1. Your team members are an investment
0:01
So I know that this quote is probably used a lot, but I feel it's just so simple and so powerful in its meaning. At the end of the day, your team members are an investment. They're probably one of your largest expenses, but also probably your most important expense.
0:16
Obviously, there are a lot of HR experts in the room here today. You know the costs and time that you put into searching for the right candidates, hiring, onboarding, training, and you know there are real costs with turnover and not to mention the benefit costs you also pay to support an unhealthy workforce. So, it's so critical that your benefit program aligns with what you are trying to achieve as an organization.
0:41
So today what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through what we call the five pillars of the benefit plan philosophy. So one, what is the purpose of your program? Why are you offering benefits in the fist place to what is your corporate responsibility and what types of coverages should you be providing?
0:57
Three, your team members are the ones that are ultimately using the plan. So, what is their role in their participation and accountability? Are there any behaviors that you want to encourage? And four, and again, this is probably the most important part of the conversation is aligning to your corporate culture. And I'll spend probably the most time in this space. And then 5, what are your desired outcomes and how do you measure those against important metrics?
2. An opportunity for change
0:00
So #2 your corporate responsibility and what benefits should be provided. Again, there are literally hundreds of things you could be thinking about when you're designing your benefit program. I've listed here some of the major benefits. You could be thinking about your life and accidental deafness merriment coverage. Are you offering optional life? Are you offering, offering optional critical illness, for example, your disability coverage in the short term, are you only relying on employment insurance or are you using a third party managed plan?
0:30
Long term disability things to think about there as well. Your elimination periods, the benefits that you should be providing and again, should your members be paying the full cost of the premium? So, the benefit received is non taxable
0:43
on the health and dental side. And this is really where I would argue that most team members value the benefit plan the most just because it's something that they use the most often. But there are so many things to think about in designing your plan. Do you want to offer a plan that is basic, median or enhanced? So, thinking about your drug coverage, for example, are you using prior authorization? Are you putting in dispensing fee caps? Are you
1:09
using a third-party adjudicator for those claims? So those are really important pieces to that puzzle.
1:15
Again, on your paramedical side as well, are you using or using a combined maximum to provide more flexibility to team members? So, you having a separate maximum for mental healthcare practitioners really supporting numbers in that space. And again, as I mentioned, there's so many ancillary benefits that can be added to the program once you've defined what your culture is, and I'll talk about those a little bit later.
3. Review your total rewards strategy
0:00
OK, so just moving on to that fourth pillar, how do you align your benefits program with your corporate culture, your vision and your mission statements? So whiteboarding sessions with your leadership team and your advisors is really important to make sure you're promoting a plan to your team members that really reflects who you are as an organization. So, I'm going to ask you several questions over the next couple of minutes. I just want you to sit back and think about the answers to these questions. So, what is your company culture? Do you have one? Do you know what it is things to think about here? Are you all in one location?
0:31
Are you spread out geographically? Do you have a hybrid work from home model? A lot of these things will impact your administration and your communication.
0:39
Again, what are your stated corporate vision and mission statements, and I'll touch on this a little bit later. If you've indicated some specific things in your vision states, mission and vision statements, you need to be addressing those in your total reward strategy.
0:51
And what are your business goals? Are you looking to grow, retract, expand, acquire? If you're acquiring, you have to think about what you're in future teams will look like because you might be bringing in different cultures.
4. Measure your outcomes
0:00
Again, if you've made plan design changes, you really need to be able to determine whether the impact, what the impact was of the changes that you already made if you want to make sure your goals are being met. So, there are a lot of metrics that you can think about. Again, have you been able to attract and retain more team members? Has absenteeism decreased? And if you have targeted, implemented targeted Wellness strategies, then has this at an increase or decrease or an impact, sorry, in other areas of cost. So, have your drug costs decreased for things like chronic conditions?
0:30
Have you reduced the number of short- and long-term disability claims or reduced the durations, for example? And at the end of the day, you want to make sure that any investment that you're making today is actually going to save you more money later on in other areas of cost.
0:47
So if you've determined that your desired outcomes are being met, that is great, but unfortunately, the work never stops. Your benefit plan needs to continually evolve with the needs of your team members and what your future focuses are. If you've determined that, oh geez, we need to need to do other things, we're not getting enough communication and education to our team members.
1:09
We maybe make some other areas of improvements to certain products and services that we're offering to our team members. So again, there's always room for change and evolving your benefit plan.
1:21
The other thing I've mentioned here too is making sure you have the right insurer or administrative support. So, you want to make sure that any carrier that you're using has your benefit philosophies aligned and they're providing you and your team members with the tools that they need for you to manage the plan effectively.
1:40
Alright, I've gone through the five pillars. So good. I'm good for time too. So, I know I'm giving you a lot of information today on how you can evolve your benefit program to align with your corporate culture. But essentially, here are the three big takeaways.
1:52
Review the plan design, ensure that it matches your corporate culture and your future strategies #2 determine the plan is meeting your needs, needs of your team members, and if not, explore opportunities for change. And of course, measure your outcomes versus your desired results. And if you're not meeting your targets, review, refine, and redesign.
2:11
And of course, you don't have to do any of this alone. This room is literally filled with experts in both pension and benefits. So please reach out to us. We want to help you with this journey. We can help with program design and effective implementation.