FEATURE: PENSIONS & EMPLOYEE BENEFITS
Can healthcare benefits
Offering an employee health scheme can be an effective way to incentivise and retain staff, but business owners need to take care when picking the right benefits package. PAMELA GELLATLY, CEO of Healthcare RM, offers her advice on tailoring the right health scheme for your business.
H
ealth, safety and wellbeing are now the focus of most major organisations and the current trend to address health issues with the same level of intensity as safety awareness is long overdue. Concern about the rising incidence of musculoskeletal and mental health
disorders, combined with the ageing workforce, is a topic now high on the priority list for most company boards or senior executive committees. In the past, when considering health benefits, companies have sort and
sourced services that they believe will help them solve the problem. But lack of knowledge on how to identify health issues – and how to manage them – means that employers can easily succumb to a good marketing message, but will these products or services deliver the required results? The common benefit schemes available may not be as beneficial as
they seem: Private healthcare – will this help an individual access appropriate clinical
care or will it drive a belief that early diagnostics and treatment are necessary when the real answer may be watchful waiting and self-help? The NHS and the private sector are both witnessing demands for medical solutions when they are unnecessary and in fact can, cause harm. Employee assistance programme – will this solve mental health in the
workplace or will it provide a benefit which fails to address the underlying risk factors associated with mental health? Occupational health – there is a concern that occupational health cannot
address ill health and injury in the workplace, when around 80% of cases referred are neither clinical nor related to work. Access to Physiotherapy – this may help address short term symptoms
but it may not address the underlying causative issues such as excess weight and lack of appropriate exercise – neither of which are the skill set of a physiotherapist. Health and wellbeing programmes – do they address the issues associated with musculoskeletal dysfunction, poor coping skills, negative
40 CHAMBERLINK MARCH 2016 be harmful?
attitudes and beliefs and poor nutrition? The answer is unfortunately no as most of these programmes only focus on areas such as excess weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and other health risks. Although these are high risk factors that need to be addresses, these programmes may not be sustainable over the long term – business owners need take into account the fact these programmes might not measure long-term results across the same population or thus might have flawed statistics In providing health benefits to employees, it is important to understand
exactly what they will deliver and what they will not. Otherwise as an organisation, whether large or small, the risk of an unsuccessful scheme is quite high. So will an Employee Benefits Consultant be able to help? The answer to
this of course is dependent on the consultant. To understand the issues outlined above the consultant needs to really be involved in the delivery of healthcare – businesses will never benefit from a consultant who merely watches from the side lines. The assessment and management of health, safety and wellbeing is so much more complex than it was 20 or 30 years ago; even those involved in healthcare every day are struggling with the range of issues that need to be addressed. The future of your employee benefits plans should therefore be built
around an integrated approach to health risk management. This is not about purchasing several products from the same company, but fundamentally looking at how we assess and treat health in a totally different manner. This approach involves identifying the underlying cause and contributory risk factors and addressing the multifactorial issues, to manage not only the short term problem but the longer term risks to the individual and your business. Only then will you truly offer your employees a healthcare benefit which will also address commercial needs.
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