In a world where Google sets the gold standard in employee benefits, a great benefits strategy can be a huge differentiator in attracting and retaining top talent. Here’s how your business clients can follow suit.
The Affordable Care Act has turned the employee benefits industry on its head. New regulations are affecting human resources teams, new competitive forces and technologies are entering the market and expectations are shifting as millennials and Generation Z enter the workforce.
This represents an evolve-or-die situation for brokers. Competition for top talent is fierce, stakes around compliance are high and HR teams are looking to brokers for answers. In a world where Google sets the gold standard in employee benefits, a great benefits strategy can be a huge differentiator in attracting and retaining top talent.
Agents and brokers need to shift their value propositions from insurance salespeople to HR experts and holistic employee benefits strategists. The main focus must be on their services’ end users: the employees and their families enrolling in benefits. When agents support their clients in building smart, loyal teams, clients become long-term customers.
Here are five ways your business clients can improve their employee benefits to retain their top talent:
Recognize changing workforce expectations. Millennials officially surpassed Gen Xers as the largest generation in the U.S. labor force this year, and Gen Z is already two years in. These demographics have different expectations from their older counterparts. As the youngest, they’re healthier and further from retirement, so they consider traditional insurance and retirement benefits irrelevant and baseline requirements, not differentiators.
Employers need to think beyond insurance to engage these employees. Whereas Gen X sought work-life balance, millennials seek work-life integration. They expect benefits to not only protect them in case of illness, but also make them holistically healthier in their daily lives. Consider non-illness factors that affect employee productivity—physical fitness, mental health, financial stressors—and incorporate benefits that employees will actually use and appreciate, such as childcare or meal and gym reimbursements. The cost is often nominal compared to sponsoring a health plan, and the return is immediate.
Help employees make educated decisions. There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to employee benefits. Employees need cost and product options as well as tools to help them make the right decisions. Look for enrollment systems that provide relevant context around the benefits, as well as intuitive decision support tools.
Provide resources to help employees navigate a complicated system. While enrolling in benefits is difficult, actually using them is even more complex. A health care concierge such as Health Advocate helps users compare costs for procedures, find doctors and request assistance when adjudicating confusing medical bills.
Kill the fax machine (finally). In 2016, no transactions should be paper-based. The easiest way to keep the broker of record is to update HR with modern tools, especially as your clients compete with aggressive brokers like Zenefits that offer such services for free. Tools that streamline processes and automated administration are baseline requirements for HR.
Go mobile. Even the best strategies fail if employees don’t know what benefits they’re paying for, or how to use them. A folder of forms in their bottom desk drawer just won’t cut it. As of January 2014, 64% of American adults owned smartphones, with younger adults, minorities and lower-income users in particular depending on them for Internet access. We access everything on our phones, and benefits should be no different.
When a company invests in its employees, they’re motivated to stick with the organization. And agents benefit when clients thrive and continue attracting smart, forward-thinking workers. For businesses that are desperate for benefits resources, agents and brokers have an opportunity to differentiate themselves through high-quality products and training.
Veer Gidwaney is the CEO and co-founder of Maxwell Health, which has created the first health-as-a-service platform. Its revolutionary operating system for employee benefits engages employees, incentivizes a holistic view of health and provides a centralized place to access health and benefits services.