Voluntary Benefits to Give Your Employees Peace of Mind

It is important to offer personalised voluntary benefit solutions to employees to meet their needs and potential gaps in their current employer benefits offering.

Three key voluntary benefits include My Critical Illness Cover, My Personal Accident Cover and My Parent Care Cover, which ideally should be offered at key life events that trigger the need, alongside benefits such as renewal, medical plan election and offering of flex arrangements. These three products are key when seeking to protect your employees against high medical costs.

When combined our three products can empower the coverage levels of employees and accelerate their core offerings to manage their exposure to major medical costs. In addition, our products are portable, allowing employees to reduce their risk exposure in the event they leave their employer due to age or medical history.

To streamline the process and make it cost effective companies such as Aon are bundling packages that combine voluntary benefits with traditional insurance offerings. These packages can help you get a preferred rate on products, offer discounts to employees, and reduce the number of insurer contacts helping you to move quickly when offering these benefits at times of increased stress. By offering these benefits in a cohesive, sequenced and accessible manner, employers can help employees see the value of additional coverage and enhance their financial wellbeing.

For example, Employer ABC provides comprehensive group benefit and hospitalisation of S$50,000 for all their employees. Mark, Employee ABC, participates in Select & Protect as offered by the employer. He decides to purchase My Medical Protect Cover and receives additional coverage of S$500,000 per annum.

Subsequently Mark suffers a medical condition and incurs a bill of over S$100,000. By having a voluntary benefits solution purchased earlier he can offset his financial exposure and connect the dots between the protection provided by both his company insurance and voluntary benefits.

We understand some employers may have initial concerns around offering voluntary benefits and products where it may potentially highlight gaps with what the employer provides as core benefits. The key benefit is to create awareness and empower employees to take the right action alongside their core benefits. Voluntarily benefits needs to be implemented and communicated effectively with what is already on offer and the added value of the benefits being made available.

Employers are increasingly assisting their employees with financially purchasing health and wellbeing solutions including voluntary benefits. A key strategy is to integrate voluntary benefits solutions with flex benefits, where flex dollar amounts support the employee with purchasing their additional cover.

Many employers use the integration of benefits to encourage employees to increase their coverage and enrol in higher deductible plans with lower premiums. In the earlier example, where Mark purchases My Medical Protect Cover the premium for the plan is subsequently reimbursed by the Employer ABC using flex benefit dollars. This not only saves employees money on their premiums but also empowers their financial wellbeing in the event of a major medical condition.

Employers are increasingly seeing the importance of having a voluntary benefits solution in place after experiencing frequent unexpected medical events placing financial stress on their employees. Employers are not only responsive in offering a voluntary benefits solution, but also keen to encourage participation through education and financial assistance.

Voluntary benefits are often misunderstood by employees and lead to low participation rates and their concerns often vary. How does that fit into the plan of the employer? What does the employer offer? What is the risk exposure if the unexpected happens? What do these benefits deliver? How do they compare in the marketplace?

Employers need to address the biases that employees may have about voluntary benefits. A common bias is that these voluntary benefits are unnecessary and add to existing expenses. However, smart voluntary benefit solutions are very defined, such as providing S$50,000 to S$100,000 of cover at a low cost of S$2-3 a week, empowering employees to protect their financial wellbeing during an unexpected life event or health experience.

Employee learning is the key to financial wellbeing and empowering awareness to act and Aon’s Voluntary Benefit Solution is focussed on enhanced education and strategic communication.