If you want to reduce benefits costs and get the best ROI from your employee wellness program, implement participation incentives and automation. That’s the finding from a study by bswift, a U.S. software provider for employee benefits administration.
The report, 2011 Wellness and Benefits Administration Benchmarking Study, surveyed 150 companies, and found that of those surveyed with more than 500 employees, all offer wellness programs. However, the study also found that the existence of a wellness program in itself does not guarantee a reduction in benefits costs, due to poor employee engagement in the program. As a result, an increasing number of companies are offering incentives that motivate employees to participate, with a much higher percentage in 2011 focused on health risk assessments and biometric tests.
Of companies with more than 500 employees, the survey found:
- 68% offer wellness incentives, significantly up from 49% in 2010.
- Biometrics are quickly becoming the cornerstone of wellness programs, with 62% offering testing in 2011—and of companies that offer incentives, 56% reported incentives for completing biometrics in 2011, up from just 28% in 2010.
- The top incentive was a health insurance premium discount or surcharge.
The survey found that more companies are automating benefits administration processes; however, they are still far from actualizing the full potential for reduced costs and operational efficiency. Of companies with more than 500 employees, the survey found:
- 22% still have not automated the new hire enrollment process and 84% manually alert new hires of incomplete enrollments.
- Only half have an automated dependent “age out” process for canceling coverage.
- 21% still manually reconcile paper health insurance invoices against benefits records or do not reconcile at all.