NAVIGATING EMPLOYEE HEALTH BENEFITS IN 2024

As time goes on, the landscape of employee health benefits is evolving, presenting both challenges and opportunities for employers. Balancing the impact of inflation on employee health coverage costs, adding value to your health benefits plan, and managing cost growth are key imperatives. By embracing these strategies, businesses can ensure that their employee health benefit programs not only meet the needs of their employees but also contribute to a resilient and thriving workplace.

Let’s have a look at three trends and explore strategies that businesses can adopt to navigate employee health benefits in the upcoming year.

1. Inflations Impact on Employees

Although inflation seems to be slowing down, it’s still impacting your employees: financially and mentally. In many ways financial and mental health challenges are often linked.

As a result of rising prices, employees may have to reduce spending on non-essentials. For example, they may choose to skip a visit to a physiotherapist or discontinue a gym membership in order to stay on budget. This could negatively influence productivity and performance.

Employers must prepare for this by designing employee health plans that consider the well-being of all employees. Balancing cost containment with employee financial and health wellness will be essential.

• Mental Health Support

The best way to support the mental health of your employees is to ensure they have access to an Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP). An EFAP is available 24/7 and can provide free short-term counselling. The Employee and Family Assistance Program also provides online resources, including podcasts, articles and toolkits. Employees who are experiencing mental health challenges (like stress or anxiety) have somewhere to turn to, so they can get the help they need.

• Financial Counselling and Advice

Helping employees effectively manage their finances is another way that you can support them during high inflation. Many employees aren’t aware that the EFAP can provide financial counselling and advice. Highlighting these resources, along with the many articles, calculators, and podcasts available can help give employees the support they need to deal with a challenging financial time.

2. Adding Value to Employee Health Benefits Plan

Employers should consider their employees and adapt benefits accordingly to foster a supportive and resilient work environment. The spotlight has been on mental health support for a while now, but the employer could add value to the health plan by providing additional plan features for support

• Health Spending Account

Including a health spending account (HSA) as part of your employee benefits plan is another way to support your employees. A health spending account functions like a bank account for health expenses. You choose the amount, and your employees can spend it on eligible health and dental expenses. It can be really helpful for those employees who are feeling the impact of rising costs.

If you already include a health spending account with your employee benefits plan, now might be a good time to consider increasing the amount. Because the price of goods and services are increasing, the money available in the health spending account doesn’t go as far as it used to.

• Wellness

The wellness trend has been gaining momentum for several years now, and for good reason. Supporting employee wellness means encouraging, incentivizing and supporting employees in pursuing a healthier lifestyle. This is an employee health benefits trend that is here to stay.

An effective and impactful wellness program can improve the physical and mental health of employees while also decreasing employee health benefit costs. Wellness is good prevention. When employees pursue a healthier lifestyle, they have fewer physical and mental health issues, which can translate into fewer prescription drug claims, fewer disability claims, and higher productivity.

There are many ways to support employees with wellness. Ideas include: a wellness spending account, enhanced Employee and Family Assistance Program, gym memberships, office fitness challenges, nutrition workshops, and more.

3. Managing Cost Increases

Everything is costing more for Canadian businesses, and this trend sees business owners struggling to balance the cost of paying for employee health benefits with the reality that those benefits are an important part of compensation, and a recruitment and retention tool.

Controlling costs is a priority for business owners in 2024, but the focus is on doing so without placing additional financial burdens on employees. Various strategies can be implemented, but a focus on virtual healthcare can not only enhance efficiency but also contribute to cost containment.

GroupHEALTH partners with TELUS Health to provide virtual healthcare as part of employee benefit plans. The service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It’s an important tool to keep your employees healthy. It helps employees get the care they need, when they need it, and how they need it.

Virtual healthcare removes barriers to accessing health services. Travelling to and from a healthcare provider is in itself a barrier. It can be exhausting for someone suffering from an illness to travel to a provider. Arranging transport, and/or paying for that transport are additional barriers.

Businesses will increasingly look for ways to support employees with health benefits, while containing costs associated with those benefits. It’s a challenging balance, but an important one when it comes to recruitment and retention.

Good advice is key

Do you have an employee benefits provider that keeps you “in the know” when it comes to industry trends? Do you have a plan in place to address trends in health benefits that are coming your way?

Review your options with one of our licensed advisors on the phone or in-person or contact us for a comparison quote.

Whether you’re looking for extended health and dental coverage, disability coverage, or life and critical illness coverage, GroupHEALTH has affordable benefit packages that work as hard as you do.