How To Build Healthcare Benefits That Fit Your Team

Most employers are stuck in a cycle of rising premiums and generic benefits packages that don't serve their workforce. The traditional approach of accepting whatever your broker presents is costing you money and frustrating your employees.

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All Benefits

From the consultant side, we see this repeatedly. Employers end up with bulky benefits packages loaded with extras their employees don't use, while being skinny on the coverage their workforce needs. This misalignment happens because most advisors take the easy route. They push the same spreadsheet solutions and cost-shifting strategies without doing the real work of understanding your organization's unique needs.

When your benefits don't match your employees' healthcare requirements, several costly problems emerge:

• Increased absenteeism due to inadequate coverage

• Higher turnover rates as employees seek better benefits elsewhere

• Wasted spending on unused benefit features

• Employee frustration with coverage limitations

When employees can’t access the care or medications they need, productivity drops, morale suffers, and frustration builds. Over time, this leads to avoidable turnover and rising costs. Multiple studies link benefit misalignment directly to absenteeism and presenteeism, both of which quietly drain your bottom line.

Why Alternative Funding Changes Everything

Alternative funding methods, particularly self-funded plans, give you the insight, data, and flexibility to build benefits around what your employees need. Instead of paying fixed premiums for predetermined coverage, you gain control over your healthcare spending and plan design.

Advantages of Alternative Funding:

Cost Control and Transparency

• Pay only for the healthcare services your employees use

• Eliminate insurance carrier profit margins from your costs

• Access detailed claims data to understand spending patterns

• Stop subsidizing other companies' healthcare costs through pooled premiums

Customization Capabilities

• Design benefits that match your workforce demographics

• Add coverage for services your employees value most

• Remove unnecessary benefits that drain your budget

• Adjust plan features based on usage data

Financial Flexibility

• Potential for significant savings in good claims years

• Ability to reinvest savings into enhanced benefits or other business priorities

• More predictable budgeting with proper stop-loss protection

• Opportunity to build reserves for future healthcare needs

Building Your Custom Benefits Strategy

Creating an effective alternative funding approach requires understanding your workforce's specific healthcare needs. This means moving beyond assumptions and gathering real data about what your employees value and use.

Start with Employee Feedback

Generation Z doesn't want the same traditional benefits as Baby Boomers. Your multi-generational workforce has diverse needs that a standard plan can't address. Regular employee surveys help identify gaps between current benefits and needs.

Analyze Your Current Spending

Most employers lack visibility into their healthcare spending patterns. Alternative funding provides detailed claims data that reveals:

• Which services your employees use most frequently

• Geographic variations in healthcare costs

• Opportunities for targeted wellness programs

• Areas where current coverage falls short

Design Around Usage

With alternative funding data, you can architect sustainable plan designs that focus spending on high-value services while eliminating waste in underutilized areas.

The Costs of Staying Fully Insured

Many brokers won't discuss the financial incentives that keep them pushing fully insured plans. These arrangements often include overrides and bonuses above standard commissions that benefit the broker but not your organization.

Alternative funding requires advisors to roll up their sleeves and do real work. It demands ongoing analysis, plan management, and performance monitoring that many brokers aren't equipped to handle.

If you're experiencing low premium increases with fully insured plans, that's a signal you should consider self-funding. Those "reasonable" increases indicate you're subsidizing other organizations' higher claims while missing opportunities to retain savings from your own plan performance.

Alternative funding isn't just about cost savings, it's about creating benefits that serve your workforce while giving you control over one of your largest business expenses. When employees have access to the care they need, absenteeism drops, productivity increases, and retention improves.

Stop accepting whatever your broker presents and start asking the hard questions about how your benefits spending can work harder for your organization.