Benefit Consultants Blog

Company management teams would do well to think of Benefits as a bonus paycheck badly in need of a route to an employee’s bank account.  Health Benefits Consultants will agree that solid communication regarding Benefits can meet the needs of valued employees while persuading them to stick around for that bonus. 

An inexpensive Benefit that can be provided to employees can be presented in the form of a navigation system that will guide them in making a host of decisions about everything from wellness programs to 401(k) options and Consumer Directed Health Plans.  Consumer Directed Health Plans require employees to make a series of critical decisions, fraught with long-term implications, about their health care.  Your company’s expert Health Benefits Consultant will advise that offering better education about company Benefits will result in increased productivity and loyalty as workers place a premium on their Benefit Packages.

Benefits often become part of a company’s non performing asset because they aren’t being properly used to foster employee loyalty.  Talk to your Health Benefits Consultant about packaging your company’s Benefits with useful, user friendly, instructions.  Employees want more communication.

With the complexity of 401(k) plans, management teams have found themselves in the uncomfortable and time consuming position of having to educate employees about all aspects of saving for their retirement.  Some HR Staff simply hand out brochures that praise the benefits of compounding while talking about inconceivable investment balances and then the workers are expected to take the reins from there.  Or the opposite is true.  Some HR department staff will deliver truckloads of information that cannot possibly be comprehended because the eyes have glazed over and the employee is absolutely overwhelmed.  None of this is educational or productive.

If your company has decided to provide a website dedicated to employee Benefit information discuss this approach with your professional Health Benefits Consultant.  Even a great website may not be enough to meet the Benefit requirements of all company employees.  There is a great demand for individualized education.  Employees want to ask specific questions and receive useful answers.  Many companies now dole out data in small segments usually via email blasts and podcasts or monthly intranet postings and sometimes online animated characters.   Some companies will set up confabs for specialized demographic groups where the lunch hour becomes a session on retirement planning for those who are approaching this time of life.  Your Health Benefits Consultant can assist your HR team with target mailings to demographic groups.  Narrowing the focus becomes a better way to reach people.  If the subject is about the worker’s particular needs it will become an attention grabber.

Participation in Benefits raises employee retention rates.  Participation is a sign that employees are connected with the organization.  Make sure your company’s Benefits are a performing asset that is positively affecting your bottom line.

Article courtesy of Benefit Consultants

Interest and keep staff with a company dental plan. Insurance companies receive better payments from companies simply because the worker pays a portion of the dental premium and the remainder is underwritten by the organization. Large enterprises may hire several thousand workers, therefore the insurance corporation will receive high payments each payment period. A bigger dental plan with a company that has a large benefit pool qualify for excellent rates on its benefit policy. This, in turn, allows the company to show better dental plans to their employees than the workers would be able to obtain on their own.
Discount dental plans, bought by an individual, may simply offer discounted dental benefits which are no match for a corporate dental insurance policy that is superior and costs the same or less. Should the workers need dental work a portion of all the costs will be underwritten by the insurance enterprise and the balance will be made by the plan beneficiary making this an much appreciated benefit to workers.
Look at a great example of dental benefits offered by an corporation:
– A group dental plan is a program where the cost is based on the fact that there will be a bigger group of participants belonging to the program. It may be a preferred dentist program, or PDP, meaning that the employees on the plan will have to choose their dental plan provider from a a pre-determined list of dentists that have all signed on to the terms of the plan. The pool of dentists may be quite high. When dentists sign on this agreement they agree to give lower cost benefits to the employees on the plan. The reduced billing can be as much as 35%. The dentists are audited thereby making sure all beneficiaries receive the same standard of care.
Corporation dental health plans are tempting to an staff due to the rigid laws regulating them. Unfortunately there are few and frequently no laws administrating discount dental plans meaning that people may be ripped off by less than honest discount dental  plans that propose affordable dental care but do not deliver. When a worker is under the umbrella of a organization dental insurance policy they can be assured that the organization their dental insurance is being sourced through is governed under the clout of the law.
Attract and retain staff with a enterprise dental plan. Talk to a qualified Benefit Consultant TODAY!

This article is written by Benefit Consultants Please visit our site for other employment and benefit articles.

Communication lies at the heart of any business. There is a simple thing that can be done to improve any businesses communications and yet few businesses ever pay any attention to it. As a draughtsman I quickly had to learn that you must assume the person who was looking at your drawing knew nothing. If it is true that experts are people who have made lots of mistakes then I am a super expert.

You should never write as though you were having a conversation. When so much of communication is usually down to visual clues in a conversation when those visual clues are not available communication becomes much harder. This is rubbish. Writing is a tool of communication; it is not simply a way of conveying a conversation.

A little while ago I was involved in a project where we had to redevelop part of a web site. To compound the problem both parts were tending to be referred to by the same name. I was frustrated that they couldn’t understand what I was talking about and they were frustrated that I couldn’t understand what they were talking about. It was only because I said something that immediately made the other person see we were talking about different things that suddenly we started making sense to each other.

The real trick is to write in such a way that you communicate your message without overdoing the detail. So use few words but don’t assume that the other person knows what you are talking about. Clearly there are good reasons for such thinking and many organizations take that advice to heart and it becomes policy. Any communication expert who studies business communication will tell you that such things need to be handled very carefully to keep employees and team members fully engaged.

Is it true that not everyone can be trusted with information? Well, information is power and if you power-up those who cannot control their integrity levels or choose not to, then in a way giving them the information makes you an accessory to their actions. For instance, many folks have a lot of knowledge, experience, observations, insight and original thoughts.

But, like water it does flow, information, like living organisms want to be free. Thus, the information just like water stopped in the river by beavers, well, eventually it will find a way, it always does. The right information is defined both as the correct information and only the need to know information.

There is little doubt that the business world locally, nationally and globally has been forever changed by the information age. The future of communication will show us more of the same, just as “The Road Ahead” predicted over a decade ago. But, what will these new technologies be that increase business communication speed of transmission and bandwidth be like? Well, there will be light-speed communication around the globe using satellites and what we might perceive as infinite bandwidth.

Soon, we will have super small devices that operate by voice and eventually by thought. The storage capacity will be better than the library of congress even for a device the size of a mini-cell phone. Well, think about it for a second, you can collaborate on designs. You will be able to see a miniature of whoever you are talking too, watch the body language and get a much better feel for the conversation.