When you’re thinking about healthcare benefits for your company, your people should take centre stage. But like every employer in today’s economy, you might find that the need to reduce costs often becomes the higher priority. So how do you make sure your health plan is delivering the impact required?
The answer lies in a holistic healthcare benefits strategy that has the added advantage of increasing employee productivity, well-being and overall job satisfaction. This is your guide to the five essential steps to do just that.
Step 1: Define objectives and goals
There are several questions you’ll want to ask yourself as you define your objectives and goals. How will you encourage people to maximise their benefits? How can you use your health plan to drive recruitment or improve retention? Do you want to focus on overall employee health or a specific workplace challenge? Are there particular factors you’ll need to keep in mind?
Asking yourself these questions will help you consider all the variables that ultimately add up to a successful healthcare strategy. From there, set simple, achievable, measurable, and health-specific goals. Some typical examples include:
- Better health: Improving employee lifestyle choices, health outcomes, and associated costs
- Better engagement: Inspiring employees to participate in preventive health programs and take control of their health
- Better savings: Reducing employee health risks and associated costs
Make sure your healthcare strategy aligns with the goals of the overall business so your key decision makers can see the connection between the two.
These sample goals and metrics can help you get started:
| Example Goal | Example Metric |
|---|---|
| Assess health of all employees | % of employees who complete a health screening assessment |
| Increase preventive care | % of employees who had an annual health check |
| Educate employees on the plan | % of employees who say they understand their plan benefits |
| Reduce impact on high-risk employees | % of high-risk employees enrolled in mental health coaching programs |
Step 2: Get an overview of the health of your employees
Before creating an actionable healthcare strategy, you’ll need to have a firm understanding of the needs, usage, and risks of your employees. This step is all about gathering the right data.
Have your employees fill out a Health Risk Assessment to gain insight into their general health and lifestyle. Then, if appropriate, consider hosting a worksite health screening to test for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, body mass index (BMI), HDL, TC/HDL ratio, and other common indicators.
Some key data points to focus on to get the best overview of their needs include:
- General health status: Are most employees generally healthy and live active lifestyles? Are there a high number of chronic conditions, like high blood pressure or high cholesterol?
- Attitudes toward health: How do your employees feel about regular preventive care or healthy eating?
- Healthcare use: How do your employees use their current health plan? How often do they receive treatment? Are there any common conditions?
- Demographics: What’s the average age of your employees? Are there concentrations in particular generations? Do many employees have children?
Step 3: Establish a performance benchmark
Benchmarks help you understand what ‘normal’ is for your organisation, and help you set smarter, more achievable goals. Some options for setting a benchmark include: use of preventive care programs, prevalence of chronic conditions and need for specialist care; engagement in well-being activities; the location of employees and their geographic spread; nationality, religious and cultural needs; and working styles.
Step 4: Create an engagement plan
With your goals in place and research completed, it’s time to create an operational plan. Make sure to include specific programs and well-being initiatives tailored to what you’ve found to be true for your company. For example, if many of your employees are diabetic, does your health partner offer specific care plans for people with diabetes?
A crucial addition to your operational plan is a plan for employee engagement. It can be one of the biggest challenges to implementing an effective healthcare strategy.
Proactively reinforce your company’s commitment to the health and well-being of its employees through workshops, well-being initiatives, and ongoing communication. Your healthcare partner may also offer outreach programs to identify and engage with employees with high health risks, discounts on health and wellbeing products, one-on-one coaching sessions, and more.
Step 5: Define a measurement plan
Your healthcare strategy won’t be complete without a measurement plan. Outline several key metrics that can evaluate its success. You’ll need to be able to prove that it’s working.
Ultimately, you’ll see the positive impact of your strategy in attendance, retention, and ongoing productivity. But you should also measure a range of metrics – monthly and quarterly – that measure employee engagement and satisfaction.
Create a straightforward and easy-to-understand survey that asks about specific aspects of the benefits you offer. Are your employees satisfied with the doctors and hospitals that they have access to? With the types of treatments and well-being products offered? What would they change about the program?
Actionable metrics are critical to promoting employee well-being and ensuring you’re still tracking for success. If you are, great. If you’re missing the mark, stop, assess, and reset.
As you embark on an employee healthcare program, taking a methodological approach can help ensure you don’t miss anything crucial. A holistic healthcare strategy that’s tailored specifically to your employees’ needs can keep them healthy, productive, and engaged.
