and enabling your workers to learn more about their plan can lead them to be even happier at the workplace.

Working Together For A Better Future

Turning your benefits plan into a strategic opportunity for your business can only happen if you and your employees work together as a team. If your employees aren’t buying into the tools and strategies your adviser is trying to implement, you’re unlikely to achieve the best results your plan has to offer.

Of course, your employees can’t be expected to blindly follow your lead when it comes to their own healthcare. By teaming up with your adviser, you help your employees learn how their decisions can positively impact:

• Their savings
• Their quality of care
• The business

Like the success of your business itself, the success of your benefits plan relies on the ability of you and your employees to work together. Once your workers understand the power of their own choices, they can begin to make well-informed choices and engage with their plan to create a positive impact for all stakeholders.

Your Plan’s Most Powerful Tool

Your adviser can provide you with all the tools and wisdom at their disposal, but if your employees don’t know how to use them, your benefits plan may still fail to serve your business at its full potential. By rejecting the norm in employee involvement, you can help create educated, empowered employees that can team up with you and your adviser to achieve the best possible result.

Contact me today to learn more about how educated employees can help you build a stronger business.

Under a traditional benefits plan, your employees may be getting healthcare options they don’t need at the expense of options they do need. Most plans offer a specific set of benefits to all the recipients, and this system often comes at the expense of your employees’ health and happiness. Employers often feel like they have to settle for this approach to benefits, but a better alternative does exist.

Working with a great adviser rather than a traditional benefits broker opens up more opportunities to give your employees control over the types of benefits they receive. By allowing your workers to choose their benefits, you offer them a customized, cost-effective experience that positively affect them and your business as a whole.

A Personalized Benefits Experience

Imagine if everyday spending experiences worked the same way that they do in the benefits industry. A stranger would spend $200 on groceries for you and your family, but the items they bought for you were the same ones they bought for every other family in your neighborhood. You may not need diapers like the new parents down the street do, and, understandably, you’d probably be frustrated that the money spent on an unneeded item had essentially gone to waste.

This spending practice is just as wasteful in the benefits industry, but it’s also the norm. Rather than following the status quo, however, your benefits adviser can offer a more “a-la carte” benefits experience in which each employee receives a designated amount of money to put toward their benefits. From there, they choose which benefits they receive. If left unused, the funds can’t be funneled back into their paycheck, meaning that your employees don’t have to face the difficult choice between using that money for their health or using it for their bills.

By making the benefits experience custom-tailored to your employees’ needs, you’ll end up with a more cost-efficient plan that leaves your employees satisfied.

Paying For What’s Needed

Traditional benefit packages often take a one-size-fits-all approach, and you and your employees end up paying the price. While plans that encompass generalized benefits (such as primary care) may apply to every employee’s pursuit of better health, more specific benefits may not.

Say, for example, that your plan devotes a significant amount of money to vision benefits. This could be vital for an employee who wears glasses, but for an employee who’s had 20/20 vision their whole life, this represents valuable funds that could’ve been better spent elsewhere.

This is also a financially wise decision to make for your business. The funds you devote to your employees’ benefits should be used to keep your workers healthy, and if your employees are lacking coverage where they need it most, their health could suffer as a result. This could lead to:

• Decreased productivity
• Increased absenteeism
• Higher turnover rates
• Expensive emergency medical procedures

By allowing your employees to decide where their benefits money goes, you’re giving them the power to take care of themselves the way they see fit.

More Control, Happier Employees

Under a status-quo benefits plan, your employees’ care is placed in the insurance company’s hands. These large corporations aren’t looking out for your business or your workers’ best interests, and their one-size-fits-all approach to benefits often reflects that.

Giving your employees more control by allowing them to choose their own benefits can lead to:

• Improved financial wellness
• A better understanding of their benefits plan
• Feeling valued in the workplace

Your employees deserve the best possible care, and they have a better chance of getting it when they have the power to define what that care should look like for them. The more involved your employees are with their own benefits plan, the happier they’ll be with both the plan itself and their overall work experience.

Choices That Count

Giving your employees the power to choose their own benefits is a decision that provides them with a better experience while also having a positive impact on your business. A personalized benefits plan gives your workers the care they need while ensuring that your money is going where it’s needed most.

Contact me today to learn more about how a customized benefits experience can do more for your business.

Health benefits have traditionally been treated as a burden rather than an opportunity. Many business owners see them as just another huge expense that gets bigger every year, and because they feel powerless to change it, they let HR handle it to help their annual renewal happen as quickly and smoothly as possible.

This way of handling the benefits conversation may be the status-quo, but it doesn’t help your business. In the hands of a great adviser, your benefits plan can be a powerful strategic tool that can help your company grow, and in order to maximize that positive impact, you’ll need to get the powerful people in your business involved in the discussion.

Here’s why you should always have your C-suite work with your benefits adviser:

Going Beyond Benefits

Your benefits plan can transform into a strategic opportunity for your business if you have the right people working together. Having an HR representative chat with a traditional benefits broker is fine if all you want is to sign off on another increasingly expensive renewal, but if you want more from your plan, you’ll need to team up with a great adviser and have them discuss your business’ potential with your C-suite.

Your adviser can manage the healthcare supply chain to help you save money on your benefits, leaving you with more to spend on things like:

• Employee perks such as bonuses and increased wages
• Investments in new materials and products
• Employee recruitment and training

Since your C-suite manages the money and understands your business inside and out, they should be the ones talking with your adviser to develop a strategy that can maximize your plan’s positive impact on your company.

A Year-Round Conversation

If you’re working with a traditional benefits broker, the annual conversation about your renewal is likely to be a quick one. Your broker will inform your HR representative about the inevitable price hike on your plan (probably between 3 and 5 percent, according to late-2018 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation), and your HR representative will sign off on it. Unless you change the way you approach your benefits plan, this process will repeat every single year, with you spending more and more for equal or lesser-quality benefits.

Your benefits plan can and should be more than just a mandatory annual expense, though, and the opportunities it can offer your entire business make it worthy of a year-round discussion between your adviser and your C-suite. The leaders of your company have the most knowledge about how your business is evolving, and they can work with your adviser to determine the best way to adapt your benefits plan to the changes in your company. A quick, one-off annual renewal meeting may be the easiest way to handle your plan, but an ongoing conversation with your C-suite will enable your adviser to help you use your plan as a tool to help your business grow.

A Great And Powerful Expense

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that employers will spend an average of $10,000 on benefits per employee in 2019. That means if your company has just 30 employees, your plan could cost you $300,000 this year alone. With an expense this big, you can’t afford to leave your company’s leaders out of the conversation, and yet, so may business owners make this exact mistake.

A great adviser can team up with your C-suite to ensure that the money you spend on your benefits plan doesn’t go to waste. While HR may not want to rock the boat, your company’s leaders will be focused on using your adviser’s tools to find every available opportunity to help your business grow. When hundreds of thousands of dollars are on the line, the people at the head of your business should be involved as much as possible.

A Conversation For Your Company’s Leaders

Your HR department is a crucial component of your business, but when it comes to benefits, your C-suite should be having the in-depth conversations with your adviser. Given the potential for growth your plan offers your business, the necessity for a year-round discussion about how your benefits should evolve with your company, and the sheer cost of benefits, your business will get more out of your plan if the people at the head of your company are more involved with your benefits.

Contact me today to learn more about how your C-suite can help you maximize your plan’s potential for your business.

In order to get the most out of your benefits plan, you should be looking for an adviser whose approach and priorities fit your business. While many business owners view their adviser as a necessary middleman to finalizing a necessary annual expense, being more selective about your benefits adviser can yield better results for both you and your employees. An adviser who is a good fit for your company is far more likely to leave you satisfied with the quality of benefits your employees receive and the amount of money you save on your plan.

Before you commit to working with an adviser, ask yourself these questions to determine if they would be a good match for your company:

What kind of business relationship do I want with my adviser?

Business owners have traditionally looked at their relationship with their benefits brokers as being between a vendor and a customer – the employer would pay for the service and plan the broker offered, then accept a hands-off approach for the remainder of the year until the time came to renew their plan.

On the other end of the scale of involvement is a benefits adviser, whose relationship with the business owner resembles more of a partnership. Instead of offering a one-off annual transaction, an adviser works with the employer throughout the year. While this type of business relationship requires more effort from you as the employer, it can help your company by:

• Creating more savings opportunities
• Developing a benefits plan that evolves with your business
• Turning your plan into a strategic tool rather than just another mandatory expense

Ensuring that your expectations for your adviser’s involvement match theirs is crucial to your satisfaction with their services.

Does my adviser understand my goals and challenges?

If your adviser doesn’t connect with your “why,” you’ll only be wasting your time by working with them. Your adviser should be asking what drives you, what your goals are, and what challenges you’re trying to overcome in your business. By getting to know your company better, your adviser will be better equipped to develop a benefits plan that can help your business meet its goals and overcome its challenges.

Your adviser should also be honest with you about their ability to make an impact on your business. If they tell you that they feel like their services won’t have your desired impact on your company or that they can’t custom-design a benefits plan for your business, take them at their word and search for an adviser that would be more compatible.

Can my adviser build a plan around my business’ values?

The backbone of any business is its workforce, and the backbone of a quality benefits plan is the value it offers to employees. If you as an employer make your employees’ health and happiness a top priority, your business will suffer from working with an adviser who tries to cut costs in your benefits plan at the expense of the quality of healthcare your employees receive.

An employee-centric adviser will prioritize:

• Engaging and educating employees – Employees that are more involved with their benefits plan become empowered to make cost-effective choices that don’t compromise their quality of care.
• Passing savings on to employees – While your adviser should certainly make sure that you save money, they should also strive for lower copays and deductibles for your workers.
• Providing competitive, high–quality benefits – The healthcare you offer should make your business a more appealing workplace to both current employees and potential hires.

Your benefits plan will produce better results if you and your adviser place the same amount of importance on your employees’ satisfaction.

Building a Benefits Dream Team

You and your adviser should see eye to eye on their expected level of involvement, your goals and how to meet them, and your company’s values. Working with an adviser who fits well with your business and vision increases the likelihood that they’ll be able to offer you solutions that maximize the positive impact of your benefits plan.

Call me today to discover how to spend less and receive more with an adviser who fits your business.

Your employees are the backbone of your business, and giving them a positive work experience is crucial to growing your company

. Your benefits plan can be a valuable tool you can use to give more to your workers, but a better plan doesn’t have to come at a steeper cost to you. In fact, building a plan that’s designed with your employees’ best interests in mind can ultimately save you thousands.

Here’s why prioritizing your employees can increase the cost-cutting power of your benefits plan:

Happiness Creates Productivity

Your employees pay attention to whether or not their value is reflected in what they get back from their employer. Providing them with great benefits is an easy way to show that:

• You care about them as people and value their health
• You acknowledge and appreciate their contributions to your business
• You want them to continue working for you

Your benefits plan can significantly raise overall employee morale, which not only creates a more positive workplace culture, but also increases earnings. In fact, a study by the Queens School of Business found that having just one “disengaged” employee can cost a business up to $10,000. Working with more “engaged” employees, on the other hand, can have a positive impact on your company, increasing productivity and customer satisfaction levels by 15 and 30 percent, respectively. When your employees feel taken care of, they’ll do more to take care of your business in return.   

Higher Retention Rates Drive Costs Down

Even if everything else about your company is great for your employees, your retention rates will suffer if your workers are unhappy with their benefits plan. In a study by MetLife, 61 percent of employees said that health and wellness benefits would make them consider leaving their current job for a new one. If a competing business in your area offers a better plan than yours, you risk losing a large portion of your workforce.

The costs of high turnover rates are staggering: Employee Benefits News reports that it costs 33 percent of an employee’s salary to replace them, which means that if just two employees with a salary of $45,000 leave your company, your business could lose $30,000 searching for and training new hires. While eliminating turnover altogether isn’t always possible, offering a quality benefits plan can give your employees a solid reason to stay with your company.

Good Benefits Attract Top Talent

There’s no reason your business can’t be the one using superior benefits to attract other companies’ employees. A study by Fractl revealed that when choosing between a job that paid more and a job that paid less, 88 percent said that they’d give the lower paying job either “some consideration” or “heavy consideration” if it offered better benefits. Even if your growing business can’t afford the competitive salary offered by larger companies, you can still appeal to more skilled workers whose knowledge and experience can increase productivity and profits.

Building your benefits plan around your employees’ wants and needs can save you tens of thousands of dollars and give your business a great reputation in the hiring market. Your employees will be more productive and more likely to stay loyal to your business if they have good healthcare, and when you do need to recruit more workers, a high-quality benefits plan will attract the talent to match it.  

Contact us today to see how you can build a benefits plan that gives more to your employees while costing you less.

Your benefits plan can be a powerful strategic advantage for your business. The right adviser can help maximize the impact your plan can have on your company, but that’s only going to happen if your benefits package creates a win-win situation for both you and them.

Most benefits brokers aren’t truly concerned with whether or not you get the best benefits plan for your business. They work on a commission-based model, which means that their goal is to sell you a plan, collect their paycheck, and disappear until it’s time to do it over again next year.

Working with an adviser whose pay depends on your satisfaction is a much easier way to guarantee that your adviser truly has your business’ success in mind. In this situation, the end result helps them just as much as it helps you, giving them a big reason to find every possible way to develop a plan that helps your company grow.

Here’s what aligned incentives can offer your business:

A Customized Approach

A quality adviser knows that your benefits plan isn’t a one-size-fits-all purchase. The plan that works for another business is unlikely to be the best option for yours, but a standard broker won’t be incentivized to create a custom-build benefits plan for your company. An adviser who is working towards the same goal as you, however, will make the effort to develop a plan that suits your company’s individual needs. Because they’re paid based on their performance, they’ll do everything in their power to ensure that the plan you end up with is tailor-made to provide your employees with the best benefits at the lowest cost to you.

A Plan That Grows With Your Business

One of the pitfalls of working with a status-quo broker is how infrequently you meet with them. The standard process for renegotiating your benefits plan involves talking with your broker at the end of the year, settling for an even higher premium than you paid the previous year, and receiving lower quality benefits in return.

An adviser whose incentives align with yours will take a more fluid approach to your plan, which involves:

• Working with you and your business throughout the year
• Keeping up with the changes in your company and understanding how they impact your plan
• Making the appropriate adjustments in your plan when it’s time to reevaluate your benefits

Because you’re both working towards the same goal, your adviser will stay on top of the changes in your company to ensure they’re consistently delivering on their promises to you.

Cost-Effective Solutions

When your adviser’s incentives align with yours, they’re going to work with you to figure out how to help you find savings throughout your benefits plan rather than trying to convince you that the miniscule amount of money you saved on your annual premium increase was a “win.”

Your adviser should offer a performance-based guarantee when you start working together, which will include approximate savings you’ll see by partnering with them. This ensures that they don’t get paid unless their services fulfill your expectations, and it pushes them to search for every available opportunity to cut costs in your benefits plan.

Aligned incentives between you and your adviser help guarantee that you’ll maximize what you can get out of your benefits plan. When an optimized plan creates a win-win for everyone involved, mutual satisfaction is an inevitable end result, which can create a sustainable working relationship and optimal benefits plans for years to come.

Contact us today to see how an adviser who wants the best for your business can help your company grow.

Healthcare plans are consistently rising in cost while decreasing in quality, and businesses and workers alike are feeling the impact. Benefits advisers are looking for ways to combat this trend, and one of the most effective ways they can do so is by managing the healthcare supply chain.

The concept of a supply chain is present in virtually every industry, but it’s often ignored in healthcare. The overall idea is the same, but instead of focusing on sourcing, production, storage, and transportation of goods, the healthcare supply chain centers around the choices involved in the diagnosis, treatment, and recovery of a patient. By taking control of the healthcare process from start to finish, your adviser can give your employees better quality care and more options while creating savings for everyone involved.

Reduced Costs For You And Your Employees

Premiums rise every year, and both you and your employees are stuck paying the hefty price. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) revealed some alarming numbers in their 2017 Employer Health Benefits survey:

• The average annual premium is $6,690 for single coverage and $18,764 for family coverage.
• Single-coverage costs rose 4 percent and family-coverage costs rose 3 percent from 2016 to 2017.
• The average employee pays $1,213 for single coverage and $5,714 for family coverage every year.

Managing the healthcare supply chain from beginning to end is a relatively simple way to mitigate these costs. For example, it’s commonplace for insurance companies to send patients to hospitals for any type of surgery. But the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that knee arthroscopy patients could save almost $1,300 in out-of-pocket costs if they choose to get their procedure done at an outpatient surgery center instead, and if you’re self-funding your employees’ coverage, you could save up to $5,100 as well.

Personalized Healthcare Options

The status-quo healthcare supply chain is pretty straightforward: Patients go in for a consultation, visit a specialist, get treated, attend follow-up appointments, and get a post-care referral. While the steps in this process don’t vary too drastically on a case-by-case basis, managing the healthcare supply chain can give you and your employees more options to develop a healthcare strategy that works best for everyone involved.

This expansion of choice begins from the moment your employee starts to feel unwell. If they decide they don’t want to spend the time traveling to their nearest primary care physician’s office, they can opt for a digital consultation in their own home, which not only provides more convenience, but can also offer an average savings of $126 per visit, according to research by Red Quill Consulting.

Healthcare supply chain management also enables you to work with your employees to find treatment options that satisfy both of you. For example, your adviser might suggest recommending a less expensive (but equal quality) treatment center to your employee that happens to be a bit farther away than the one closest to their home. In exchange for their willingness to travel, you might offer to cover their co-pay. Methods like this give you the potential to save money while giving your employees more control over their healthcare choices.

Equal or Better Quality Care

More expensive benefits aren’t always better benefits. A 2013 study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) found only a “small to moderate” association between healthcare cost and quality, and many options that can be offered through managing the healthcare supply chain can give your employees the same quality care for less.

In fact, the most expensive and invasive steps of the healthcare supply chain aren’t always necessary in the first place — a study by USA Today revealed that between 10 and 20 percent of all surgeries may actually be unnecessary, with cardiac procedures, spine and knee surgeries, and hysterectomies being some of the most common operations that are performed “more often than needed.”

If your employee has a knee problem, the status-quo healthcare process might see them undergoing a painful, expensive, and invasive surgery that could keep them out of work and forever impact their quality of life. But a good benefits adviser will explore other options, like physical therapy, that might eliminate the need for surgery altogether, solving your employee’s ailment without all the downfalls that accompany the more drastic alternative.

More Choices, More Savings

Supply chain management is often an unexplored option in the healthcare industry, but working with an adviser who knows how to do it can make your company’s benefits plan unbeatable. The savings, options, and care quality that can come from managing the benefits supply chain can give so much more to your business than a status-quo benefits plan, and your happier, healthier employees will also feel the difference.

Contact us today to see how a properly managed supply chain can help your business grow.