There has never been a more challenging time for employers dealing with the dual problem of rising health care costs and declining employee health. As such, employers need to be thinking very differently about how they approach health care, says Jim Winkler, a senior vice president and large employer segment leader at Aon Hewitt.
“Employers need to actively, directly and candidly talk with employees about the need to change behaviors for better health,” says Winkler. “You need to build in the right combination of rewards so that employees understand that if they want to spend a large amount of ‘house money’ on health care, they have to follow ‘house rules’.”
Smart Business spoke with Winkler about the challenges and solutions surrounding health and benefits, and how to address them.
How can employers begin to have a conversation with employees about health care?
You first have to understand how consumers think about health care. Our Consumer Mindset 2011 research tells us that they understand that the system is broken, they understand the political dynamics and they know what they need to do in terms of health. Everyone knows they shouldn’t smoke, they should eat better and they should exercise. However, the messages that employees react best to are those that make navigating health easier and more personal.
Don’t talk to them about the company’s costs. Instead, talk about how a lack of health may be getting in the way of teaching a grandson baseball. You need to make it meaningful to employees so they understand the results of good health.
You also need to deploy more than just one tactic. You can’t just have a great communications strategy, and you can’t just have a plan design or incentive strategy. With consumer-driven health plans, consumers understand that you want them to be better consumers, but if all you give them is that design mechanism, you’re just going to frustrate them because they don’t understand the cost of specific health services. You have to give them the tools and information to navigate a broken system and help them see how their exposure to potentially higher out-of-pocket costs is going to enable them to make healthier decisions. You have to connect those pieces.
For example, if you have a consumer-driven plan, don’t just put employer money in the savings account. Instead, say, ‘If you complete a health risk assessment and you know your biometrics, then we’ll put money into your account.’ Make it very clear that you want employees to be successful under the benefits plan and to have access to more of the employer’s money, but you need them to do something in exchange.
People don’t always like that, but they can see very clearly how the actions they take can lead to good things and how inaction can result in a less satisfactory benefit plan.
How can an employer target better health for employees?
There are two starting points. First, as an employer, you want to have your arms around your data. Maybe you’ve done a health risk questionnaire and you have medical claims data in such a way that you can stratify it to say that, of the eight greatest risk factors (such as smoking, lack of health screenings, poor diet, etc.) and the 15 most prevalent chronic conditions, these are the ones that are most prevalent in your population. From that, you can target those two or three greatest risk factors that will lead to the best improvement in health status and a lessening of the frequency and severity of chronic disease.
If you don’t have that data because you’re a smaller company or you haven’t performed a health improvement strategy yet and have no real insight into company-specific risks, the three areas to target are poor diet, physical inactivity and lack of health screenings.
Your real opportunity for impact is to get after weight, as more than two-thirds of the U.S. population is either overweight or obese, and physical inactivity. With health screenings, you begin to build a baseline, and the more screenings you do, the more you understand risk in your population. And screenings are an early identifier of risk and disease, so you start to put a dent in high-cost conditions. If people wait until they’re diagnosed, then they’re likely to be on medication for life and have a higher cost outcome.
How do you address concerns about employers being involved in employees’ health care?
As an employer, you have to start with the basic premise that your current cost environment, the way you’re running your benefits program today, is not sustainable. If you’re going to change the status quo, can you continue to do the things you’ve been doing, like plan design changes that shift costs to employees and changing your medical vendor? Is it reasonable to assume the same tactics will produce a different outcome?
No, so you have to take a different approach. There are two paths you can take. One is the path of house money, house rules. Be candid with employees and share that the reason you’re talking to them about their health, and their behavior, is that you’re spending a lot of money on health care, so the organization has a vested interest in managing health care costs more effectively.
Second, in a challenging global economy, you need a healthy, present, high-performing work force. What percentage of your work force is out because of health issues? What if you could cut that number in half? You add nothing to your payroll costs, you spend less on medical coverage, and you get people back to work who are more productive to the business.
It’s in your best interest to drive business results to spend less on health care and have a healthy work force, and the way you’re going to get that is by engaging people around their health.
Jim Winkler is senior vice president at Aon Hewitt, the global human resource solutions business of Aon plc. Reach him at [email protected]. Linda Van Howe is senior vice president at Aon Hewitt, Detroit practice leader – Health and Benefits. Reach her at (248) 936-5238 or [email protected].
Insights Risk Management is brought to you by Aon Risk Solutions
