How Successful Companies Manage Health-Care Benefits

Watson Wyatt, a global HR consultancy, recently took a look at companies thathave lower-than-average health-cost increases and are meeting or exceedingcompany financial expectations. The research discovered that companies that arelikely to see lower-than-average health-cost increases are those that run theirhealth-care programs like a business. More specifically, successful companies:

• More directly manage their health-care supply chain.
• Emphasize employee productivity and overall health as key goals of their health-care program.
• Have longer health-care strategy planning cycles.
• Include employee self-service features in their health-care program.
• Empower employees to take responsibility for health benefits.
• Provide employees with self-care information and decision support.
• Use data in health-care decision-making.
• Make use of the Internet to administer benefits and distribute health-care information.
• Are less likely to consider reducing or eliminating coverage.

    Perhaps most important, the Watson Wyatt research also discovered thatcompanies with lower-than-average health-cost increases don’t make incrementalchanges that do things to employees. Instead, they make changes with employeeinput.

Workforce, September 2002, p. 34 — Subscribe Now!