Strategic solutions

Health and other benefits are a critical component of any company’s total rewards offering.

In today’s turbulent economy, employees are asking tough questions about the value of their benefits, particularly when they give up much needed cash compensation to pay for them. And employers are seeking sound ideas on how to meet goals that often seem in conflict or are, at the very least, challenging:

• Control cost over a line item that has often increased at twice the CPI.
• Improve quality in an environment that lacks a comprehensive, centralized database on provider performance
• Get employees to take accountability for their health despite some messages that say someone else can always be blamed for bad outcomes.

These complex challenges require leadership commitment to making tough changes. More than ever, leaders need to get behind changing how they, their community and their employees think about health care. For some employers, it has meant taking on more of the direct delivery of care. Or, they have started to integrate delivery of care so employees are not dealing with multiple sources of potentially conflicting advice, forms, and guidelines. Or, they have introduced healthier foods into vending machines and cafeterias. Increasingly Mercer is being asked how to improve the health of an employee population so employees can lead longer, more productive and healthier lives.

Clients are looking for sound ideas on how to maintain health care costs while improving quality. Our ideas are shaped by a commitment to data-driven solutions. For example, our investment in Mercer HealthOnline®, a proprietary data warehouse we use in the U.S., enables us to evaluate individual and collective cost and utilization patterns. In addition, we have the industry’s largest health resource network of experts in medicine, pharmacy, behavioral health, nursing, consumer engagement, measurement, and wellness.

Among our strategic services and solutions are the following:

• Total health management strategy: More than ever, employers need innovative, smart ideas that can control trend, increase workforce productivity, improve the quality and cost efficiency of care, and increase consumer participation in the right programs to protect their health. Today’s strategies require corporate commitment to creating a culture of health. Employers have to lead in demonstrating commitment to healthy lifestyles, nutrition, education and prevention. It also requires continual improvement in how vendor programs can be integrated to offer seamless, consistent and well coordinated participant support.

• Benefits strategy: Medical, life, accident and disability and special risk benefits are critical to employee financial security. Employees can underestimate the value of these benefits until a life event triggers their understanding. The challenge with these benefits is ensuring that the programs are financed in the most competitive, sound manner; vendors provide outstanding service at the time of life events; and that the designs meet employee needs.  

• Risk management: Employers need to trust that their benefit programs are not a source of corporate risk. HR can manage that risk by identifying and documenting sources of risk and how those risks are controlled. Are the programs compliant with federal and state regulations? Are benefits paid correctly and only to eligible participants? Are vendors meeting the performance goals and guarantees that they promised? A well-defined benefit risk management program is a natural extension of and supports a commitment to overall corporate risk management.

• Total rewards: Each workforce has divergent needs, but today’s intense economic pressures make employees question the value of their total compensation and benefit programs. Some employees want more cash to make ends meet, or more long-term financial security, or solutions for balancing their work and life. Increasingly, employees want adequate opportunities for personal time, fitness, social or community commitment, and learning. We know these services have a “sticky” value for retaining employees who view that they have a meaningful place to work.

• Global benefits, health management and mobility: As corporations expand their operations across the globe, they need to look at the scope and level of benefits they provide for both the local workforce and the increasingly mobile workers. Mercer helps employers understand local country competitive practices and structure the most cost-effective approach to funding and administering the total benefit program. A second challenge involved in expansion is managing the diverse health risks present in each location. Mercer’s global benefits specialists understand how to incorporate unique health risks, delivery system attributes and cultural concerns into a global health strategy.

For information any of these solutions, please email us.