Sarah Lecuna: The Benefits Manager

Tax preparation software company Intuit Inc. had robust benefits offerings before the Affordable Care Act. As a result, getting into compliance with mandatory changes, such as no longer discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, required no effort on Intuit’s part. The real challenge was making sure all reporting was done correctly, which the company solved by partnering with Aon Hewitt. Outsourcing some of that burden to consultants allowed Intuit to focus instead on the human aspect of benefits administration.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into communication resources around employee education. As far as the coverage, we have a very rich benefit plan, so we haven’t had any complaints. The Affordable Care Act has been in the news so much our employees have paid attention to the communication pieces that we’ve put out.

“The only thing that really has changed is that we had a PPO plan that no longer exists and we switched it out with a high deductible HSA plan so the employees could put more toward their future health care costs into that health savings account. That’s really the biggest change that has happened to our plan was implementing that and removing the PPO.

“Private exchanges have started to enter the conversation as of late. I think that every single consulting firm talked to their client about that. However, I think that a lot of tech companies are not yet ready to pull that trigger.

“We’re all self-funded, so one of the levers that we’re trying to pull is things like the wellness programs. We’re trying to get our employees active and watching what they eat through a variety of on-site wellness initiatives. The other piece is the consumerism piece and educating our employees on how to be better consumers of medical care. … We want them to understand how to take full advantage of the plans we offer to them.”