A healthy workforce is a critical component for business success. To run a competitive business, you staff must be motivated to do their best at work. You want to ensure employees will show up to work every morning and perform their tasks to the fullest extent. Unfortunately, this type of success will be difficult if your employees are always feeling sick, stressed, and unhealthy at their place of work.
As an employer, you have a responsibility to take care of your employees’ health, both physically and mentally. Having a dynamic employee health benefits program is essential. Your employees need to be assured that their health insurance will provide adequate coverage for illnesses, hazards, and general wellness.
The best employee benefits management will involve providing insurance coverage and encouraging a healthy lifestyle. Below are the six best practices for implementing and managing health benefits for your employees:
1. Your employees deserve to have the best health benefits.
An employee health benefits package can be quite expensive. While it might be tempting to go for cheaper health insurance plans, cheap is cheap for a reason. How good is a cheap plan if the insurer bails out on you at your critical hour of need? Besides, some of the cheap policies in the market do not include wellness benefits and other health checks that employees often seek.
If it is economically feasible, try your best to go for a higher tier of health benefits coverage whenever available. In general, the more you are willing to pay, the more health benefits your employees get to enjoy. Your expenses may increase, but you will enjoy a much happier and healthier workforce as a result.
2. Only choose reputable insurance firms.
Not all insurance firms are created equally, and not every firm can provide the best employee health benefits. If you make a mistake in choosing an insurance provider, it can be detrimental to your goal of providing medical insurance coverage for employees.
Some insurance providers are known to drag out the claims process, refuse to pay claims, or even ignore your questions. If a firm can’t deliver or doesn’t have a good reputation, stay away from them!
3. Choose between local and international insurance coverage.
Both local insurance and international insurance serve the same purpose. Where they differ is in terms of their coverage levels, depending on where in the world you are located. Usually, international insurance plans have higher limits and broader coverage. What this means is that they typically cover the cost of expensive medical facilities of wherever you reside in.
If your employees frequently travel overseas, a local insurance plan won’t work. What will happen if your employee falls ill while on duty abroad if the cover you provide is local? It means they will have to pay extra fees. The best solution is to segment your employees: those who travel overseas and those who don’t. Get a local plan for those who don’t travel, and an international one for those who do.
4. Don’t assume all health conditions are covered by the benefits.
In terms of healthcare, a pre-existing condition is a health challenge that was in existence before the person’s healthcare benefits came into effect. Ordinarily, when discussing a medical group plan, Medical History Disregard (MHD) is inevitable. This implies that their medical insurance is all-inclusive and covers all medical conditions, including pre-existing ones. However, this is not always the case.
It’s crucial to review in detail of all the terms and conditions for your employee health benefits. Should you wish to cover your employees for pre-existing medical conditions, make sure you inspect and negotiate the terms of agreement before finalizing your insurance coverage.
5. You should fully understand the eligibility requirements.
It’s essential to pre-determine the beneficiaries of a group plan before setting it up. Most group plans include a condition that employees at a certain level must be included in the group plan. For example, the insurer could demand that all mid-level employees be enrolled in a given policy. It’s prudent to clearly-define the diverse levels of coverage per the employee’s position.
You may also want to enrol the senior management into international coverage schemes while entry-level employees get local coverage. In this case, when an employee gets promoted, they are enrolled in a new group plan that’s commensurate with their new position.
Work with professionals who can advise your HR department on the best health benefits scheme for your employees. This way, you will avoid making corporate health insurance scheme selection mistakes.