Doing Employee Benefits Better
Your employee benefits package plays a key role in attracting and retaining the best individuals. However, managing the benefits for your most valuable asset – your workforce – is more complex than ever before.
Hartin Dynamics helps companies take care of the most important part of their business – their people. If you are like most employers, the cost of insurance coverage for your employees is a top line item expense. And, you’re also likely frustrated with the complexity of selecting and managing a program.
We help you simplify the benefits selection process and help your employees understand what they have. With Hartin Dynamics as your partner, you get expert advisors that come alongside your team to help drive cost containment while ensuring your employee benefits remain competitive.
Simply put, we are committed to helping you do employee benefits better.
OFFER A COMPETITIVE BENEFITS PLAN
Medical
Every employee group is different – different size, different risk, different situations. But no matter what, your group is made up of people who need good medical care. By offering a group health insurance plan, you’re providing the fundamental element of your employee benefits offering. The choices are many and the cost factors are complex.
There are a lot of things to consider when choosing a health insurance plan for your employees. It’s never easy to find the perfect medical insurance for everyone’s needs and budget. However, these are some questions you might start with:
- Who will be covered (full-time, part-time, dependents, etc.)?
- How much does my business need to contribute toward the cost of coverage to be competitive?
- Would employees rather pay more up-front and less when medical care is needed? Or vice versa?
- What products should we bundle as riders to the medical plan?
- Do I have a trusted advisor who can expertly review our plan on a frequent basis?
- What steps can be taken to help us manage costs?
Our advisors will look at your group’s data and determine the best possible coverages, at a fair price. We will listen to your goals and make certain that medical coverage is in place to protect your team, keeping your workforce as healthy as possible.
Dental
The majority of employees consider dental benefits to be a valued part of their employee benefits plan. So, most employers choose to keep them smiling by offering options to off-set the cost of dental care. With so many dental benefit plans available to patients today, it’s important to learn the differences between them. You’ll want an advisor to guide you in establishing a dental plan that will be valued by your group. Options include:
- Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO) – a network of dentists under contract to the insurance company to deliver specified services for set fees
- Dental Health Maintenance Organizations (DHMO)/Capitation Plans – contracted dentists are “pre-paid” a certain amount each month for each patient that has been designated or assigned to that dentist. Dentists must then provide certain contracted services at no-cost or reduced cost to those patients.
- Indemnity Plans – sometimes called “traditional” insurance, in this type of plan, an insurance company pays claims based on the procedures performed, usually as a percentage of the charges
- Direct Reimbursement – a self-funded plan that allows patients to go to the dentist of their choice
- Point of Service Plans – patients with a managed care dental plan have the option of seeking treatment from an “out-of-network” provider
- Discount or Referral Plans – contracted dentists agree to discount their dental fees, then patients pay all the costs of treatment and there are no dental claim forms to file
- Exclusive Provider Organizations (EPO) – requires that subscribers use only participating dentists if they want to be reimbursed by the plan
- Table or Schedule of Allowances Plans – indemnity plans that pay a set dollar amount for each procedure, irrespective of the actual charges, and the patient is responsible for the difference
Vision
For employees, an employer-funded vision plan defrays some of the high costs of routine eye care, is a beneficial element to include. Offering this extra perk differentiates your organization from other companies that do not invest in health. Attention to vision needs of your employees – especially if they are at risk of digital eye strain through long hours in front of a computer screen – sends a message that you care about their well-being.
Vision insurance plans are designed to reduce the costs of routine preventative eye care and prescription eyewear (eyeglasses and contact lenses). Some vision plans also include discounts on elective vision correction surgery or other procedures.
Think of the eyes as the windows to good health. An annual eye exam is often a means to assess an employee’s overall health and pick up on conditions that, left unattended, may become much more expensive to control. Early detection keeps employees at their desks. It also keeps medical premiums low; that’s a sound investment.
Group Life
Group life insurance provides you as the employer with a master contract for coverage that is extended to employees. The good news is that group term life insurance is relatively inexpensive compared to individual life insurance policies. As a result, employee participation is high and is an expected component of a comprehensive benefits package.
Of course, there are eligibility requirements, such as being a permanent employee or 30 days after hire and standard coverage amounts vary based on a number of factors. You’ll want to be informed about what an employee (especially a potential employee) might expect. Hartin Dynamics advisors can help you establish a competitive group life benefit and will evaluate carrier options to meet your needs.
Disability
As important as it is to have sound medical coverage for your employees, Disability Insurance is just as essential. It happens more often than we like to admit, but consider the likelihood of someone suffering an illness or injury that could take them out of work for an extended period of time. Disability policies can be tailored to address several situations, including:
- Supplementing employer benefits
- Providing benefits to the self-insured
- Funding a business disability buy-sell agreement
If an employee becomes disabled, for the short or long term, many will struggle to pay the costs of daily living assistance during periods of serious illness or disability. These costs are not covered by traditional health policies, so offering options for Disability Insurance is important.
Our advisors will evaluate your workforce data and help you determine which disability programs to offer as a part of your overall employee benefits.
Voluntary
By offering Voluntary Benefits, you can make your employee benefits program more robust while leaving the choices up to individuals on the plan. With Hartin Dynamics’s guidance, you can offer innovative, competitive and diverse benefit options. We will keep you up to date on new solutions and trends to help you build a quality program that employees value.
Some of the ways you may choose to enhance your employee benefits program include:
- Implementing benefit strategies that includes voluntary benefits and long-term care options
- Diversifying benefit solutions and plan options for employees
- Increasing employee engagement and retention without incurring added benefit costs
We offer integrated programs to complement the typical core offerings of an employee benefits program. We can analyze your current plan to determine the best products and carriers to include, based on your industry, geography or employee survey results.
FSA | HRA | HSA
You can choose the funding options to help employees pay for and manage their health care expenses, and we will advise you of the details you need to consider. By offering a flexible spending account (FSA) you are allowing employees to take home a larger portion of their paycheck by reducing their taxable include. If employees enroll in this benefit, tax-free dollars are contributed into an account that can be used on qualified care expenses. This reduces their out-of-pocket costs.
Health Reimbursement Account
- Employer owns the account.
- Any type of corresponding health plan arrangement is allowed
- Unused funds remaining at the end of the plan year can carry over to the following year if the employer configures the account accordingly
- The account is not portable between employers
Health Savings Account
- Employee owns the account
- A high-deductible health plan is required in order to qualify for an HSA
- The individual owns the account and any contributions made to it, regardless of the source or timing of the contribution, can be carried over
- When leaving an employer, the account is portable since the individual owns the account
Wellness
At Hartin Dynamics, we find that most organizations want holistic wellness programming that promotes healthy lifestyle choices to keep their employees at their best and in turn, helps them control their employee benefits spend. The problem is, creating and sustaining a true wellness culture can seem like a full-time job. We believe an organization’s workforce is its greatest asset and promoting its health and wellbeing should be simple.
The steps to building and managing a program may seem obvious, but the details of promoting, analyzing, and supporting employees is often best left to a team of outside experts. To get started, we follow these basic steps:
- DESIGN YOUR PROGRAM – Based on the goals of your organization, we help you choose or customize a program that best meets the unique needs of you and your organization.
- IMPLEMENT YOUR PROGRAM – After choosing a program, our team guides you through implementation; completing portal setup and helping prepare for preventative care requirements.
- ENGAGE YOUR TEAM – Through the use of provided promotional materials, you can begin educating your team about your new Wellness program and start partnering with clients to enrolling your employees!
MAKING IT HAPPEN
The insurance industry is complicated, and managing your program can be downright overwhelming. That’s where we come in.
At Hartin Dynamics, we believe you deserve more than a traditional broker. You need a partner who can understand the challenges and act on your behalf. We step in to simplify where needed and enhance offerings where it makes the most sense.
GET CUSTOMIZED COVERAGE
We analyze data to learn all we can about your team and then develop a custom employee benefits program that is innovative, while keeping you compliant.
CONTAIN YOUR INSURANCE COSTS
We will show you funding options and other methods to manage the costs of claims as well as premiums, and maybe even get some money back.
MAKE THE TRANSITION EASILY
We do all we can to make the transition to new program painless, while making sure your employees know the value of the plan you’re providing.
