Employee Benefit Services

Employee Benefit Services

Why should you adopt a generic, product-driven benefits package when a custom package is available? You shouldn’t, of course. Through a customization process, we help you create a benefits package that reflects:

• your personal values regarding employees
• the needs of the individuals you hope to recruit and retain
• the need for simplicity and consistency in every-day administrative communication

To create a custom package, we typically complete a Benefit Assessment. This detailed process consists of a benefits audit and an evaluation, and includes some or all of the following:

• identify your compensation and benefit philosophy
• analyze employee demographics
• assess current benefits against company objectives
• do a risk management review
• survey your employees
• review cost-sharing practices
• identify net cost per employee
• review key employee benefits

Once thoroughly familiar with your benefits program, we evaluate it relative to company goals, and submit recommendations.

Want to take a first step in this process? Print out and complete our 20-Questions: How Do You Rate? form. To help you better understand your broader business needs, contact us for a free booklet called Business Viewpoint. This expanded checklist helps you pinpoint the specific concerns and issues you face as a business owner, employer and manager.

Unique to our process is the degree of attention we give to benefit costs. Too often, companies respond to rising benefit costs by simply shopping for cheaper products. Rather than take that one-shot approach, we like to look at options. Our cost evaluation and cost-containment recommendations are designed to help employers develop a strategy for addressing rising costs. Often that includes establishing a published benefits cost ceiling.

To start this process, we complete a benefit cost analysis and evaluation which gives us the information we need to identify the appropriate cost ceiling. This cost-containment step helps the employer draw an important line in the sand. If benefit cost exceeds the budgeted level, then the response can be multi-level:

1. change benefit levels
2. increase employee cost-sharing
3. look at other carriers or other types of plans
4. combine some or all of the above

Increasingly, as part of our evaluations, we discuss consumer-driven healthcare with employers. Healthcare is a very expensive and highly inflationary coverage, and as such, the most highly perceived benefit from the employee's perspective.

Group health plans in the Twin Cities have featured HMO's and co-pay plans for several years. Employers needed to consider such plans for competitive reasons; however, we are now finding great interest in plans that bring the consumer/employee into the picture (consumer-driven healthcare) which consumers can use for healthcare expenses such as health reimbursement plans (HRAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs). These combine a high deductible plan with a healthcare account that consumers can use for health care expenses.

In addition, wellness programs are coming back into vogue, specifically because healthy people have less costly premiums and lead more productive, satisfying lives.

The key here is to recognize that there are many approaches to managing benefit-related costs. We want to help you make informed decisions.

Let's say you are with a smaller, growing company and are the person responsible for doing recruiting interviews. The person you are interviewing today is currently employed by a large company with excellent benefits. This person has expressed an interest in the opportunities for growth and accomplishment that are possible with a smaller employer like yours.

When the interview turns to an explanation of the benefit package, this person will no doubt make what I call a "perception judgement". They will decide on the spot if the benefit package meets their expectations. If it does, you both can move on to the important task of considering whether the job, the applicant and the employer are going to be a good fit.

The interview is the moment when the recruiter "sells” the company, the opportunity, and the salary/compensation which includes the benefit package. As benefit advisors, we want to make sure that your benefit package is strong enough to become a non-issue in the interview process.

We also consider it our job to make sure that the recruiting interviewer has a good understanding of the benefits package, knows why the package "benefits" the employees, and is armed with materials that help explain benefits to the applicant.

For most of our clients, we have done all, or some, of the following:

• provided an Annual Benefit Package Summary—a short summary of benefits designed for the employee
• created a packet checklist describing the forms and materials important for a new hire
• explained the benefits package to existing employees, usually in small groups
• helped create materials for use at a re-enrollment meeting
  
• met with the company's recruiters to prepare them to sell the benefits package

We take our consulting role seriously and are compensated for the analysis we provide and the experience and wisdom behind our recommendations.

When we complete an Employee Benefit Assessment, we are paid on a fee-basis to evaluate the existing package and provide recommendations for change. Fees vary depending on the complexity of the package.

At that point, the client is free to take our objective recommendations and move on, or hire us to implement change. If we are hired to revise the benefits package, we then work on a fee- or commission-basis, depending on the size of the employee population.