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4477
Phone: 281.880.6525
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Extending Your Benefits Program with
Voluntary Offerings
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Employees generally recognize that you don't have an unlimited budget for
all forms of compensation, including employee benefits. And in recent years
most have grown accustomed to the necessity of sharing more of the
financial burden of health benefits. So if they can get products and services
they need or want at a discount thanks to your role in making that possible,
you should reap some of the same positive outcomes you expect with
standard benefits. That is, a greater ability to attract, retain and motivate
employees.

Voluntary programs have been around for

decades, but have changed considerably.
Not only has the variety of available
voluntary benefits evolved, but also the
understanding of how to make the most of
them.
Enrollment Maximization Pointers
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Enrollment professionals offer the following tips on making the most of a
voluntary program:
1. Have the enrollment period for voluntary benefits coincide with your
regular open enrollment process. Doing so:
Ensures that employees will be aware of what their voluntary
options are, and
Helps them to recognize gaps in their basic benefits that might be
filled by a voluntary benefit.
2. Enable new hires to enroll in voluntary benefits at the same time they are
eligible for employer-paid benefits.
3. Be selective in the voluntary benefits you make available, particularly in
the early stages. Too many choices can overwhelm employees, and cause
them not to take advantage of sound opportunities. Add additional
benefits gradually as employees have become acclimated to the standard
offerings.
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4. Don't treat a voluntary benefits program as the stepchild of your basic
plan. If you forget it after getting the program rolling the first time around,
participation inevitably will trail off. Have a plan for maintaining the effort
after the initial enrollment.
5. Establish high yet achievable enrollment goals. A good enrollment rate for
core voluntary offerings (for example, life, disability, accident) is in the 35
percent to 40 percent range, depending of course on the scope of the
employer-paid program and employee demographics. Other categories,
such as pet insurance, are unlikely to garner widespread adoption.
6. Assess results against your goals, and plan the next enrollment effort
accordingly.
Product Evolution
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One early staple of the voluntary benefit lineup was "cancer insurance." The
proper term is critical illness insurance. Depending on the policy, these days,
cash payouts can be triggered by a myriad of other serious ailments, such as
Alzheimer's, strokes, kidney disease, organ transplants and heart attacks.
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The function of the coverage is to provide extra cash to pick up expenses
incurred as a result of conditions that are not covered by medical insurance --
or any other purpose, for that matter. Those might include travel expenses
associated with visiting with the patient (particularly when treatment is at a
distant location), childcare (if the patient had been the primary childcare
provider), and so on.
Another common voluntary offering is life insurance. As with critical illness
coverage, life policies have become much more flexible. For example, some
allow for advance payments to cover some long-term care costs.
Remaining "core" voluntary benefits include vision insurance, short- and long-
term disability, accident insurance and dental insurance.

Worksite Marketing
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Following the initial success of voluntary insurance, a myriad of insurance and
other service providers have jumped on board what they see as a lucrative
distribution channel they call "worksite marketing." Among the more recently
introduced services are legal insurance, identity theft protection, pet
insurance, and discount merchandise purchasing arrangements.
Making the most of a voluntary benefits
program requires careful planning, free
from the onslaught of voluntary service
providers seeking access to your employee
population. Planning begins with a review
of your current array of benefits looking to
identify gaps in what you offer. So if you
don't have and cannot afford, for example,
a vision plan, this might be a logical benefit
to make available on a voluntary basis.
Poll Employees
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Polling employees about what voluntary benefits to offer is critical to
garnering a critical mass of participants. Although voluntary benefits don't
cost you anything directly, you will need to invest some energy in getting a
program launched or re-launched, if your voluntary program is languishing
due to being ignored. You also need to demonstrate your support for the
program by giving employees some time to learn about their choices,
possibly get some guidance, then enroll. A voluntary benefit program with
minimal enrollment is not worth having.
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You do not need to be the one providing all of that education effort, however.
Some brokers specializing in the voluntary market have a staff of enrollment
specialists to help employees make their decisions. Caution: It's generally a
good idea to use an enrollment firm whose employees are paid on salary,
rather than commission, to avoid subjecting employees to a sales process
that may not lead to the best choices.
Enrollment firms generally prefer to arrange one-on-one meetings with
employees to create the opportunity to answer individual questions and offer
suggestions based on individual circumstances. For example, if an employee
has a family to support and lacks adequate life insurance, but wants to buy
pet insurance, the enroller with no axe to grind would probably encourage
the employee to meet what would seem to be the greater need.
Enrollment in voluntary benefits, like that in any other kind of benefit, can be
accomplished online without any outside involvement. These systems may
include tools to help employees assess their needs, and automate the
process of establishing payroll deduction payments to pay voluntary benefit
fees and premiums.

www.hrp.net
Enrollment in voluntary benefits, like that in any other kind of benefit, can be
accomplished online without any outside involvement. These systems may
include tools to help employees assess their needs, and automate the
process of establishing payroll deduction payments to pay voluntary benefit
fees and premiums.

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