Become an Employer of Choice While Managing Benefits Cost Pressures

Viewpoints from Nick Favro

Attracting and retaining top talent requires a strong employer brand and a competitive benefits package. The past decade has seen soaring healthcare costs, legislative complexities, and renewal pitfalls. This market puts immense pressure on companies to manage benefits costs without sacrificing employee satisfaction. Having the right partner alongside you is a must – you do not need to navigate this alone.

Don’t be blindsided.

Healthcare inflation impact is inevitable. Utilization and increased unit costs will likely impact your renewal, whether your plan is fully insured or self-funded. But there’s good news. Your EPIC broker can work with you to navigate this challenging benefits landscape and design a cutting-edge benefits strategy that’s:

• Competitive: Attract and retain top talent with a plan that offers value through benchmarking, innovative offers, and plan designs that align with your enterprise goals and objectives.
• Sustainable: Manage costs effectively to achieve your long-term goals. Review underwriting workups, enrollment strategy, utilization patterns, cost drivers and targeted investments.

Use data to measure effectiveness.

Working with you to understand your benefits philosophy and goals, we conduct a forensic analysis to set your trajectory and formulate a multi-year plan of attack.

EPIC provides real-time plan performance benchmarking using the most up-to-date claims data. While benchmarking should not drive strategy alone, real-time data allows employers to understand where their plan stands relative to peers and the market based on current utilization and spending metrics.

One size does NOT fit all.

One way we can help our clients lower costs is by providing targeted benefits to specific employee populations.

While you may offer certain perks to leaders and hard-to-recruit groups, some strategies could help lower costs for lower-wage employees, such as:

• Implementing tiered employee contributions based on salary levels, with lower contribution rates.
• Indexing existing salary-based contribution break points to account for increases in cost of living over time.
• Considering the relative costs of covering spouses versus employees when setting contribution rates, as spouses typically cost 20-40% more to cover.

Point solutions: boon or bloat?

Sometimes, one-off solutions that seem like no-brainers drain resources and cause disengagement. Point solutions – intended to help manage specific chronic health conditions or address modifiable lifestyle factors – may not be worth their anticipated value.

Here are some tips to consider when evaluating point solutions:

• Analyze your claims data to validate whether the solutions improve outcomes and reduce costs through increased engagement.
• Ongoing data validation is required to ensure point solutions continue delivering value. EPIC consistently conducts an independent cohort analysis to assist our clients with such validation.
• Less is sometimes more. Too many point solutions can dilute engagement and add to administrative costs. Consolidating vendors may help improve coordination and communication.

Effective employee communication is critical when making changes to point solutions to ensure members understand available programs and how to participate.

What to focus on for 2025.

As you plan your 2025 benefits strategy, your EPIC broker is an indispensable partner. Our approach to integrated benefits, tailored to your specific needs, can help you bridge gaps in your current offerings and align with your broader organization goals. Our tools and strategies can help you evaluate the value you’re getting from your plan and your vendors, delivering efficiencies and effectiveness that are well worth the effort. Lean on us to help you navigate the complex benefits landscape.

Download our 2024 Key Employee Benefits Market Insights from the form on this page to gain awareness and direction.

EPIC offers this material for general information only. EPIC does not intend this material to be, nor may any person receiving this information construe or rely on this material as, tax or legal advice. The matters addressed in this document and any related discussions or correspondence should be reviewed and discussed with legal counsel prior to acting or relying on these materials.