Seven months into the COVID-19 crisis, a growing number of companies are looking for ways to adjust their benefit packages to help support employees in the unprecedented uncertainty created by the pandemic.
Now that more is known about COVID-19 and the initial panic sparked by the virus has subsided, companies are beginning to take what they’ve learned and adapt their employee benefit policies around that knowledge.
Mike McClenahan, managing partner at Benefits by Design (BBD), said three main trends have emerged among companies looking to change their employee benefit packages.
First, McClenahan said, companies are focusing on assistance programs for employee mental health. BBD has seen an increase in the number of people requesting information on employee assistance programs or adding them to their benefit programs.
With more employees working from home, it is perhaps not surprising that the second major trend to emerge is an increased focus on digital health-care delivery.
“The general trend in telehealth has been accelerated by years, on both the public and private side,” McClenahan said.
Companies are even combining the first two trends using digital options to address mental health. Traditionally, mental health benefits provide only enough money for a few treatment sessions. However, companies are turning to digital counselling and therapy to reduce the cost of delivery and allow employees to get a full course of treatment for the money provided.
The third emerging trend, which McClenahan said has been accelerated by the pandemic, is an increase in the number of companies wanting more flexibility and choice within their benefit plans.
One example is companies exploring programs like health-care spending accounts, where a specified amount of money is provided to employees to use for various approved expenditures.
While the employee benefit industry was starting to get renewed interest from companies during the first months of the pandemic, employers were not looking for new ways to expand their benefits but rather for ways to put them on hold.
However, some benefits, like prescriptions, saw either no change in claims or a minor decline before making a quick recovery.
The use of lower priority care, such as massages, decreased more significantly.
Employee benefit companies were consequently paying out less money and returning those savings to customers in the form of premium credits.
McClenahan said the decision to return savings to customers took only one of the industry’s big players to blink first before everyone else started following suit. He added that the potential negative public-relations fallout from the industry being seen to save money during the pandemic and not returning it to struggling businesses was also a factor.
