Wescan

Understanding and Identifying Employee Needs

Small and medium-sized employers would never launch a new product or expand their business without first understanding the marketplace and current business environment. Similarly, employers need to understand what their employees and organizations are looking for before making any decisions about their benefits plans. As with general market research, there are several simple steps that employers can take to determine what type of benefits might be best for them and their employees:

Conduct a benchmarking exercise to determine what benefits other employers in the same/similar sector are offering. General information is often available from Chambers of Commerce and the Conference Board of Canada
Conduct an employee survey to determine the health needs, preferences and expectations of their workforce; and
Review the demographic profile of their employees and previous claims experience (if available) to identify the needs of the workforce and to determine options that will meet the requirements and expectations of the largest number of employees.

These steps are something Wescan Insurance Brokers benefits advisor can assist and advice you with.

Asking the Right Questions

After establishing a benchmark for employee expectations, employers need to understand the role and cost of providing or changing the benefit coverage they provide. Answering a few basic questions can help provide this understanding:

What is the reason they offer/plan to offer a benefits plan?
What will the program’s primary goal be? (Competitiveness, retention/recruitment, increased productivity, provide protection to the employee)
Will/does coverage meet the needs of the current workforce?
Will coverage meet the emerging and changing needs of future employees? (Demographics, health needs, age, diversity, expectations)
What should the annual budget be for providing coverage?
Do/will employees understand their benefits and what is being offered to them?
How often should plan design/cost be reviewed to ensure that it meets the needs of a changing workforce and rising health care costs?

While some of the answers to these questions may require the assistance of an advisor, the exercise of working through these questions will allow employers to start to develop a group benefits strategy

Develop a group Benefits Strategy

Once the Employer has asked themselves the right questions and understand what role the group benefits plan plays/will play within the organization, small and medium-sized employers can develop a strategy for establishing their group benefits plan.

Research Analysis

The cost of most employee benefit plans vary based upon many factors, including:

01

Balancing Coverage, Cost & Group Impact

Determining the Employee Coverage needs, Affordability & Long-Term sustainability of the Benefits plan are the key factors to think about when designing an Employee Benefits plan.

It is easier to have a conversation telling employees you’re going to INCREASE coverage, rather than a discussion to DECREASE coverage.
Your plan is shared across all employees and should be designed from a group’s perspective. EHC (Extended Health Care) & Dental rates/premiums paid are based primarily on group’s plan utilization & demographics – which applies to most group insurance plans. If your group has someone who uses the plan heavily, the group collectively pays for this high user. Whether high users are employees who require expensive drugs regularly OR employees that max-out visits to the chiropractor, massage therapist and other professional practitioners – the group collectively pays for abnormal high usage.
A poorly designed plan will increase the amount of time you spend administrating the plan. With a poor plan design, renewal costs continue to rise and spiral out of control. This means more of your time will be dedicated to re-configuring the plan design, researching the market for best pricing and going through the enrolment process all over again.

02

Avoiding the Big-Corporation Trap

One of the biggest mistakes we see with small businesses is to design a benefits plan from the perspective of a large corporation.

This influence may be due to some of the employees that come from large corporations or general expectations of what a group benefits plan should provide employees. In either case, implementing a small business health insurance plan based on a large corporation type plan design, or general expectations of a few employee/s what employee benefits / health insurance plan is supposed to look like, shall likely not work out for the long run.

Adapting Your Plan for Changing Needs & Long-Term Sustainability

There are different solutions available depending on your past group experience, group demographics, etc. We can show you ways to make a few subtle modifications to the plan design and shall guide you through the process of plan implementation. By implementing this modified group insurance solution, you shall be able to address the changing Employee Coverage needs, plan affordability & long-term sustainability.

Cost Efficient Plan Designs

The primary objective of any Plan design should be Maximum Cost Control and Maximum Flexibility.

Features	Traditional Plan	Enhanced Plan	Unique Enhanced+ Plan
Routine Dental	up to 80%	90% or 100%	100%*
Prescription Drugs	up to 80%	90% or 100%	100%*
Out of Country Travel	100%	100%	100%
Major Dental	No	50%	100%
Visoncare	No	Optional	100%
Life	Optional	Optional	Optional
Disability	Optional	Optional	Optional
Claim Limit	No Limit	No Limit	To Fixed Annual Limit
Claim Flexibility	According to plan guidelines	According to plan guidelines	Employee directed
Plan Flexibility	Ability to add options or increase protection	Ability to add options or increase protection	Ability to increase limits and switch plans
Cost Control*	Rates re-set annually based on claim history	Rates re-set annually based on claim history	Annual cost is fixed and owner controlled

* With Unique Enhanced Plus Plan you gain absolute total cost control forever by setting an annual maximum claim limit for each employee. The annual limit is chosen from one of 5 levels: $500, $1,000, $2,000-$5,000 and $10,000 (custom limits may be available). You have the flexibility to assign maximum claim limits to different groups of employees, for example senior people get $5,000 while new hires get $1,000. Employees have flexibility to use their annual limit any way that they wish, until they use up their annual limit. Un-used limits can be carried forward and added to next year’s new allocation. Unless, you change the per employee annual claim limit, costs are capped forever.

We are able to further customize the above plans by changing the coinsurance levels and other variable plan options like disability, Dental, Prescriptions Drugs etc.

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Designing & Customizing Group Benefits Plans