IS IT EASY TO SET UP AN EMPLOYEE HEALTH BENEFITS PLAN?

The prospect of setting up an employee health benefits plan sounds complicated. It sounds like a lot of work for you and your administration team (the team which, depending on the size of your company, may or may not consist of you, alone). Surely it can’t be easy to set up a plan?

The simple answer is yes. Yes, it can be easy to set up an employee health benefits plan, but that “yes” is contingent upon choosing the right benefits provider.

The Provider

There are many different providers that you can work with on your employee health benefits plan. The provider you choose to work with will have an enormous impact on the benefits plan and the benefits experience for you and your employees.

You’ll want to choose a provider who has a similar outlook on benefits. For example, if you’re looking for a sustainable plan that you can stick with over the long term, then you’ll want a provider who shares that outlook. A provider who is focused on sustainability will incorporate cost control into the plan design, because the cost of the plan has a whole lot to do with keeping the plan sustainable.

You’ll also need a benefits provider with experience. Setting up an employee health benefits plan takes a lot of coordination – you’ll need a provider who has a lot of experience doing it. An experienced provider can help you avoid the headaches that are so often associated with setting up an employee health benefits plan. They’ll be able to provide you with recommendations and advice from their experience.

Along with that experience, you’ll need a benefits provider who can support you. They must be able to support you with both excellent systems and excellent customer service. The right systems make plan administration easy and will also take on the arduous task of registering your employees in the health benefits plan. Online registration has a huge impact on whether or not it is easy to set up your benefits plan.

The right provider must also be proactive in creating products and plans to make your experience better. This means anticipating needs and identifying pain points, then taking steps to eliminate them. The right provider is the key to making it easy to set up an employee health benefits plan.

The Plan

Choosing the right employee health benefits to include is the next step in setting up your plan. The right provider can guide you through this process, to ultimately make setting up the plan easy.

Start by establishing goals for the plan. Whether or not you have a clear vision of what you’re trying to accomplish with the plan can really impact the setup process. Goals for the plan can vary widely, but common goals are to:

• • Support recruitment and retention efforts
  • Improve the health of employees
  • Reduce absences (including sick and disability leaves)

If you know what your goals are, you’ll have an easier time choosing the right benefits.

If this is your first employee health benefits plan, you may want to choose a plan already tailored towards someone in your situation. At GroupHEALTH, we have something called the Smart Plan for Small Business. This plan was created for small businesses that do not have an employee health benefits plan. It is a comprehensive plan that balances great benefits with excellent value. It has transparent pricing and allows you to choose which benefits make sense for your company. If this is your first foray into sponsoring a plan, choosing the Smart Plan for Small Business can make things easy.

If you already have an employee health benefits plan, then designing the right plan for your company and your employees is the next step. Your provider can walk you through available benefits and help you choose. You’ll likely want to start with traditional benefits like health and dental, disability, life and accident and serious illness benefits. Then you can look at incorporating more modern benefits or “tweaks” to traditional benefits.

More modern benefits are things like virtual healthcare, Accident and Serious Illness (instead of Accidental Death and Dismemberment), and Wellness Benefits. You’ll also want to build cost-control into the plan right from the start. This can be done with products like Smart Rx Solutions (that target prescription drug costs), or by incorporating things like disability management services that aim shorten the length of disability leaves.

It’s easy to set up an employee health benefits plan when you have a benefits provider who clearly explains benefits that are available and provides guidance tailored to your organization.

The Process

The actual setup process for an employee benefits plan can be easy, providing you’ve chosen the right benefits provider, who has the right systems.

Registering employees in the benefits plan is traditionally a huge pain point for organizations. It usually involves paper enrollment, following up with employees to complete the enrollment forms and then inputting all the information into the system. Deciphering hand-written forms and following up with employees is onerous. In fact, having to go through employee enrollment is often a reason why companies choose NOT to change plans or providers.

At GroupHEALTH our industry leading Enrol-ME online registration system makes employee enrollment painless. You provide GroupHEALTH with a spreadsheet of basic information about employees (name, contact info, employee class) and our system does the rest. Enrol-Me sends a welcome e-mail to employees, guides them through the enrollment process and sends reminders if enrollment isn’t completed. It can’t be understated how much time and resources your Plan Administrator can save when enrollment is completed online.

Setting up an employee health benefits plan is easy with the right provider, the right benefits, and the right systems.

Good advice is key

Are you ready to have an employee health benefits plan that’s easy? Easy to set up, easy to maintain and easy to use? 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.