It’s not easy being an HR professional these days.
The cost of healthcare and employer-sponsored health plans are on the rise in 2024. According to some estimates, the year will see a nearly 9% increase in the cost of medical care benefits, and inflation alone is not to blame. Cutting-edge medical technologies and new medications (such as Ozempic) are among the factors driving up costs.
Meanwhile, human resources teams are under significant pressure to rein in benefits spending while — and this is the tricky part — also helping employees improve their well-being with offerings designed to address a crisis of stress, anxiety, and chronic disease among America’s workforce.
As if that wasn’t enough, although the Great Resignation of 2022 is well in the rearview mirror, the recruitment landscape remains challenging, and many of the most talented job seekers see benefits as a key differentiator.
Related: Get Flimp’s free guide to reduce healthcare spending with decision support Get it here →
All of this leaves HR teams in a seemingly impossible position. How can you cut healthcare spending without sacrificing the quality or appeal of your company’s benefits package?
One way is to help employees make better choices — better for their health, family budgets, and your company’s bottom line.
As several studies have attested, employees routinely choose sub-optimal health plans due to misunderstandings, cognitive biases, and pure momentum at great cost to themselves and their employers. By helping employees recognize the value and quality of options such as high-deductible health plans (HDHPs), your HR team can maximize your benefits budget while boosting employee satisfaction with your plan offerings.
This is why HR teams in 2024 are building their open enrollment strategies around decision-support tools, specifically, Flimp Decisions.
A Brief Definition of Decision Support
For the full rundown on decision support, get your free copy of the ebook “Your Secret Weapon for Reducing Healthcare Spending.”
But to summarize, as we describe in the book, a decision-support tool is a “virtual enrollment advisor.” It’s a digital tool — typically an app, website, or both — designed to help employees predict their healthcare needs for the coming year, anticipate their expenses under different plan options, and choose the best-fitting plan.
Why Use a Decision-Support Tool for Open Enrollment
Decision-support tools — the best of them, anyway — address many, if not all, of the frustrations that cause employees and HR teams alike to dread open enrollment:
Uncertainty, Anxiety, and ‘Analysis Paralysis’
The differences between health plans can be confusing and, without proper guidance, employees often worry they lack the expertise to choose correctly. As a result, they default to the plans with the lowest deductibles or simply roll over the same plan year after year. A good decision-support tool makes side-by-side comparisons clear and straightforward.
Time-Consuming Research
Time-strapped (and distracted) employees do not have the bandwidth to puzzle through pages of plan documents and benefits guides. The best decision-support tools reduce the time needed to research and choose benefits to mere minutes.
Low HDHP Enrollment
High deductibles sound scary, which is the primary reason employees choose more expensive plans over HDHPs. By breaking down costs for premiums, deductibles, copays, and other expenses, a decision-support tool can demonstrate that not only are high deductibles nothing to fear, but HDHPs can lead to substantial savings over the course of a year.
Ineffective Benefits Communication Campaigns
The old ways of informing employees about benefits don’t seem to be working. Emails go unopened, benefits guides wind up in the recycling bin, and group presentations suffer from low attendance and inattention.
Don’t blame your employees; the typical office worker has never had so much messaging from so many different sources to sort through. The best decision-support tools distill all that into a convenient — some might even say fun — user experience.
Why Choose Flimp Decisions for Decision Support
Those are just a few reasons HR teams are turning to decision-support tools to improve the open enrollment process, lower costs, and give employees a cognitive break.
However, there are several decision-support tools from which to choose. Your team might already be using one, but you’re not seeing the results you expected. If that’s the case, we invite you to take Flimp Decisions for a spin.
Flimp Decisions is an industry-leading benefits decision-support tool designed to be completed. That is, while other tools see high drop-off rates, Flimp Decisions typically sees engagement rates of 50% to 70% because it does just what it claims — guides employees to satisfactory plan decisions without any fuss or wasted time.
Flimp Decisions doesn’t bog employees down with endless intrusive questions and wordy explanations. Here’s how it works:
- Employees receive a link and log onto the tool from their desktop or mobile devices.
- Employees answer four key questions (that’s it!) used to predict their upcoming healthcare needs.
- Using an advanced algorithm and a database of about 240 million claimants, Flimp Decisions maps likely employee medical needs against 26 types of service, including office visits, lab tests, and prescriptions. Regional costs are also factored in.
- The tool offers a visual breakdown of plans and cost estimates and recommends the best fit for each employee.
The whole experience can take as few as five minutes, and most employees — and HR teams — are extremely satisfied with the results. On average, HDHP migration improves 20% to 30% with Flimp Decisions.
Nebraska Medicine, a healthcare employer with over 5,600 benefits-eligible employees, saw 81% of its employees select HDHPs after implementing Flimp Decisions — 200% higher than actuarial estimates.
Other reasons to switch to Flimp Decisions for decision support include:
- Predictive-analytics capabilities, which allow HR teams to forecast costs and run “what-if” analyses for potential plan options.
- Lightning-fast setup. We can have Flimp Decisions up and running for your HR team in about a week.
- Availability in English and Spanish, with fluent writers and voice over artists.
Switch to Flimp Decisions, Become an HR Superstar
Like we said, it’s not easy being an HR professional these days. Expectations are sky high, budgets are shrinking, and stress levels are off the charts. The Flimp Decisions tool can help with that by powering an efficient, cost-effective, and satisfying open enrollment season. Click here for a free demo.