Enhancing employee engagement
By Beth Taylor
Source: https://eba.benefitnews.com
Actively disengaged employees cost more than $300 billion per year in lost productivity alone. That statistic from global consultant Gallup pinpoints the key to long-term success in a corporate wellness program - employee engagement. It is also the most challenging. Short-term success frequently plateaus until engagement slows or stops. The same employees participate in your clients' wellness initiatives, often resulting in missed opportunities to engage employees with the greatest health risks. A rising trend in wellness is to target employee engagement. The following presents three steps for helping clients improve their long-term engagement results.
Incorporate wellness in business
Business strategy that incorporates wellness initiatives sends a clear message throughout the organization that there is value in a healthy workplace. Like any area of performance, your clients should develop metrics that align with company goals, communicate objectives, and obtain feedback. Wellness strategy should focus on total health, including physical, emotional and social health. Measurable business outcomes in areas such as absenteeism, productivity, and safety incidents help refine goals.
Manufacturer Lincoln Industries has received national recognition as a case study in blending wellness initiatives with business strategy. Lincoln provided its employees with the tools for success, control over their results, and recognition through an awards program. By focusing on total health and integrating wellness, safety, and health benefits, this 500-employee company experienced more than 90% employee participation in wellness initiatives, decreased absenteeism and turnover, and lower workers' comp and health care costs.
Incorporating wellness in business strategy is the first step in engaging employees in the process. The message starts with your clients' managers.
Hold management accountable
It is common practice for businesses to hold management accountable for their unit's performance. Successful organizations recognize the link between employee engagement and performance by adding that area to management evaluations.
Management is the front line for implementing your clients' business strategy, which should include wellness initiatives. To create the right environment for a culture of wellness, managers' key performance indicators should include measurements for employee engagement. Some companies go as far as integrating bonuses for their managers for measurable successes.
Visible signs of management accountability have a huge impact on results. For example, some companies post leader boards that share wellness activities results by units, departments or teams. If your clients have a point system for recognition, they can hold managers to two levels of accountability. The first measures the timely posting of results by managers. The second measurement reflects the earned points from the managers' direct reports.
Engage employee champions
Sponsor a company event and inevitably, certain employees emerge as champions. They are the first to volunteer and are quick to lend their support. Every wellness program needs employee champions. Grassroots efforts engage employees; however, you do not want to overlook other potential champions.
Engaging the same employees for every event discourages others from participating. That pattern contributes to wellness programs launching with a bang, and then fizzling away over time.
Making assumptions about employee populations kills even the best strategy. For every organization characterized as entrepreneurial or competitive, you will find employees who don't fit that mold. The quiet "steady Eddy" at your client's fast-paced workplace may be the perfect candidate for tracking award points or providing structure for meetings.
Help your clients recognize the hidden champions or the outside-the-mold employee and understand what motivates the them. For every champion your client engages, it increases the likelihood a buddy will come along for the ride. Another way to encourage the buddy system is by rewarding points to employees when a friend accompanies them to a wellness event.
By learning the motivational push buttons for employees, your client is able to customize wellness communications and activities for better engagement. Creating a winning solution for your clients' wellness programs, like a winning sports team, requires every member of the team be engaged in the same pursuit of success.
Wellness Newsletter: Healthy Skin, Healthy Living
Glowing, spotless, wrinkle-free skin is much valued in our society. We’re willing to spend a lot for that look. It’s estimated that the skin care industry in the U.S. is worth about $43 billion per year. But healthy skin starts from the inside, not just from creams and lotions applied on the outside.
Below are three important ways to keep your skin -- and your whole body -- healthy.
1. Eat Your Way to Healthy Skin
Eating a diet rich in certain vitamins and fats may provide anti-aging effects for your skin. Let’s look at some of the best choices for skin health.
Citrus and other vitamin C-rich fruits and vegetables: Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is key to the production of collagen, a protein that gives skin its firmness and strength. Vitamin C also helps create scar tissue and ligaments, and it helps your skin repair itself. Collagen breakdown, which speeds up significantly after the age of 35, can leave your skin saggy. Consuming sources of vitamin C such as oranges, grapefruits, mangos, melons, strawberries, tomatoes and broccoli may help tighten the skin and slow down the onset of wrinkles.
Orange-red fruits and vegetables such as carrots, apricots, mangos, cantaloupe and sweet potatoes are full of beta-carotene, which our bodies convert into vitamin A. Vitamin A helps your skin produce more new cells and get rid of the old ones, reducing dryness. In the case of vitamin A, you also get anti-acne benefits -- vitamin A has been used in acne medications for many years. It's best to get this vitamin from food and not from supplements because too much vitamin A can cause hair loss and other health problems.
Avocados, nuts, eggs and wheat germ all provide vitamin E, which is thought to help protect your skin from sun damage. It also tends to help skin hold in moisture and relieve dryness, which makes skin look younger.
Fatty fish: Oily or fatty fish such as salmon, herring, mackerel, anchovies and sardines provide beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. (Keep in mind that “fatty” fish is always leaner than “lean” beef.) These “good fats” have received a great deal of attention for their potential in boosting heart health and reducing inflammation. Some research shows that getting too little omega-3 may contribute to skin disorders like eczema and psoriasis. Omega-3 fatty acids can also help keep the heart's arteries clear and so improve circulation. Good circulation is key to skin health.
Remember, many of the best foods for healthy skin also promote good health overall. Rather than focusing on specific foods for healthy skin, concentrate on a healthy diet in general. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Try to eat fish or shellfish at least once a week. Include nuts, seeds and beans in your favorite meals. Opt for whole-grain breads and pasta. Strive for variety as you're making healthy choices.
2. Sun Protection Is Critical for Healthy Skin
Damage from overexposure to the sun’s radiation presents itself in several ways. A painful burn is a sure sign of short-term damage. Signs of permanent damage become apparent over time. Too much time in the sun can cause:
- Wrinkles. The sun’s ultraviolet rays break down the connective tissue in your skin and your skin loses its elasticity.
- Irregular pigmentation of your skin, especially on your face.
- Dark brown spots called liver or age spots (dermatologists call them solar lentigines) that appear most often on the forehead, forearms or hands.
- Skin cancer.
Just because summer is over doesn’t mean you can stop applying sunscreen for the next nine months. The American Academy of Dermatology strongly recommends applying sunscreen 365 days a year. Use sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher. A wide-brimmed hat, a tightly woven long-sleeve shirt and long pants are also good ways to protect your skin.
Do not try to maintain a summer tan with visits to the tanning salon. Indoor tanning beds are as dangerous as natural sunlight. Most tanning light bulbs emit longer-wave UV-A rays, which penetrate the skin more deeply than UV-B rays. UV-A rays significantly raise the risk of developing melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer.
3. Stop Smoking to Stop Damage to Your Skin
Smoking speeds up the normal aging process of your skin, contributing to wrinkles. These skin changes may occur after only 10 years of smoking. The more cigarettes you smoke and the longer you smoke, the more skin wrinkling you're likely to have -- even though the early skin damage from smoking may be hard for you to see. The nicotine in cigarettes causes narrowing of the blood vessels of your skin. With less blood flow, your skin doesn't get as much oxygen and important nutrients, such as vitamin A. Tobacco smoke also damages collagen, which gives your skin its strength and elasticity. As a result, skin begins to sag and wrinkle prematurely.
Gingered Carrots and Oranges Makes 6 servings
The perfect complement to grilled salmon or roast chicken -- you’ll enjoy the mix of spicy, sweet and tart flavors, and your skin will appreciated the vitamin A and vitamin C.
| Ingredients2 pounds peeled baby carrots1 11-oz can mandarin orange segments and juice
1/2 cup orange juice 1/4 cup dried cranberries or tart cherries 2 tablespoons chopped crystallized ginger
|
Preparation Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan. Simmer over medium-low heat until the carrots are tender, about 15 minutes.Nutritional info per serving 133 Calories 0.3g Fat 0.1g Saturated fat 2.0g Protein 31g Carbohydrate 5.4g Fiber 105mg Sodium |
Workers Flounder with Health Care Decision
By Editorial Staff
Source: https://eba.benefitnews.com
Open enrollment deadlines are just around the corner, and a new survey suggests the choices aren’t getting any easier for many workers.
According to a report from Aetna, Americans rank choosing health care benefits as the second most difficult life decision, behind only saving for retirement. Aetna’s survey shows those who stress over health benefits decisions cite confusing and complicated information (88%), conflicted data (84%) and difficulty knowing which plan is right for them (83%).
“The … results showed that consumers understand the importance of health benefits. However, they don’t feel they have the resources they need to make an educated decision,” says Mark T. Bertolini, Aetna’s chairman and CEO “We need to make the process of choosing and using health benefits easier for consumers.”
Conducted in July with results released last week, the survey finds Americans split on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, though 75% think that all of its key elements are important for them or their families. Forty-one percent of respondents said they need more information on health care reform to understand its impact.
Reducing medical costs remains a major economic and political issue, even though 42% of Americans reportedly never or rarely monitor out-of-pocket health care expenses. This is despite the fact that more than one in five respondents had to dip into their savings in the past year to help cover medical bills.
The survey further finds that more than 40% of respondents have skipped a prescription dose, halted their medication or delayed a needed medical procedure. What’s worse, those in fair or poor health (76%) or with chronic conditions (57%) are the most likely to engage in those dangerous behaviors.
Wendy Shanahan-Richards, national medical director for Aetna, says the survey illustrates the need for health plans data to walk the line between concise and digestible and thorough and comprehensive information.
“The [survey] results help us better understand the challenges that consumers are facing today,” Shanahan-Richards says. “We want to arm consumers with as much useful, easy-to-understand information as possible to help them make more informed health benefits choices and take better control of their health.”
Challenging employees boosts engagement
BY AMANDA MCGRORY
Source: https://www.benefitspro.com
Most employees don’t want to sit at their desks bored, mindlessly sift through their work and punch out when it’s time to go home. Especially in today’s competitive work environment, employees are looking for positions that are challenging, and when that need is not met, employees often become disengaged, says Sheryl Kovach, president and CEO of Kandor Group, a human resources consulting firm in Houston. Not only can this hurt retention levelsbut it can also impact the corporate culture as a whole.
“When employees don’t feel challenged, they tend to get bored, and when employees get bored, generally, their motivation levels decrease,” Kovach says. “Their degree of overall commitment toward the organization begins to suffer. Symptoms of boredom are decreased motivation and commitment, an increase in errors, lack of an optimistic attitude, increased absenteeism and even increased turnover. When these types of symptoms are manifested in an organization, they’re contagious. Others start to see and feel the effect of that attitude.”
The top performers at a company are especially prone to feeling unchallenged in their roles, Kovach says. Generally, top performers excel quickly and have go-getter attitudes. With that kind of motivation, high performers have to be stimulated constantly in order to operate at such efficient levels.
To prevent employees from becoming unchallenged in their roles, managers must open communication lines, Kovach says. On a regular basis, managers should discuss career goals, how success is defined and workplace challenges with employees. Managers should also take the time to find out from employees what they need from a managerial level to develop within their roles. While many employers offer career development programs, they are often underused.
“A lot of times companies have career development programs, but none of the employees participate in them,” Kovach says. “The main reasons I see for this is the employees either don’t know they exist, and the managers in charge of driving career development in their employees are not promoting them. The managers need to be educated on how these programs work, so they can help encourage further development.”
Many successful development programs allow employees to test and apply their knowledge, skills and abilities that they may not be able to fully apply in their current roles, Kovach says. This might include tasking an employee with a project that includes heightened responsibilities on a larger scope.
Performance reviews can also help keep employees from becoming unchallenged in the workplace, Kovach says. With performance reviews, a manager can measure how an employee has been performing relative to the goals and expectations of the position while identifying any gaps in knowledge or skills. This helps a manager determine whether the employee is ready for new challenges and development opportunities.
“Performance reviews can help shed light on whether employees have really mastered their positions,” Kovach says. “If they’re hitting that level of mastery, in order to keep them engaged and retain them, we have to keep them challenged.”
Best HSAs combine attractive plan, good communication
By Tristan Lejeune
Source: https://eba.benefitnews.com
If your promotion plan for your health savings account starts and ends with open enrollment, you’re losing enrollees and impact, two benefits experts maintain.
Jennifer Benz and Dennis Triplett are perhaps uniquely qualified to discuss education and strategy surrounding health savings account administration together, as their professional collaboration centers around developing exactly that strategy. Speaking to employers, brokers and providers last week at Benefits Forum & Expo, the communications expert and the UMB Healthcare Services CEO, respectively, shared techniques for maximizing enrollment and effective account management.
“We began working with Jen and her staff a couple years ago around the whole notion of communication, which we see a deficit of, honestly, in the success around HSAs,” Triplett said.
Speaking at Benefits Forum & Expo in Phoenix, the pair said there are two key aspects of maximizing HSA potential: attractive plan design and effective communications. And one of the simplest parts of each, according to Benz, is getting the name right.
“We see a lot of companies hanging onto these really confusing or counterintuitive plan names,” Benz said. “So if you call the health plan the HDHP or you call it the Catastrophe Plan or you call it the high-deductible plan, you know that’s not super, super appealing.”
Triplett emphasized letting the plans sell themselves. Employers should make sure their HSA actually has features like tax breaks and a catch-up contribution for older workers and then just present them accurately and engagingly.
Benz agreed, saying that a “robust, ongoing education” was far superior to trying to cram information in in the weeks and months leading up to enrollment.
“We know how to get people into these plans for the most part – you promote the heck out of the plan during enrollment, you give people a million different ways to understand the plans, you give the personal testimonials, you give them cost calculators, you give them great scenarios, you make the plan really attractive in terms of how the contributions stack up and you make that really clear, but a lot of companies just stop at that point,” she said. “Where it really comes to getting the most value out of consumer-driven strategy is getting people to use those plans properly throughout the year.”
Triplett said far too many consumers treat their HSA exactly the same as a flex-spending account – treating it like there was no rollover and having a flat balance year to year -- and illustrating the differences between an HSA and an FSA should be included in communication efforts.
“I guess they have two letters in common, but other than that, there’s several differences,” he said, adding that it was providers’ responsibility to “reverse the tide” on FSA thinking by tailoring the HSA advances to specific employees: “Personalize the message as best you can, put a persona around it.”
The average cost of all future medical needs for a fresh retiree is some $240,000, Triplett said, “something that quite a few even financial planners overlook.”
“And that’s for people who are 65 today, so think about the person who is 40 today, what kind of expenses he or she is going to be faced with in retirement.”
The room, which included a first-time employer hoping to add HSAs as a benefit for his workers and an HR exec who said she struggles with getting the most out of her own plan, was asked to participate by coming up with pitches for a few hypothetical wage-earners, finding ways of marketing psychologically.
A young, healthy employee with low health costs, for example, could be told about the tremendous edge in interest accumulation (“This is something that we just can’t emphasize enough,” Benz said) that comes with starting young and saving for the days when pretty much everyone racks up medial costs. One provider also suggested that to such workers she makes the family pitch: saving not just for not-yet-existent problems, but for not-yet-existent people.
On the other side of the spectrum, an older worker could be informed of catch-up contributions and available transfers to beneficiaries.
When given the hypothetical scenario of an employee with a chronic condition who needs a large amount of health care and asked what the proper message for them might be, one woman shouted out “choose the PTO.”
Benz said knowing one’s audience, in this case one’s workforce, is crucial to getting through to them.
“Who is in your plan? How are they using their account? How are they using their health plan, and so forth,” she said. “Then we can look at the behaviors we want to change and be very, very focused on getting people to get the most out of their plans.”
CDHPs increasingly popular among employers
By Marli D. Riggs
Source: https://eba.benefitnews.com
Consumer-driven health plans have bypassed health maintenance organizations to become the second most common plan design offered by U.S. employers, according to an Aon Hewitt survey.
CDHP designs are becoming increasingly popular among employers because they provide the framework needed for educating and motivating employees to actively engage in managing their health and wellbeing, according to Maureen Fay, senior vice president and head of Aon Hewitt's CDHP working group.
In 2011, 58% of employers offered a CDHP and 38% offered HMO plans, according to the survey of nearly 2,000 U.S. employers representing more than 20 million U.S. employees and their dependents.
PPOs continue to be the most popular plans, with 79% of employers offering them in 2011.
“As employers struggle to address unsustainable increases in health care spend, they can no longer rely on traditional methods of tweaking plan designs like increasing copays and deductibles or increasing employee payroll contributions for medical coverage,” says Fay. “Employers are beginning to explore innovative solutions that focus on both the short-term need to manage health care costs and the longer-term requirement to change underlying behavior patterns, shifting the focus from ‘caring for the sick’ to ‘actively managing the health of their employees.’”
A growing number of employers are also considering using voluntary benefits, such as critical illness and accident insurance policies, to supplement CDHPs. More than a quarter (26%) can attribute an increase in CDHP enrollment to the availability of voluntary or supplemental medical benefits. While just 6% of employers use voluntary benefits today to complement the CDHP and encourage enrollment, 42% report they will consider this approach in the next few years.
Among employers that offer CDHPs, health savings accounts outpace health reimbursement arrangements, 34% to 18%, respectively. However, the survey shows a higher number of employees enrolling in HRAs (43%) compared to HSAs (28%). HRA plan designs are popular among large employers embarking on full replacement CDHP strategies, as they offer more design flexibility to the employer than HSA designs.
Employers are using a variety of tactics to encourage employees to enroll in CDHPs, including subsidizing premiums at a higher level than other plan options (36%), covering preventive medications before the deductible (34%) and contributing employer funds to the HSA (30%) and HRA (22%).
Employees are willing to try CDHPs and their associated accounts, and will continue to choose them because they often come with a lower premium, according to a separate survey of 3,000 employees and their dependents by Aon Hewitt, The Futures Company and the National Business Group on Health. However, employees find the plans challenging to understand and use.
“Employees want to choose the most cost-effective plan with the least hassle, but they often have very full lives and are not all that interested in digging into the details of CDHPs, HSAs and HRAs,” says Joann Hall Swenson, partner and health engagement best practice leader at Aon Hewitt. “Our research and experience tells us that simply giving employees lots of educational information about these plans and accounts is only helpful to the small minority of people who like all the details.”
To address this, she offers employers the following tips:
• Make sure the right people are in the right plan. Employers need to identify segments of their population most likely to value and take advantage of the unique features of the CDHP, and tailor the marketing to them. They also need to monitor employees’ day-to-day experience of using the plan to ensure it “re-sells” itself and engages consumers in the appropriate financial and health behaviors.
• Reinforce the plan’s actions and advantages. Employers should articulate what’s in it for employees; how they can benefit from the plan’s key features, and be very specific about the actions they need to take.
• Make it easy for employees and their families. This includes removing barriers to care at the point of need through initiatives like value-based plan designs or fully-funding employer contributions to HSA/HRA accounts at the beginning of the year.
To be effective, employers must also provide tools and support throughout the year so more employees and their families can learn how to:
• Participate in activities to help them assess their health opportunities and risks such as health risk assessments and biometric screenings.
• Navigate new tools to help them make smart choices in selecting appropriate treatments.
• Leverage behavioral and clinical resources like disease management nurses and health coaches to help set and make progress toward health improvement and maintenance goals.
• Follow preventive care guidelines to stay their healthiest.
• Manage chronic conditions by working closely with their physician and adhering to evidence-based treatment protocols.
Studies: Target couples for life insurance
By Carrie Burns
Source: https://eba.benefitnews.com
Thirty-nine percent of U.S. adults do not have life insurance, according to survey results released by InsuranceQuotes.com. And many of the 2,000 Americans surveyed who do have life insurance appear to be underinsured and not as knowledgeable as they should be about their policies.
These results and other survey results from ING and MetLife, all announced in conjunction with Life Insurance Awareness Month, suggest that a substantial number of Americans are inadequately prepared for end-of-life issues.
Today, ING announced findings from a consumer study of attitudes and behaviors toward life insurance. According to the research, “Insurance Revealed,” 78% of respondents — 1,006 adults over the age of 25 — viewed life insurance as a valuable tool for estate or financial planning, and 53% believed that the current economy makes life insurance even more important today than in past years. However, 51% of respondents cited other priorities, such as paying off debt or a mortgage, as major obstacles to purchasing life insurance.
The study also revealed individuals who purchased life insurance face-to-face with a financial professional felt the most confident and knowledgeable about their coverage, and 49% look to their employer as the only source for insurance coverage. Employees without access to life insurance benefits at the workplace were seven times more likely to have no coverage at all than employees who did have access.
Meanwhile, 61% had never calculated their life insurance needs and 44% had little or no confidence that the amount of life insurance coverage they had was sufficient.
The study also showed communication is an area for further opportunity. While 62% identified family as the number one reason to purchase life insurance, many couples confirmed that they avoid discussing the issue. Among married respondents, 45% had rarely or never talked with their spouse about what would happen to the family finances should one of them pass away.
MetLife’s 10th Annual “Employee Benefits Trends Study,” released last week, highlighted similar findings. It found that marriage appears to be a catalyst for working men and women to obtain life insurance protection. However, when children enter into the equation, parents are not adjusting life insurance coverage to accommodate the change. About half of single working men and women without children have some amount of life insurance, a percentage that climbs to 72% for married workers without minor children but only increases marginally, to 75%, for married couples with youngsters.
The study found that workers both with or without minor children have, in general, only about three times their annual household income covered by life insurance. This amount may be inadequate with the addition of children as the number and age of dependents should be taken into consideration when determining the amount of coverage needed.
55 billion reasons for consumer-driven care
Source: Benefitspro.com
In a report this week, we found out something we already knew—but probably not to this extent.
Our country’s health care system squanders a ridiculous $750 billion a year. That’s roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar spent. It happens through unneeded care, excessive administrative expenses and data, fraud and other problems, a report by the Institute of Medicine revealed.
Let’s go over some numbers. America spent $2.6 trillion on health care last year. And a third of that spending did nothing to make any of us any healthier. Our health care costs are rising faster than inflation, and it’s literally bankrupting many of us. It’s also killing us. By one estimate, the report says, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state.
So what is going on?
The report breaks down the sources of overspending: Unnecessary services tops the list at $210 billion, followed by inefficiently delivered services ($130 billion), excessive administrative costs ($190 billion), prices that are simply too high ($105 billion), fraud ($75 billion) and missed prevention opportunities ($55 billion).
Though we’ve come a long way in health innovation—such as the management of previously fatal conditions—the report said, the American health care system is still falling short on “basic dimensions of quality, outcomes, costs and equity.”
Not that this is news. We know this. It’s apparent every time we see health report numbers or look at our own medical bills.
The question is what we can do about it.
The Institute of Medicine has recommendations: Fully adopt mobile technologies and electronic health records; increase transparency about the costs and outcomes of care; use better data; and move toward a system that rewards doctors for quality, not quantity, of care.
Sure, these are good ideas, but whether they'll happen any time soon is really a mystery. Sadly, it’s out of consumers’ hands.
But preventive care isn’t. There’s something each of us can do—get checked, get necessary and recommended health screenings, eat healthy, exercise, don’t smoke, be proactive about problems—the list goes on. Older people, the report notes, have a big problem with preventive care, and it’s especially problematic because they're more prone to serious and costly health woes.
It’s also worth noting that the report comes at an interesting time. The presidential race is tighter than anyone thought—and health reform and Medicare cuts are sources of major contention. President Obama didn’t even give mention the signature piece of his presidency, the PPACA, during his nomiation acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Seems like there’s a lot we—and Washington—can do to drastically cut health care costs while also improving care that doesn’t cost another trillion or so dollars to implement.
Medicare Part D Notice Due
This is a reminder to employers who are required to provide an annual Medicare Part D Notice. Sponsors of group health plans that provide prescription drug coverage generally must provide the Notice to all participants who are eligible for Medicare. The Notice must be distributed prior to the start of the election period (which runs from October 15 to December 7), so you may want to include the Notice in your open enrollment packages. You must send the Notice out no later than October 14, 2012.
You must provide the Notice to all Part D eligible individuals enrolled in or seeking to enroll in your plan, including spouses and dependents. Because employers may not know which individuals are Part D eligible (some individuals might be eligible because of a disability, some might be eligible due to age, etc.), many employers distribute the Notice to all individuals eligible to enroll in the plan to ensure that no Part D eligible individual is missed.
Here are some basic rules for the Notice:
- You have flexibility in the form and manner of providing the Notice.
- You may use the model notice form published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (although you are not required to do so).
- You are not required to send the Notice as a separate mailing. You can provide it with other participant information materials (although note that certain formatting requirements may apply).
- A separate disclosure must be provided if you know that the spouse or dependent resides at a different address than the participant.
- You may distribute the Notice electronically if you follow the same electronic disclosure requirements that apply to summary plan descriptions (SPDs), except you should inform the participant that he/she is responsible for providing a copy of the disclosure to his/her Medicare-eligible spouse and/or dependents eligible for coverage under the plan (otherwise, you will need to separately send them a hard copy notice) and you must post the Notice on your website (if you have one) with a link on your home page to the Notice.
- If you have not yet finalized your 2013 offerings, the Notice should still be provided now based on your current 2012 offerings. If the status of those offerings changes from creditable to non-creditable (or vice versa), you will need to provide an additional Notice within a reasonable period of time (maximum 60 days) after the change occurs. You should indicate on your Notice that it will not be updated if coverage changes but it remains creditable or non-creditable (as applicable).
In addition to the Notice, you must annually disclose to CMS the creditable coverage status of your prescription drug plan, using the online Disclosure to CMS Form (available here). The Form is due no later than 60 days after the beginning of the plan year, within 30 days after termination of a prescription drug plan, or within 30 days after any change in creditable coverage status.
Are employee purchase programs with payroll deductions a good idea?
By Jason Steed
Source: https://www.pacresbenefits.com
It sounds like a good plan: Offer your current and retired employees discounts on products and services from companies that you have existing business relationships with. Then, arrange for employees to have payroll deductions to help them more easily pay for these items (without finance charges, of course). These types of employee purchase programs are quite active in some companies, giving employees a semi-personalized ‘mall’ of products and services to choose from.
In some cases, these programs provide a solution for employees that cannot get credit for a longed-for big ticket item, do not have all the money on hand for an emergency purchase (such as replacing a broken washing machine) and / or would appreciate a much easier way to buy a new item, like a laptop, for their college student. There is certainly some value for both the company (bringing business to their client helps the client be more successful) and the employee (discounts and payroll deduction make payment much easier) with this arrangement. This benefit also gives employers an extremely low or no cost way to deliver direct value to employees by helping them save money on products and services they may be purchasing anyway – but not necessarily from the company that the employer already has a relationship with.
This seemingly “no brainer” employee benefit does have its downsides. Many employees are already underinsured, some perhaps even living paycheck to paycheck, and some people would argue that employees should never buy anything that they can’t already afford, whether it’s a washing machine or flat screen television.
One interesting question is what participants are actually doing with the savings they can get from these purchase programs. Are employees ever encouraged to then contribute more to their retirement plans or buy insurance or other items that can help them financially down the road? Would having that option or information change the value of a employee purchase program?
With all the discussion recently on the consumer driven healthcare – employees making their own decisions on medical insurance based on their individual / family needs - where do other benefits decisions fall? Should there be other consumer driven benefit options, including employee purchase programs?
Due diligence is a very important part of any benefit product offered to an employee, even these types of non-traditional offers. So why not find a way to integrate them? Given the advances in technology over the last five years, why not educate employees and offer them some valid tools to help improve their financial future? Example: “Congratulations! You just saved $1,000 on your new dishwasher. With that savings, you may want to contribute more to your 401k or buy additional life or disability insurance. Here’s how…………”
The bottom line is that employers need to consider all the aspects of having an employee purchase program, and whether its purpose to help employees financially outweighs the potential personal financial mistakes some employees may make. I suggest we work on creating an employee benefits marketplace where all of these different types of benefit components can work together: 1) consumer choice (which automatically brings some personal responsibility) and 2) employer due diligence including the appropriate vetting of programs and the technology platforms they run on. Integrating core and these types of voluntary benefits is the best way to ensure your benefits programs delivers real value to your employees and is truly in their best interest.