Employee Benefits Insights
How Benchmarking Can Assist Your Strategic Benefits Planning
MARCH 5, 2024
Employers will face increased pressure from the employee benefits expense line, which will be fraught with challenges over the next 12 to 24 months. However, eliminating or drastically reducing benefits can seriously undermine employee morale and make it challenging to attract the workers you need for your organization’s continued success. Before cutting back your benefits, take the time to examine your existing plans to determine:
- If you’re offering the right mix of benefits
- That you’re not overcontributing or spending more than you should on your current offering
- That your benefits are competitive versus other employers
What Does Total Employee Cost Tell You About Plan Usage?
Plan richness — which determines employees’ out of pocket costs — combined with payroll contributions determines the total cost of healthcare for your average employee. This example demonstrates that the individual coverage offered by the employer is less rich (with higher total employee costs) compared to the benchmark average. However, the family coverage offered by the employer is much richer than the benchmarks. This employer could consider charging more for dependent coverage while still remaining competitive.
How Do Your Benefits Compare?
Understanding where your plans perform well and where you can adjust allows you to take a more strategic approach to your benefits offering — in other words, to better align benefits with your organization’s needs and expectations, often reducing costs.
Every year, thousands of employers participate in USI Insurance Services’ Benefits Benchmarking Study, resulting in a detailed look at benefit plan performance and actions to optimize plan design and spending. Participating employers are able to access the latest insights on:
- What benefits they should offer
- Plan design and contribution options
- What similar organizations are offering
- Emerging benefits trends
The largest survey of its kind, the Benefits Benchmarking Study uses current plan year information to evaluate the effectiveness of your offering based on hundreds of data points, including plan design and contributions, employer industry and size, location (local, state, regional and national), employee demographics, and benefits usage. USI uses these data points to generate a custom plan performance assessment and recommend solutions specific to your organization.1
Interested in participating in USI’s 2024 Benefits Benchmarking Study and getting a plan assessment? Start the survey here.
What’s New This Year?
To accurately capture current trends and employer concerns, USI’s underwriting team makes continuous improvements to the Benefits Benchmarking Study. New questions in the 2024 survey examine how employers are addressing several high-cost challenges such as:
- New and emerging gene therapies
- Diabetic GLP-1 medications used for weight loss
- Population health management
How USI Can Help
Taking a strategic approach to plan design allows your organization to offer competitive benefits and better manage operating costs. Contact your local USI benefits consultant or email ebsolutions@usi.com to learn more.
Source:
1 USI begins to distribute plan performance assessment reports in May. Contact your USI consultant to learn more.
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