Improve Employee Satisfaction with Innovative Health Benefits
7 Minutes
Team Curative
Jan 12, 2023
Nearly four years since the pandemic began, COVID-19 continues to redefine the workforce. Greater workplace flexibility due to the massive shift to remote working leaves many employees making critical decisions based on current access to essential health benefits. For example, in Texas, employees can make decisions regarding job offers based on the best health insurance Texas has to fit their needs. When shopping for the best health insurance Texas offers, employers search for a plan that adapts to new trends in an ever-changing workplace, a plan that puts the health and well-being of their employees first. In a post-COVID era, employees want a progressive health plan with benefits to support their health journey, thus improving employee satisfaction and your organization’s productivity. The best health insurance Texas offers is a transparent, innovative, preventive plan that evolves alongside your employee’s needs.
Post-Pandemic Prevention and Innovation
The response to the pandemic certainly influenced new approaches to wellness and prevention. Because of the physical, emotional, and financial stresses and challenges COVID-19 posed, more and more employees view workplace benefits as crucial when deciding on an employer. Technological solutions make it possible for workers to use their benefits for a more personalized approach to health, contributing to shifting wellness trends moving into the new year.
The pandemic changed the way workers value their health in the workplace. Increased remote working means employers should be conscious of how novel workplace benefits can protect and support staff outside of the traditional office setting. Employees notice when their employers demonstrably care about their health journey. According to a new survey conducted by Prudential, 77 percent of workers consider benefits a crucial part of their compensation and want their employers to provide benefits that center their financial well-being. Considering 68 percent of workers said their workplace benefits helped them focus more at work, it is not surprising that many survey respondents revealed they would leave their current job for better benefits with a new employer.
Cost Transparency Helps Alleviate the Burden of Medical Debt
Now is a crucial time for employers to consider how better benefits can alleviate the burden of health care costs on employees. In recent years, medical debt has become a significant problem for the American public. According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 100 million Americans report they have struggled with medical debt in the last five years. This is a staggering realization when these numbers represent 41% of the adult population in the country.
The consequence of medical debt can lead to severe consequences, with 1 in 7 people reporting they have been denied access to care by a provider due to overdue bills. Furthermore, this medical debt leads to significant stress. Employers must take this into account when they are deciding their benefit offerings because that stress will expand into the workplace. About 63% of employees have outstanding debt from medical bills and prescription drug costs, and 50% of those employees spend at least one hour per week at work dealing with debt-related issues.
This also leads to worse health outcomes as about two-thirds of these individuals delayed care they or their family members needed due to the uncertainty of health care costs or an inability to pay.
If nothing else, the pandemic highlighted the interconnectedness between work and life. As workplaces continue to decentralize across industries, employers can expect to invest in critical health care benefits to support, protect, and engage their employees.
Better Benefits, Stronger Productivity
Offering employees progressive health benefits has lasting positive impacts not only for workers but for the entire organization. Better benefits help improve presenteeism and reduce absenteeism. When employees show up to work but are less productive than usual and show lower levels of engagement, they participate in presenteeism. Those who fail to show up at all contribute to absenteeism.
Health concerns ranging from insignificant to life-threatening represent some of the most common reasons for presenteeism. On the surface, employers may think their workers are simply ignoring their health. But the real reason is much more complex. According to ALM Benefits Pro, “inability to pay for health care has been a major driver for many to avoid the health care system, but simply not being sure if a service is affordable is enough of a deterrent for many Americans.”
When employees avoid care for ailments that result in presenteeism due to fear of bills and confusion over coverage, businesses feel the impacts on productivity and overall success. After conducting a four-year review of presenteeism data among US employers, researchers discovered that various health conditions contributed to daily productivity loss and resulted in additional annual estimated costs for the health care system as a whole. Illnesses with the highest estimated daily productivity loss that increased annual cost per person included:
Chronic back pain
Mental illness
General anxiety
Migraines or severe headaches
Neck pain
Depression
Presenteeism data is a valuable resource for employers looking to curb productivity loss and improve employee health and well-being.
Meeting The Evolving Needs of Today’s Employees
A flexible workforce deserves flexibility of care. A new kind of employer-sponsored health insurance, Curative health insurance supports the evolving needs of employees by letting people focus on care—not costs.
Our next-generation health plan meets employees where they are in their health journey through a transparent, innovative, better approach to health insurance. Curative offers:
One monthly premium, like any other subscription
$0 copays, $0 deductibles, $0 out-of-pocket costs
24/7, 365 access to physicians and care navigation
Direct member support any day, any time
Our annual Baseline Visit allows your employees to curate their personal, preventive wellness experience. After completing their visit, Curative health care plan members can access free and unlimited care in our high-quality preferred provider network, as well as 24/7/365 access to a local physician typically under 10 minutes via telemedicine**.
Choosing the best health insurance Texas has for your employees shouldn’t be complicated. Curative insurance makes the process simple, because when health care is this easy, employees feel healthy, resilient, and engaged.
Learn how to partner with Curative, the best health insurance Texas offers.
References:
Allen, D., Wandtke-Hines, E., Pazdernik, V., Tierney-Konecny, L., & Breitenbach, E. (2018, November). Four-year review of presenteeism data among employees of a large United States health care system: a retrospective prevalence study. Human Resources for Health. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30413168/
Allen, T. (2021, April 7). The pandemic is changing employee benefits. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/04/the-pandemic-is-changing-employee-benefits
Benefits are key to financial resilience; American workers looking to employers to deliver. (2021, January 27). Prudential. https://news.prudential.com/benefits-are-key-to-financial-resilience-american-workers-looking-to-employers-to-deliver.htm
Employee benefits in a post-pandemic world. Corporate Wellness Magazine. Retrieved December 30, 2022, from https://www.corporatewellnessmagazine.com/article/employee-benefits-in-a-post-pandemic-world
Employee benefits in the United States - March 2022 - Bureau of Labor ... (n.d.). Retrieved December 21, 2022, from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf
Hart, W. (2022). Lack of price transparency still keeping many from seeking health care. ALM BenefitsPro. https://www.benefitspro.com/2022/05/31/lack-of-price-transparency-still-keeping-many-from-seeking-health-care/?slreturn=20230612135211
Levey, N. (2022, June 16). 100 Million People in America Are Saddled With Health Care Debt. Kaiser Family Foundation. https://khn.org/news/article/diagnosis-debt-investigation-100-million-americans-hidden-medical-debt/
2022 employee wellness industry trends report. (2022). Wellness Labs. (n.d.). Retrieved December 30, 2022, from https://www.wellable.co/labs/research/employee-wellness-industry-trends-reports/2022/#reportform
