How To Reduce Your Costs Without Changing Your Healthcare Plan

March 1, 2019

Employers often operate under the misconception that getting a better benefits plan means getting a new benefits plan. While big changes are sometimes necessary for big improvements, some business owners may shy away from looking at new opportunities for their plan because they don’t want to get rid of their current plan or benefits broker. The truth, however, is that working with a benefits adviser can help increase the quality of your benefits and reduce your costs without requiring you to stop working with your broker or completely change your plan.

Here are some ways your adviser can help you do more with the plan you already have:

Teaming Up For High-Quality, Low-Cost Benefits

Many business owners assume that they have to fire their broker in order to work with a benefits adviser. A great adviser, however, may be willing to work with your broker to help improve your existing plan instead of dismantling it and starting from scratch.

This enables you to:

Adjust your plan piece by piece, making changes more palatable for you and your employees
Maintain your relationship with your broker if you’ve been happy with their performance
Create savings with minimal risk through a performance-based guarantee

Not everyone wants to make the full switch from their existing broker to a new adviser, and that’s fine. Your adviser and your broker can form a team that can help maximize the positive impact your benefits plan can have on your business.

Measuring Your Progress

The only way to truly tell whether or not your benefits plan is really saving you money is to track your progress over time. Your adviser should have a multi-step process to be able to objectively look at how your benefits plan is impacting your business:

Gather and analyze data
Create and implement a solution
Review and evaluate the results

Many traditional plans stop at step two, only revisiting the process when it’s time to renew. Your adviser, however, can work with you throughout the year to develop solutions that evolve with your business. By enhancing what works and adjusting what doesn’t, they can make your existing plan more dynamic, increasing its efficiency as time goes on.

Eliminating Wasteful Benefits Spending

Completely dismantling and rebuilding your benefits plan isn’t always necessary to increase its efficiency. Your adviser’s goal should be to reduce and eliminate unnecessary costs and procedures, which are probably more common than you think if you currently have a traditional benefits plan. For example, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) estimates that up to 30 percent of all surgeries are unnecessary. Imagine how much you could save if your plan helped just two of your employees find less stressful, lower-cost alternatives to invasive operations.

Many business owners don’t know that these savings opportunities exist at all. Your adviser can work alone or with your existing broker to find and eliminate excessive spending within the plan you already have, helping you and your employees spend less while maintaining (or even increasing) quality of care without requiring drastic changes to your plan.

Finding Problems, Building Solutions

You can change your benefits plan without changing your benefits plan. By working with your existing broker, measuring the progress of your plan, and searching for savings opportunities in the plan you already have, your adviser can help you make your current plan more efficient and cost-effective. Sometimes, unlocking your plan’s true potential is all that’s necessary to transform it from a regular benefits plan into a strategic advantage for your business.

Employee Benefits

5 Misconceptions Employers Have About Their Benefits Plans

by Dynamic Benefit Solutions

February 1, 2019

Traditional benefits plans have changed so little over the years that many business owners don’t even realize that changing their plan is possible. Stagnant, overpriced benefits plans can cause employers to develop misconceptions about how to make their plan more efficient, resulting in uneducated or even unhappy employees and benefits plans with wasted potential.

Here are five of the most common misconceptions business owners have about their healthcare plans:

1. “The insurer has my best interests in mind.”

Just because an insurer is working with you doesn’t mean they’re working for you. Misaligned incentives are a common factor driving up health insurance costs for employers. Insurers make more money as your premiums go up, so there’s no real incentive for them to work to bring your costs down instead. Rather than trusting an insurer at their word, business owners should look for advisers who offer a performance guarantee. This ensures that your adviser only gets paid if they save you money, so you can trust that their promises to help you are backed by their own desire to get paid.

2. “If I provide a benefit, my employees perceive it as a benefit.”

A “great” benefits package is only going to offer great things for your business if it makes your employees happy, and your employees will only be happy with their benefits if they can afford to use them. In 2017, a survey from GoBankingRates found that 57 percent of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. Even if they’re the only person relying on their insurance, they may still have a $3,000 deductible, putting them at risk for going into debt even if they have insurance. This benefits system creates a population of “functionally uninsured” people who have insurance, but can’t afford to use it.

Your adviser should work to go beyond simply making sure that your employees have health insurance – they should create a plan that enables your workers to actually be able to use the benefits they’re paying for without going bankrupt.

3. “I can’t improve the performance of a plan I already have.”

If your plan needs work, but you don’t want to fire your broker, you don’t have to stay stuck paying ever-increasing costs for the same benefits plan. Your adviser can work with your broker to find solutions that can help you save money while keeping your existing plan. By having your broker team up with your adviser, you get to keep your relationship with your broker while increasing the positive impact your plan can have on your company.

4. “Employee education isn’t necessary for a successful benefits plan.”

Just because you’re making a change that will benefit your employees doesn’t mean that your employees will understand how to use it. Many employers believe that if they explain a benefit just once, their employees will understand it and begin to correctly utilize it. The truth, though, is that employees need a comprehensive education about their plan to understand how they can get the most out of their benefits. Your adviser can work with you to develop a plan for proper and continuous employee education so that your workers never have to wonder if they’re using their plan the right way.

5. “I should only make changes to my plan when it’s time to renew.”

You don’t have to wait until your renewal to make changes, and in many cases, you and your employees may be better off if you don’t wait until the end of the year. When you discuss changes to your plan with your employees, a lot of information can get lost in all the noise of an annual renewal. This can result in your employees looking over the positive changes and focusing only on negative updates, such as end-of-the-year cost increases. When you make changes that aren’t associated with your renewal, though, your employees can develop a more positive view of the changes in their plan. By implementing new strategies and tools into your plan before your renewal, you facilitate your workers’ understanding of these changes while allowing them to see how these differences can positively affect them.

Many standards that are commonly accepted in traditional benefits plans are simply unnecessary (and often detrimental) for business owners. By rejecting these commonly held beliefs, you can open up your mind and business to a benefits plan that serves both your company and your employees better, improving the healthcare experience for everyone involved.

Employee Benefits

How Investing In Change Can Help You Build A Better Benefits Plan

by Dynamic Benefit Solutions

January 1, 2019

Most benefits plans are treated as one-off annual expenses, and the result leaves business owners paying more and more every year for the same benefits. Despite this, many employers are hesitant to try something new, worried that different strategies might somehow leave them worse off than the system that’s been taking advantage of them for years on end.

Some of the most intimidating changes can pay off in incredible ways. I invested over $100,000 into improving my own company in 2018, and it was worth every penny. The risks I took are now enabling me to serve my clients better, helping them build benefits plans that can elevate their business and give more to their employees. This growth in my own business wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t been willing to make some big changes, and it’s one reason why I push my own clients to invest in their own success by trying something different with their benefits.

Here’s why a big change can be your greatest investment when developing your benefits plan:

STEPPING OUT OF THE COMFORT ZONE

For many clients who have gotten used to status-quo benefits plans, developing something new and innovative with a great adviser is just as uncomfortable as it is exciting. They’ve gotten used to the same process (and the same increased costs) year after year, and the prospect of trying something new can seem like a huge risk.

If you’re on the fence about making the switch to a more innovative benefits plan, ask yourself these questions:

What’s my annual increase? For most business owners, the answer is 5-6 percent every year.
Is it sustainable? And even if you can afford to pay the increase, are there really no areas of your business where that money could be better spent?
Am I willing to make a change? If you stick with the same process you’ve been using every year when you renew, you’ll keep spending unnecessary funds on the same suboptimal benefits services.

Change can be intimidating, especially when it comes to the business you’ve worked so hard to build up. If you want to finally stop overpaying for benefits, though, you need to try something new to avoid getting more of the same.

A RELATIONSHIP OF TRUST

A good adviser will understand that you may be hesitant about making big changes to your benefits plan, and they’ll do everything they can to earn your trust throughout the whole process. One of the biggest ways that your adviser can ensure you’re getting what you paid for from your plan is through a performance guarantee. This ensures that your adviser only gets paid if you save money through their work.

Your adviser will also work closely with you and your employees throughout the benefits process. Unlike a broker, who meets with you just once a year to “negotiate” a renewal, a great adviser will work with your business throughout the year, adapting your plan to your company’s changes and growth. They can also meet individually with your employees to help them understand their plan, educating them on how the choices they make can help save them (and you) more money.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD FIT

Ultimately, even a great benefits plan won’t work if you and your adviser are a poor fit for each other. Just as your adviser has to be willing to build your trust and prove that their services are worth your time and money, you need to believe in what they’re doing in order to get the most out of your benefits plan.

Recently, a now-former client of mine decided that they wanted to make the switch back to a traditional broker. They didn’t understand the concepts I had available to bring to them, and they wanted to stay in the status quo. A mismatch like this wasn’t going to serve either of us in the long term – they weren’t willing to accept the changes necessary to help their business grow, and they went with something they were comfortable with instead. For me, this outcome wasn’t a failure, but rather the result of a poor client-adviser fit. Business owners have to believe in the tools and strategies their adviser provides them, or even the best benefits plan won’t give them the results they want.

NO QUICK FIX

The journey to a better benefits plan isn’t as quick and simple as signing off on an annual renewal, but it can be one of the best choices you can make for your growing business. By being willing to exit your comfort zone and trust your adviser, you can help build an amazing working relationship that takes your benefits plan from another annual expense to a strategic tool for your company.