Moving from blindly buying PMI to defining a healthcare strategy will stabilise company health plans. Rachel Riley explains.
Arguably, the under-30s who are earning less than £30,000 would get much more value from a scheme offering dental and optical benefits. Plus, they have the added advantage of a lower p11d liability.
Look at offering a blanket employee assistance programme coverage across the totality of the workforce – something which is valuable to both employees and employer alike.
These options do not necessarily require more money to be allocated to the firm’s healthcare budget – in fact, quite the reverse.
Companies we have been working with have seen the scope for membership of the scheme increase vastly while maintaining overall costs at the same level.
It is simply using money in the most effective way.
As an overall strategy, where do companies want to position their healthcare scheme? Why are they providing it? Is their opinion aligned with their brokers and other stakeholders?
It is an interesting discussion point to produce a cost compassion matrix and ask three or four people to mark where they believe the company should be positioning its healthcare scheme. Get this right and all else follows.
Ultimately, in ensuring your scheme is fit for purpose, within each layer of benefit in your graduated approach you must take a view on the cost containment options which are available to you in order to hit your agreed cost compassion mark.
The final step is to communicate the value. Once you have an agreed approach, it is important to craft a communication strategy that explains exactly why you are taking this approach, why it will benefit employees and most importantly, the value to the employees of the healthcare they will be getting.
Total reward statements are one option, but this is merely one more piece of paper to file. Make it honest, make it real and make it personal and you can’t go wrong.
“Do nothing now” as a strategy will mean your client’s healthcare scheme will, in the not too distant future, disappear into the ether. Ignoring the cavernous black hole is not an option.
Rachel Riley is a managing director at WPA and a director of business development
