Running Head: EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: SELECTING BENEFITS
Jordan Alkire
McDaniel College
Objective 2A: Educational Perspective: Selecting a Benefits Package
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EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: SELECTING BENEFITS
Perhaps one of the most popular tasks for the human resources professional is choosing
the proper benefits packages for their organizations. HR professionals must ensure that the
healthcare packages that the organization offers are economical for the company, yet meet the
needs of all employees working there. The Business Intelligence Model from our Business
Research Methods Class will allow this paper to fit into objective two as an educational concept.
This will assist an HR professional in keeping track of trends around them, which will play a role
in choosing the right benefits for the organization. I chose to write about selecting benefits for
objective 2 due to the fact that it requires data collection, the evaluation of data, and also a
summary of relevant data in order to be able to choose which benefits packages are best for the
needs of the organization as a whole. Once the package options are in place and employees have
been educated on them, brokers or representatives of the insurance companies may provide
further assistance in helping the employees choose the best option.
Healthcare benefits play a huge role when people are selecting jobs, and it is important to
be sure that employees are educated on these benefits before they choose the package that is best
for them, and also for their family if that applies.
As human resources professional several methods can be used to track the trends that are
going on around you. As you track these trends, such as economic growth/decline, technology,
cultural, social, and your competitive arenas, you are able to see what is occurring more
frequently than not. The importance of understanding what is going on around you is that as
people’s attitudes, beliefs, and needs change their healthcare benefits may change as well. HR
professionals need to collect data within their organization, such as healthcare interests, how
many people would be interested in benefits for their families, and also data such as ethnicity in
order to compare and contrast benefits options.
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I would suggest using the Business Intelligence Model to keep track of the trending
going on around you, because all of this will play a role in healthcare benefits (Cooper and
Schindler, 2008. Business Research Methods). The economy, cultural and social beliefs, and also
your competition.This model will allow you to collect data about these trends and compare it to
past data that the organization may have gathered in order to help with selecting the benefits for
the year.
As a manager you want to have what is the best and most attractive to your employees,
but you also want to keep the costs as low as you can, especially in the economic times that we
are experiencing now. I have learned that I need to take a look at what my competition is
offering. I can do this through different research methods, such as web research and scholarly
article research, and also by reading reviews online. Also, I have to make sure that the benefits
are balanced with the other things that the company needs to be able to afford, such as upkeep
within the organization and advertising costs.
Once an organization has chosen the right healthcare benefits, you then need to
effectively communicate these benefits to your employees. In order to present the benefits to
employees HR professionals need to have an understanding of their audience. It will be helpful
to have a variety of options available in explaining the benefits, such as meetings, which will
give people a chance to ask questions in person, and an online enrollment process for those who
may already know what they want and don’t feel that a meeting is necessary.
The next task of the HR professional is deciding how to relay this information to
employees. There are several different options available here, such as putting the information
online or giving the employee a benefits handbook.Again, HR will need to take a look at the type
of their audience and gauge what may be the best method. Data could also be collected from
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employees through a brief survey in order to see which methods they would prefer.
“Good benefits communication not only informs, it also leads employees to take more
responsibility for their health choices” (Vernarec, E. 1997. Communicating Choices for Cost
Effective Care, 18).
So as we see from the above statement, the method of communication that we choose is
very beneficial, not only to the employee, but also to the organization. If an employee is being
more conscious of their health and wellness then they are going to save the organization money
in the long-run. They will keep premium costs lower by not going to the doctor, and this is
because they were properly educated on which health benefits would be the best fit for them and
also on the importance of taking advantage of preventative care options that are presented to
them.
LouAnn Cash, vice president of employee benefits for United Health Care, describes in
one article the process used to educate employees on benefits: "Our first step was to conduct
focus groups across the country to learn from employees what they know about managed care,
what they want to know and what kept them from enrolling” (Vernarec, E. 1997.
Communicating Choices for Cost Effective Care, 18).
As Cash says above, conducting a focus group in order to learn what employees already
know is a good idea because then the HR professional will be able to be more specific when
teaching what is not already known. This is something that I hadn’t thought of before, but by
gathering this information through research it allows you to see what points might need more
focus than others when you begin communicating the benefit options to your employees. This
also gets them actively involved in the process.
If all of these steps are taken and the process is executed correctly, involving employees
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and making cost-effective decisions, then money will be saved by the organization overall.
Involving employees in the process may also make the company more attractive than its
competitors because not all organizations will choose to have their employees openly involved
and people like working for a company in which they feel like their opinion matters and plays a
role in important processes that affect their lives.
In an example of how important benefits can be, Reddick stated, “The public sector uses
benefits as a way of attracting and retaining employees because of its inability to offer salaries as
high as the private sector. Health benefits can be used to attract the best and brightest to public
service careers. In addition, the politics of public sector employment has often dictated that
government provide more generous benefits packages rather than wage increases because
benefits are less subject to public scrutiny” (Reddick, C. 2009. The Importance of Employee
Health Benefits in the Public and Private Sector, 49.)
Benefits are not only important in the public sector, but in the private sector alike. If the
HR professional is taking employee’s needs into consideration, as well as keeping up-to-date
with the trends around them, choosing the right benefits packages shouldn’t be difficult or
stressful to the employee. The proper benefits education will also help cut back on the amount of
time it takes to choose the benefits and then employees are not scrambling to enroll at the last
minute.
In order to provide this education to employees HR professionals must know the level on
which they need to communicate with their employees. If one group of employees tends to
communicate better via the web then this should be an option for them, if another group is better
when sitting down face-to-face with an HR manager then this should be available to them. These
needs can be determined through interest surveys and also through coaching your employees and
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observing how they react to different methods of education.
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References
Cooper, D. & Schindler, P. (2008).Business Research Methods. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Reddick, C. (2009). The Importance of Health Benefits to Employees in the Private and Public
Sector.Public Personnel Management, 49.
Vernarec, E. (1997). Communicating Choices for Cost-Effective Care.Business and
18.
Health,