Last year, 47 million Americans quit their jobs, with 4.3 million people quitting in December alone. This record-breaking job turnover — the Great Resignation as we’ve come to call it — is the biggest spike in quitting in more than 20 years. It’s also not going to recede anytime soon. The reasons for this are complicated and varied, of course, but one thing is for certain: employees feel underappreciated due to stagnant wages, and their primary benefit — employer provided healthcare — isn’t enticing enough.
In every crisis, there is opportunity, and some companies are leveraging better benefits to drive recruitment and retention despite mass resignations hitting their competition. Employers rated highly by employees on compensation and benefits saw 56% lower attrition rates, according to
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So what are these companies doing to develop, recruit and retain talent during the biggest spike in resignations in two decades? What I’ve noticed is that employers who have focused on improving the healthcare consumer experience for their employees are weathering the storm of the Great Resignation.
Most employees are less than thrilled about their employer’s healthcare plans. The healthcare experience is often confusing, time-consuming and impersonal. Focusing on an exceptional, personalized healthcare consumer experience — one that’s easy to use and simple to understand — presents an opportunity for benefits leaders to strengthen employee-employer relationships and reduce the company-wide impact from turnover. Help your people navigate healthcare with a great customer experience and they will feel that you truly value their physical and mental health.
Here are three healthcare consumer experience strategies that benefits managers should consider, so that your people and their families have an experience they deserve.
Offer a holistic experience through technology
Ensuring that employees have the tools they need to stay physically and mentally healthy is table stakes for a great healthcare experience. Sadly, many healthcare benefits are lacking in this area.
Take the area of mental health, for example. With burnout driving resignations, mental health and family-focused benefits must be easier to find, navigate and understand. One way to accomplish this is through the smart application of technology. It’s possible to deliver a one-touch approach to drive benefits seekers to the right destination. Your employees shouldn’t be wasting time on the phone to find what they need.
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Reduce the variables when employees access their healthcare, and not only will you offer an exemplary experience, but you’ll save money, too.
Don’t forget the importance of a human advocate
Remote work isn’t going away, so social isolation from your larger culture will be a persistent challenge. Don’t overlook the importance of human interaction in the healthcare experience. What your employees are looking for, and what’s missing too often from the healthcare experience, is someone who can get to know them and their challenges. Someone who can advocate for them so they don’t feel like they are constantly fighting alone for what they need.
Having a human guide, and being able to talk to them again and again, if necessary, rather than a different person each time is incredibly valuable to the healthcare benefit experience. At Collective Health, we call these people “Member Advocates.” At their core they are an extension of your benefits team. They are dedicated to your organization, so they can learn your culture and hone in on how to improve the employee experience.
Empathy is often missing from the employee healthcare experience. Member advocates can restore it when it’s needed most.
Meet the “customer” where they are in their journey
With remote work, people are more disconnected from their office ecosystem. It’s easy to feel forgotten in the daily barrage of emails, Slack messages, texts and video calls. Taking the time to engage with, understand or even make suggestions about healthcare benefits can take a backseat to the daily grind.
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With a hybrid office ecosystem of remote/in-person work now emerging, employees should place an emphasis on building knowledge of the resources available to help solve their employees' problems — e.g., self-service tools and human advocates to help members when they need it. Seasonal kick-offs, ideally around open-enrollment, are timely opportunities for knowledge building. This also builds toward a bigger component of a great healthcare experience: employee confidence in their ability to navigate the confusing world of healthcare.
Knowledge and confidence are important for creating dialogues that help ensure you’re solving the right problems. Research suggests that people who feel a sense of agency in their own healthcare are happier with their benefit plan choices. For example, Collective Heath's Healthcare Journey survey showed that members who feel more familiar with the healthcare system are more than twice as likely to feel that their plan fits their needs well compared to those who feel less familiar.
It's important to meet the employee and their family where they are on their journey. Help them build knowledge and agency, and this will help you deliver a great experience at a lower cost.
