Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: Customizing Benefits Across Industries Using a Consultative Approach
By Jim Brown, Chief Revenue Officer at Cobalt Benefits Group
In today’s competitive business landscape, self-funded health plans offer employers an opportunity to manage the rising costs of health care–without sacrificing the quality of coverage they offer to employees.
But self-funding alone isn’t enough to solve all your benefits challenges. To develop a truly effective self-funded benefits plan, employers need tailored coverage that addresses the unique needs of their employee population.
After more than 60 years serving as a Third-Party Administrator (TPA), Cobalt Benefits Group has discovered that strong client relationships are built by asking a simple, but crucial, question: What problem are we solving for?
The Foundation: Understanding Before Prescribing
At Cobalt, our consultative approach is apparent from the very first conversation. When an employer or broker engages us, we don’t lead with what we think they need. We start by asking the right questions:
What’s not working with their current plan?
What challenges are they facing?
What does success look like for their organization and their employees?
This discovery process reveals the real drivers behind their search for a new benefits partner. Sometimes it’s about service. Maybe they’re frustrated with poor member experience or lackluster client support.
Other times, it’s about limited solution offerings or the need for more flexibility in their benefits portfolio. Often, organizations are looking for ways to bend the health-cost curve while maintaining or improving the quality of care for their employees.
The strength of a self-funded health plan lies in its inherent flexibility. Unlike fully insured products, self-funded plans can be designed from the ground up to address specific organizational needs. This flexibility allows us to create custom plan designs with tailored inclusions, exclusions, and cost sharing that reflect the unique nature of each business.
Industry Nuances: Recognizing What Makes Each Sector Different
While our consultative approach remains consistent across industries, we’ve observed some interesting patterns in how different sectors approach their benefits strategies.
Secondary Education Schools In secondary education, we often work with prestigious institutions where employee retention is paramount. Educators and staff view comprehensive health benefits as a key factor in their decision to stay with an organization long-term, so their health plan needs to deliver on expectations. The tenure system in academia also means that once employees are established, they tend to remain for decades. This makes quality health benefits both an expectation and a retention tool.
Manufacturing Employers in the industrial and manufacturing space present a different set of considerations. These organizations often have multiple locations, requiring a broad network to ensure coverage. Their employees work multiple shifts and don’t have regular access to a computer at work, which makes 24/7 access to benefits information on our JoinHealth mobile app especially important. We’ve found companies in this industry employ a workforce that values face-to-face interaction, too. When it comes to open enrollment and benefits education, a manufacturing company might benefit from onsite support—having someone present at each location to set up benefits fairs and provide hands-on assistance to employees who prefer in-person guidance. As a TPA, we make it our responsibility to provide the support that works best for any employee population.
Financial Services Financial services organizations, on the other hand, may employ highly compensated professionals who expect premium benefits without barriers to care. In this case, the priority isn’t cost savings above all. It’s about competitive benefit packages and seamless service. In our experience, these groups like to tailor pre-certification criteria, build in custom cost sharing, and offer condition-specific solutions that enhance the benefits experience—such as Carrot for fertility and Sword Health for musculoskeletal conditions. Because employees work remotely or have flexible schedules, digital enrollment processes can be preferred to hands-on, location-based support. They value white-glove service across many aspects of their personal and professional lives—and their benefits administration needs to reflect a similar approach.
Hospitals and Healthcare Hospitals and healthcare systems face unique challenges when it comes to managing employee benefits because they’re both the employer and the healthcare provider. This opens a number of strategic opportunities when self-funding, like offering preferential benefit tiers for their own facilities and implementing “process no-pay” models that reduce administrative and cash flow burdens. To learn more, read our blog on How Hospitals Can Strategically Leverage Their Own Resources with Self-Funding.
Tailored Benefits: Making Experience-Driven Recommendations
After understanding the unique needs of an employer, we then work alongside our clients and broker partners to develop a tailored benefits plan. While we avoid being overly prescriptive, we don’t leave our clients to navigate complex benefits decisions alone.
In each conversation, our team brings decades of experience to the table (our average client services team member has 15 years of self-funded insurance experience). This deep expertise allows us to share best practices and identify potential issues before they become problems.
Our consultative approach extends beyond the technical aspects of plan design to encompass the entire employee experience, including implementation and enrollment. We recognize that benefits are only effective if employees understand and can easily access them. This means tailoring our communication strategies, enrollment processes, and ongoing support to match each organization’s culture and employee preferences.
For some clients, this might mean developing comprehensive digital resources and self-service tools. For others, it could involve creating print materials and scheduling in-person information sessions. The key is understanding what will resonate with each unique employee population.
Building Long-Term Partnerships
What sets Cobalt apart is our commitment to ongoing partnership. We don’t view plan design as a one-time transaction, and our consultative approach doesn’t end when the plan goes live—it continues throughout the relationship. We understand that organizations evolve, and their benefits needs will evolve with them.
Whether a client is experiencing rapid growth, facing economic challenges, or simply wanting to optimize their existing plan, we’re there to provide strategic guidance. Our flexibility even allows clients to adjust their mid-year to ensure benefits remain aligned with their business objectives and savings potential is maximized.
In an industry where many health plans offer a cookie-cutter approach, Cobalt’s consultative methodology sets us apart. We don’t just ask what you need, we help you discover what you need. We don’t just design plans, we create comprehensive solutions that address your unique challenges and support your business objectives.
The benefit of our approach isn’t just in its flexibility, it’s in our focus on understanding first, then delivering solutions that truly make a difference for organizations and their employees. It’s an approach that has served us well for more than 60 years, and it will continue to drive our success into the future.