In today’s diverse and dynamic workplace, fostering a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is not just a moral imperative but also a strategic business necessity. One critical aspect of this commitment involves designing employee benefits packages that ensure fair and equitable treatment for all employees, regardless of age, gender, income, education, geography, or any other characteristics. In this article, we will explore how employers and HR teams can enhance their DEI efforts through inclusive employee benefits packages.

Conduct a Comprehensive DEI and Benefits Assessment

To create a benefits package that promotes DEI, it’s essential to start with a thorough assessment of your organization’s current practices and culture. You may want to consider:

Offer Flexible/Voluntary Benefits

One way to promote DEI in your benefits packages is by providing flexibility. Recognize that employees have different needs and circumstances. Consider offering a range of options to level the playing field, such as flexible work hours, remote/hybrid work opportunities, or voluntary benefits packages, allowing employees to select benefits that align with their individual requirements.

Address Healthcare Disparities

Healthcare benefits are a crucial part of any employee benefits package. To ensure equity, take steps to address healthcare disparities. Consider the following:

Support Family and Caregiver Needs

Recognize that employees may have diverse family structures and caregiving responsibilities. To support DEI in your benefits package:

Encourage Financial Wellbeing

Financial wellness is a critical aspect of employee wellbeing. Consider these steps to enhance financial equity in your benefits:

Promote Professional Development

To ensure DEI in career growth opportunities, invest in professional development benefits:

Raise Awareness and Foster Inclusivity

Create a culture of inclusivity by:

Monitor and Adjust

Regularly review and assess the impact of your DEI-focused benefits initiatives. Solicit feedback from employees and adjust your benefits package as needed to address evolving needs and challenges.

By conducting this recommended process, employers can proactively enhance DEI in their employee benefits packages, fostering a workplace culture that values diversity and promotes equitable access to opportunities and resources for all employees. Championing DEI efforts in benefits also often leads to greater outcomes in engagement, recruitment, and retention.

Our Senior Vice President, Prabal Lakhanpal was featured in a Global Captive Podcast episode, during which they discussed Spring’s client, The Haskell Company. Haskell is a privately-owned engineering, construction and architectural firm that was able to reduce insurance costs, optimize coverage, and introduce new lines of risk by switching to a captive. Check out the full episode here.

Running a small to medium-sized business (SMB) can be financially challenging, especially when it comes to providing competitive employee benefits and managing insurance costs, since economies of scale generally benefit larger organizations. However, with strategic planning and calculated decision-making, SMBs can maximize savings without compromising on the well-being of their employees. In this article, we’ll explore cost-saving methods for SMBs in the areas of health insurance and employee benefits.

1) Conduct a Comprehensive Benefit Audit

Before making any changes, start by conducting a thorough audit of your current benefits package. This will help you understand where your company is overspending or underutilizing benefits. Key points to consider:

2) Emplore Self-Funded Health Plans

Many smaller organizations look past a self-funded model due to resource constraints and risk appetite, but various versions of self-funding can work for smaller employers. According to Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2022 Annual Survey, 35% of workers in small firms (3-199) are in a level-funded plan, a self-funding option. Level-funded plans often have a steady monthly rate employers contribute to cover claims, administrative costs, and stop loss coverage. Many of these plans limit offerings to smaller companies with fewer covered lives.

3) Leverage Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)

Consider HSAs, HRAs and FSAs for employee healthcare expenses, or if you are already offering one of these solutions, be sure to communicate the offering and encourage utilization among your workforce. These help employees pay for medical expenses beyond what is covered by your health plan and are particularly well-suited to pair with a high deductible health plan. Some offer tax advantages and can help reduce the financial burden on employees demonstrating that the company is invested in them. Depending on what path is chosen, employers can contribute to the account.

4) Offer Telemedicine Services

Telemedicine services have gained popularity, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. By offering telehealth options as part of your health plan, you can potentially reduce healthcare costs associated with office visits and encourage preventative care. In 2023, most health plans provide some level of telehealth, but allowances and nuances vary, and it is worth a closer look.

5) Implement Wellness Programs

Wellness programs can lead to healthier, more productive employees and lower healthcare costs. Consider offering incentives for employees who participate in wellness initiatives such as fitness challenges, smoking cessation programs, or health screenings.

6) Negotiate with Insurance Providers

Leverage your broker/consultant to negotiate with insurance carriers and ensure you are getting the best coverage at the best rate. Our team helps clients explore options for bundling different types of coverage or increasing deductibles to reduce premium costs, and regularly seek competitive quotes from multiple providers.

7) Promote Employee Education/Communication

Educate your employees about their benefits and how to use them effectively. By ensuring that employees understand their coverage, they are more likely to make informed choices, reducing unnecessary healthcare expenses. Effective open enrollment communication strategies are essential in ensuring employees take advantage of benefits offered.

8) Consider Voluntary Benefits

Voluntary benefits, such as dental, vision, and life insurance, can be offered at little cost to the employer. These benefits can be partially funded by the employer, or fully funded by employees, depending on your budget and strategy. In any case, it will help bring costs down and provide nontraditional and more customized coverage for employees based on their needs (e.g., pet insurance, identity theft protection).

9) Review and Adjust Annually

Market conditions and employee needs change over time. Regularly review your insurance, health plans, and benefits package to ensure they align with your business goals, budget, and employee demographics. Adjustments may be necessary to stay competitive and cost-efficient, and new tools and solutions are being launched at a rapid pace.

10) Seek Professional Advice

Consult with insurance brokers, benefits consultants, or financial advisors who specialize in working with SMBs. Subject matter experts, like our team at Spring, can help you navigate the complexities of insurance and benefits, ultimately saving your company time and money.

In conclusion, cost-saving methods in insurance, health plans, and employee benefits for SMBs require strategic planning and a commitment to employee well-being. By conducting regular reviews, being as targeted as possible, negotiating with providers, and exploring innovative options like telemedicine, SMBs can achieve a balance between cost savings and providing valuable benefits to their employees. Remember that a well-crafted benefits package can be a valuable tool for attracting and retaining top talent in a competitive job market. If you’re interested in reevaluating your current benefits package or wonder how your programs stack up, our consultants and actuaries would be happy to assist.

I had the pleasure of leading a panel last month at the 2023 VCIA Annual Conference entitled, “Tips for Communicating the Value of Your Captive,” and it was a lively discussion with great takeaways I wanted to share.

Background

Today’s economy is tough, and the insurance markets have hardened. As a result, organizations are in reactive mode, looking for combative strategies to mitigate bottom-line issues. A captive insurance program has long been a risk management tool that allows organizations to weather proverbial storms like these. For those organizations with a captive, risk managers might have to defend against a piggyback mentality from leadership or other stakeholders, because the current environment creates temptation to treat a captive like an ATM regarding surplus. In addition, goals and purpose surrounding a captive are likely to change over the years. As such, it’s important to be able to illustrate captive performance in tangible ways that will resonate with audiences outside the core captive team.

Captives as Problem Solvers

There is a time and place to leverage capital surplus from a captive, but a great strategy is to use that by pouring additional coverage and innovation back into your insurance programs. To do so, we recommend securing reliable relationships with your broker and actuary to understand your captive’s risk appetite, what problems could be solved via a captive, industry statistics and trends, and whether the risk is worth the reward for a particular initiative. TPA or data analytics partners are also critical to assess exposures and determine potential loss prevention measures. Lastly, your captive manager should serve as a valued second opinion and will help evaluate the ramifications of exposing equity in the captive to new potential losses.

The ultimate goal here should be to reduce the total cost of risk (TCOR).

To bring concepts to life, one of Spring’s clients used captive surplus to hire a return-to-work coordinator, which in turn improved overall disability and productivity goals. Another client worked to obtain sexual abuse & molestation coverage that was difficult to procure. A private equity firm was able to retain ransomware coverage after a significant claim hit and utilized the captive to buy down the retention for individual entities, mitigating premium increases.

Metrics to Consider

Every captive has different experience, objectives, and risks represented, so it is hard to pinpoint benchmarks that will hold true across every program. That said, there are some factors and calculations that should be top-of-mind regarding captive performance.

Qualitative

While numbers and hard ROI are often the priority, “soft” indicators, such as those listed below, should not be discounted.

Quantitative

For the numbers crowd like our actuaries, below is a non-exhaustive list of metrics to consider when working to gauge your captive’s success.

Given the difficult markets we are facing as an industry, we are stressing to our risk manager clients the criticality of captive optimization, but also the need to truly have a pulse on your captive’s performance and be able to illustrate it to a wider range of stakeholders who may be under financial pressure. If you could use assistance in developing customized key performance indicators (KPIs) for your captive program, or in diving into these qualitative and quantitative measures at an organization level, Spring’s consultants and actuaries are ready to help.

Our Managing Partner, Karin Landry was quoted in a recent Captive.com article on potential savings when switching to a captive instead of the commercial market. Check out the full article here.

Executive Summary

In the ever-evolving landscape of employee benefits, wellness solutions have emerged as a pivotal focus point for employers with a long-term view of health and productivity. Recognizing the vital link between a healthy workforce and organizational success, employers are redefining wellness programs to meet the diverse needs of their employees.

Employee wellness programs have undergone a remarkable transformation since the start of the pandemic. Once limited to in-person fitness challenges and generic health screenings, these programs have evolved into holistic initiatives that prioritize the everyday wellbeing of employees (both inside and outside of work). Employers are now taking a proactive approach, aiming to not only prevent health issues but also enhance employee engagement, productivity, and job satisfaction. In a survey conducted by Glassdoor, 60% of job seekers reported that benefits and perks are a significant factor in considering job offers. A robust wellness program signals an employer’s commitment to employee well-being, making the company an attractive destination for skilled professionals seeking an organization that values their health and work-life balance.

What is the impact on healthcare spending?

Investing in employee wellness is no longer a discretionary choice; it’s a strategic imperative. The cost of poor employee health is significant, leading to decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and higher healthcare expenditures. According to Harvard researchers, every dollar spent on employee wellness yields a reduction in healthcare costs of $3.27 and a decrease of $2.73 in costs related to absenteeism1. A similar ROI study conducted by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans determined that employers save between $1 and $3 on healthcare costs for every dollar spent on wellness initiatives.

These cost savings are from both direct and indirect triggers, and it’s important to also include more qualitative factors like retention and productivity when you look at the cost/reward analysis.

Point Solutions Overview

Employee wellness is an important yet broad and nuanced space. Over the last decade, we have seen a significant increase in point solutions dedicated to well-being outcomes, some of which include:

What should I do as an employer interested in wellness point solutions?

For committed employers, point solutions should be just one component of an overarching wellbeing strategy that takes into account the following:

  1. Assessing Current Health Trends: Analyze health data to identify prevalent health issues and trends within the employee population.
  2. Designing Tailored Solutions: Use this data to inform decisions around point solutions. It is rare the overcommitting to point solutions will produce the desired results; we recommend a more pointed approach. Craft an approach that addresses specific needs, encompassing physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
  3. Benchmarking and Surveys: Compare your offerings to industry standards and continually assess its effectiveness through employee feedback and measurable outcomes.
  4. Incorporating Cutting-Edge Technology: This is where point solutions come in; leverage technology and tools to provide engaging and accessible wellness resources, from wearable devices to wellness apps.
  5. Promote Inclusivity: Ensure that wellness solutions cater to a diverse workforce, taking into account geographic, cultural, and accessibility considerations.

The journey towards a healthier and more productive workforce begins with employers’ commitment to holistic wellness solutions. As employee needs evolve, so too must wellness programs. By embracing innovative models, tailoring benefits to specific needs, and fostering a culture of well-being, employers can embark on a transformative journey that not only enriches the lives of their employees but also contributes to the overall success of the organization. Wellness point solutions, if tackled thoughtfully, can be a tool in your toolbox to arrive at a healthier, happier, and more vibrant workforce.

1 https://www.bravowell.com/resources/do-wellness-programs-save-companies-money

Demand for new weight loss medications continues to rise and employers remain concerned about budget impacts if they decide to offer these costly medications as part of their benefit package. These medications, known as GLP-1 agonists have skyrocketed in popularity and are thought to be “miracle drugs” by many. The reality is that weight loss requires a multi-modal approach and not all people who use them will achieve significant weight loss. Studies have shown that once discontinued, patients gain an average two-thirds of the weight back1. The reality is there is no miracle cure, but these medications have helped to destigmatize obesity and make clear the benefits of taking a multi-faceted approach to sustain weight loss.

Employer Case Study

As is the case with many organizations, weight loss drug strategy was recently of particular interest to one of our clients, edHEALTH. The client was interested in the positive impacts yielded but was daunted by the complex dynamic of long-term cost versus benefit.   

Spring assisted edHEALTH in assessing a best practice avenue for weight loss drugs, keeping in mind that spending on obesity-related conditions result in approximately a 12% increase in total healthcare costs2.  Wegovy (semaglutide) has an average price of approximately $1,349 a month, or more than $15,000 annually. That is more than double what the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER)3, a private entity that provides an independent source of evidence review and creates cost-analysis reports, recommends, instead stating that Wegovy should be priced somewhere around $7,500–$9,800 per year to fall into the cost-effective threshold.

We worked with edHEALTH and its PBM partners to fully understand their weight loss medication utilization management and monitoring parameters. As a member consortium, edHEALTH is committed to providing their member institutions with the information needed to assist them in determining the best cost-management strategies. Therefore, a key part of our evaluation was to prioritize the education of staff and faculty on the protocols and side effects of these medications to potentially narrow the interest to those highly motivated groups. There is no one size fits all solution, but there are specific points of consideration and educational resources that can help organizations of any kind address this topic with stakeholders.

Additional recommendations included:

For example, edHEALTH hosts an annual walking challenge between member schools, with prizes and check-ins along the way. The healthy competition creates a simple yet effective way to get employees moving more than they might otherwise, and a tactic like this pairs nicely with an overarching weight loss strategy.

Considerations for Employers

Ultimately the choice to cover these medications is an organizational decision, but it’s critical to have all the information necessary to make this decision, starting with a robust view of your population demographics. With high rates of obesity for most health plan sponsors, a prudent and thoughtful approach to expanding weight-loss coverage will be required. Attempts like this to tackle the obesity epidemic could produce long-term savings with lower overall healthcare costs, prevention of progression of existing diseases, and most importantly a better quality of life and employee experience. 

No matter your decision on offerings, the more you can offer through communications and education will help your plan participants make informed decisions and understand their role in achieving and keeping weight off. To realize tangible results, all parties must be committed.

Our clinical pharmacist and benefits consulting team is here to help you assess weight loss as a component of your benefits strategy, including not only weight loss drugs but also wellbeing initiatives and data analytics for monitoring success. Get in touch for assistance in navigating this nuanced and rapidly evolving area.

1 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/happens-stop-taking-wegovy-ozempic-many-people-regain-weight-rcna66282
2 https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-consequences/economic/
3 https://icer.org/news-insights/press-releases/icer-publishes-evidence-report-on-treatments-for-obesity-management/

Introduction

With employers being challenged with attraction and retention, employee benefits and perks take center stage. Many organizations are aware of the importance of benchmarking when it comes to the competitiveness and performance of an employee benefits program, but are unsure about how to get started or what programs to compare.

Benchmarking can be conducted across a range of offerings, but recently time off programs have been a significant area of interest for employees and employers, especially around parental and family leave.  If your organization is considering changes to your program – or just looking to verify your time off programs remain competitive – benchmarking is critical. 

Getting Started

No matter which benefit you want to benchmark, including time off programs, it’s important to set the stage before the number crunching phase. Start with:

  1. Confirm benchmarking objectives: be sure to establish what you want to accomplish and why. Think about what problem you are trying to solve, or question you are trying to answer. What specific outcomes can be associated with the metrics you are trying to highlight? You might want your benchmarking to inform how your program is performing so you can make the case for additional resources, or how your program is structured, so you can explain how it could be more competitive for attraction and retention.
  2. Determine how you will gather data: the more focused you can be in your efforts, the more expediently you can get to the results. This starts with deciding which programs you are going to benchmark and metrics you are going to compare. You will also want to confirm whether you are interested in:
    • Internal benchmarking, where the comparison is made against your own data over time
    • External benchmarking, where metrics or practices of your company are compared to one or many other companies
    • Both internal and external benchmarking

External benchmarking is perhaps the more talked about path, but both can provide real value and insights based on what you are trying to achieve.

Digging In

When it comes to paid time off, policies worth evaluating might include:

When conducting external benchmarking to compare your leave benefits with those of other companies, you might be interested in analyzing the following categories:

It may also make sense to filter your evaluation by parameters like company size, location, industry, etc., so that you have as clean of a comparison as possible.

On internal benchmarks, it’s important to understand what’s actually happening in your population.  Utilization data may be your best source of “benchmarking” related to time off programs. Work to understand when employees are using time, establishing patterns of behavior among different employee classes. Use this data to defend maintaining the status quo or making changes. 

There are many ways in which you can slice and dice benchmarking data related to time off programs, and you don’t have to do it all. Always go back to your established goals and then work backward to identify which data sets will inform those objectives.

Industry Standards

We are constantly fielding questions around the competitiveness of leave offerings, particularly related to parental leave and PTO/vacation days. Data in this area is varied, but below are some statistics that can give you a gauge of norms.

Number of Time Off Days Given Based on Years of Service1

New Hire1-5 Years of Services6-9 Years of Services10+ Years of Services
PTO Bank0-10 days11-15 days11-20 days20+ days
Sick1-5 days1-5 days1-5 days1-5 days
Vacation0-10 days6-10 days11-15 days16-20 days
Personal0-5 days1-5 days1-5 days1-5 days

Get in Touch

If you’re interested in benchmarking your benefits programs such as leave offerings, or are wondering how your programs stack up, Spring’s subject matter experts would love to hear from you.

1 Alera Group Healthcare & Employee Benefits Benchmarking Survey, 2022
2 Spring Consulting Group’s 2022 Integrated Employer Survey

As a mark to the end of summer, The Disability Management Employer Coalition (DMEC) hosted their Annual Conference in the beautiful (and beachy) San Diego! The conference is in a different city every year, and it was refreshing being by the water this time. DMEC is one of the leading organizations in the absence and paid leave landscape; their conference brings together stakeholders from all across the industry to connect and discuss trends and best practices.

Here are some buzzworthy topics I wanted to share from the conference:

1) Mental Health Support

Although the demand for employer support for mental health and wellbeing services may not be as high as it was during the COVID-19 pandemic, it remained a hot button topic at this year’s conference. As mental health support solidifies its place in the benefits industry, employers are looking at innovative ways to stand out and cut costs. Some related presentations I found insightful include:

-The very first session of the conference, “A Mental Health Culture Shift: Addressing It from the Top Down,” brought together representatives from multiple health systems to discuss the importance of developing mental health resources that work for employees of all levels.

– In the presentation, “The Echo Pandemic: Mental Health, Lost Time, and Benefits Spend,” the speaker reviewed the ROI impact of preventative wellbeing solutions on benefits spend and workplace culture.

– In a one-of-a-kind presentation, a licensed psychologist reviewed “Regulated Psychedelics for Mental Health & What You Need to Know.” As psychedelic therapies are expected to be approved in 2023-2024 for PTSD treatment, this session reviewed how this will impact employers and their mental health offerings.

2) Compliance Strategies

It seems like at every conference and event I attend, compliance is top of mind for employers across the nation. With shifting national, state, and local regulations, it can be difficult to stay compliant while satisfying a dispersed workforce. Here are some noteworthy sessions related to compliance:

3) Returning to the Office/WFH Approaches

As the worst of the pandemic echoes behind us, many employers are trying to revert to tradition and get people back in the office (or find some middle ground). Decisions made regarding this dynamic will lay the foundation for employee culture and how employers approach leave management. Below are some relevant presentations I wanted to highlight:

– Experts discussed “Transitional Return-to-Work Programs that Last,” this included the cost benefits of these programs and tactics to educate and motivate front-line managers.

– A representative from Headversity, provided tips and resources to help empower future generations of women leaders. This included addressing accommodations that support the work-life balance of female employees.

4) Leveraging Tech

Tech in the absence and disability space continues to evolve with the introduction of new innovations and tools that can help create efficiencies and drive best practices. Even building on existing tools and systems can help us better understand current patterns and trends. Here are some presentations I found most insightful:

– In an interactive session with DMEC’s CEO, Terri Rhodes, Spring’s Jackie Myers and me, the attendees engaged in DMEC Benchmarking Jeopardy, which spotlighted DMEC’s new benchmarking platform that Spring helped build, which will give users an easy and user-friendly way to compare and contrast absence management policies and procedures.

– My colleague Marcy Updike and I reviewed survey data that analyzed the monetary value of flexible time off programs and their potential impact on recruiting and retention during our session, “The Value of Workforce Flexibility: Impact & Tradeoffs.

– Representatives from three different absence software companies discussed “Key Considerations for Selecting & Implementing Software as a Solution.” They reviewed employee considerations for implementing absence software and tips for managing day-to-day operations.

As a regular attendee and partner of DMEC, I have to say this may have been my favorite destination to date! As we approach the end of summer, it was great enjoying a few days of sunny weather. Throughout the busy few days, the Spring team and I had a great time reconnecting with industry leaders and deepening our knowledge of innovations in the leave management space. We are excited to see what next year’s conference has in store for us!