Employee benefits are often a significant expense for organizations and a crucial component for attracting and retaining employees. While most people associate benefits with their renewal, the work that you do with your broker should be happening throughout the year to ensure the best results.
The more work you do during the year means giving yourself the highest probability of achieving your goals. A broker's role is to help guide, facilitate, and advise on what can be done during the plan year to maximize the current plan and prepare for a successful renewal.
Below, we're going to cover a high level outline that will help you navigate benefits during the year and allow you to be proactive with your approach. Of course, this does not cover everything that happens but it does provide a great foundation for how to be proactive with your benefits.
Four to Six months before your renewal (or anytime)
This is a great time to evaluate the relationship with your current broker. A broker works for you and should be involved with you and the organization far ahead of the renewal. TBC offers an extensive Broker Evaluation Survey to help you analyze the reality of your situation. Below is a sample of some questions you can use when doing this evaluation:
- Does he/she have a thorough understanding of the healthcare delivery environment?
- Does he/she provide education for employees to maximize plan effectiveness and contain costs?
- Does he/she conduct frequent reviews of plan performance with decision makers?
- Does he/she understand your business and long term vision?
- Does he/she have a depth of knowledge in underwriting and able to successfully negotiate on your behalf?
If you answered "no" to any of these, give us a call.
Three to Four months before your renewal
This time frame is crucial for doing a deep dive and evaluation of the plan you're offering.
First start with an examination of the carrier itself:
- Do you feel you are getting a return on your investment?
- Are they offering programs to help with cost-containment?
- How is the carrier servicing our account? Are they responsive and helpful?
- How is our usage of the plan? How is our in-network access?
This is also the time to make sure the team is getting together in preparation for the renewal. We recommend having a C-suite presence, HR leader, and a Finance leader involved to closely examine performance of the current plan, implications of changing plans, evaluating external market conditions, and determining employee satisfaction with the current offerings.
Depending on your situation, it is also valuable to gather benchmarking data to compare yourself to industry peers. This data will help inform decisions about where to go next. Your broker should be bringing information about trends in the market - Are there alternative funding arrangements worth exploring? Should you be offering voluntary benefits in addition to core health benefits?
The last (and arguably most important) factor in the renewal planning process is how your benefits offering is being received by employees. We come across employers on a regular basis that when asked "What do your employees think of the plans being offered?" the answer is in the realm of "We're pretty sure..." or "I think they like them".
If you are offering benefits as a strategic tool, and spending a lot of money to do so, shouldn't you be extremely confident on how your employees feel about it?
We recommend surveying employees to gather this information. Understanding their preferences with cost, level of benefits, voluntary offerings, and ultimately value-received is extremely useful information in deciding on plan-design and contribution strategy. TBC Benefits has developed a unique Employee Benefits Survey that makes this step easy and efficient.
>Three months before your renewal
The last phase of planning includes goal-setting, preparing for open enrollment, gathering data to accurately quote/shop new plans (if needed), and receiving/reviewing your renewal options.
When it comes to goal setting, it helps to document and define outcomes you want to achieve with the renewal. A few ideas to consider:
- Increase participation in an underutilized plan
- Increase overall participation in the group benefits plan
- Increase awareness of components of the plan for employees
For the open enrollment preparation, this is the time to get benefits guides ready, and build your communication strategy. Putting a communication strategy in place early on in the process will lead to better engagement, less anxiety, and have a positive impact on enrollment.
Open Enrollment itself is a process and we will cover the detail of how to effectively handle it in a different post.
Why TBC Benefits is Your Trusted Partner
At TBC Benefits, we've helped organizations of various sizes and make-ups deliver world-class benefits at the lowest possible price. Our unique understanding of the healthcare delivery system from years on the carrier-side and passion for data analytics allows us to make recommendations that are valuable to your organization. We believe the work for a successful renewal starts right away. With our suite of tools, comprehensive surveys, and depth of knowledge, we know we can be your partner and work for you throughout the entire year.