Mountain Equipment Co-op doesn’t mind the expense of its paramedical benefits—they help keep its employees fit and active
For $5 you can become a member of Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), the Vancouver-based outdoor sporting equipment and clothing store, and vote on how the co-op is governed. But for a resumé, you can work for an employer that truly values healthy employees. For MEC, the perks are about being active. “Ultimately, we want to encourage and have our staff lead healthy lives,” says Abbie Hodgson van Essen, manager of compensation and benefits. “That’s what MEC is at the core—getting people outside and getting people into self-propelled activities.”
MEC has roughly 1,800 employees— full-time, part-time, contract and casual—but it’s the 690 full-time and 218 part-time employees who are eligible for benefits coverage. And they need it, because they’re a physically active group. “[Employees] are off making sure their bodies are working well, so we try to make sure our paramedical offering is quite healthy,” says Hodgson van Essen. However, that healthy offering costs.
“It’s not inexpensive by any stretch,” she says, “but we want to ensure that we’re supporting our employees with what they need. We consider high paramedical utilization to be a good thing in that employees are participating in healthy activities and then using paramedicals to get back to good health if they are having medical issues.”
That healthy helping of paramedical services means $700 per practitioner— which was upped from $500 in 2007. There are 10 practitioners in total: acupuncturist, chiropractor, naturopath, osteopath, physiotherapist, psychologist, registered massage therapist, chiropodist, podiatrist and speech pathologist. In 2012, approximately 59% of covered employees used at least one type of paramedical benefit, and paramedical claims accounted for 41% of MEC’s total extended healthcare spend.
Some benefits, such as registered massage therapy, require a physician’s note. “That removes the ‘nice to have,’” she explains, “and definitely helps with the costing.”
But while employees can mount up costs by rehabbing with a physiotherapist or realigning with a chiropractor, their usage of prescription drugs is comparatively low at MEC, at only 44% of all extended healthcare claims. “We’re very fortunate because our drug utilization is low,” Hodgson van Essen says, adding that with such a young demographic its current top drug utilized is birth control. MEC employees have low incidences of heart disease and cholesterol, too.
MEC also uses a pay-direct drug card as well as generic equivalents in its prescription drug benefits. “We definitely try to encourage that within our plan,” she says. “We aim to have successful annual renewals each year. Nobody wants to have a big premium spike, so for us it’s a matter of keeping a hand on the pulse of what our employees’ needs are and what MEC’s financial position is as we head into anything new.”
But while MEC employees may be healthy at this point, Hodgson van Essen isn’t so short-sighted to think that there may come a time when prescription drug usage may increase. “We are different, but we don’t pretend we’re so different that we wouldn’t be affected by something like biologics. Anything like that, we keep our hand on the pulse.”
Critical Illness
Though employees are healthy, some of them are at that stage where they want to think about being healthy down the road. At the end of 2011, MEC rolled out its voluntary critical illness (CI) offering—it had approximately 70 enrollments at the time of sign-up. “[The CI offering] exhibits that we are hitting the mark on keeping a hand on the pulse of what our employees are doing and what we’re offering.”
Hodgson van Essen says part of the reason for offering CI is that the demographic in the MEC stores is changing. While the retail locations traditionally attract a young demographic—university students, early 20s—she says MEC was starting to see the average age increase to early 30s.
“Those folks obviously have different needs—people are trying to buy their first home or maybe they’re getting married or having children. The decision around CI had been on our radar for a period of time, then we determined that it was a good time to launch it as part of our optional benefits offering, because we have optional life and optional AD&D as well.”
And employees think it’s a worthwhile offering. “Our managers within our store locations across Canada will give feedback to us on anything that they’re hearing anecdotally.” Although Hodgson van Essen says that CI isn’t necessarily a common offering, employees were letting store managers know that it was a great one to have. “We hear so much in the media, and even just MEC’s own experience with illnesses with staff—they happen. And I think, anecdotally, those few employees do tend to pipe up and say something because it immediately impacts them because they’ve either experienced [illness] or someone within their family has.”
Financial Help
And while the CI benefit may alleviate employees’ financial worries down the road, MEC’s interest-free loans can help alleviate those worries now. This started with computers, because the company had a high student quota in its employee base. “We were helping to support employees financially to be able to have a computer at home and have a loan to be able to purchase one.”
That just morphed into a couple of MEC’s bigger product lines, such as bikes and boats. “That is definitely a well- utilized benefit,” says Hodgson van Essen. “Staff love it.” In 2012, 287 employees used the program.
MEC also offers a tuition reimbursement program for both its full- and part-time employees who meet the criteria (i.e., one full year of employment at MEC). Full-time employees receive $1,000 per year, and part-time employees receive $750 a year. Last year, 112 people utilized the program. “MEC encourages employee growth and movement throughout their career in whatever it is they’re discerning to do,” says Hodgson van Essen.
She recalls a long-term employee who took advantage of the reimbursement program when it was launched. He is now a nurse. “He is still with MEC and has nothing but positive things to say about his experience here,” she says. “He is appreciative of the support for his education and ultimately his main career.”
Hodgson van Essen says that’s part of MEC, too—being part of the MEC family. “It was lovely to see [this employee] pursue where he wanted to go. Those employees continue to move on in their lives and talk about MEC with their family and friends—kind of pay it forward that way for us.”
Brooke Smith is managing editor of Benefits Canada. brooke.smith@rci.rogers.com
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