The Value of Effective Benefits Communication

Workplace dynamics drive changes in benefits.  Typically, employers need a competitive benefits package, want to close the knowledge gap, and wish for easier enrollment administration.  Employees need help understand benefits and want peace of mind.

We meet the needs of both groups through the communication of their overall benefits package.  Our one to one benefits counseling sessions with each employee allow companies to:

• Engage employees in the benefits enrollment process
• Educate employees about the benefits they have
• Help employees identify any coverage gaps and make better decisions about choosing benefits to help them fill them
• Help employees realize what is being spent for their benefits and the value of what is being provided
• Gain better appreciation from employees for the benefits they offer
• Achieve a better return on investment for their benefits programs.

We take a holistic year round approach and provide ongoing enrollment support.  According to a survey by Employee Benefits News, our services are exactly what employers say they value the most in enrollment support from their benefits carriers.

Benefits communication is an ongoing process, and we do not simply stop at the enrollment.  We provide strong pre-enrollment planning, flexible technology, expanded services and creative solutions to help you design a robust benefits package.  During the enrollment, we facilitate group meetings to give employees information before they visit with their Benefits Counselor.  After the enrollment, we provide participation and election results, carrier feeds and verified demographics information, employee feedback, ongoing education, and long term planning.

Contact us to determine how we can help you reinvent the enrollment experience and drive value to your benefits package.

Insurability And The Work Place Advantage

Insurability is a critically important insurance concept.  Employers are sometimes hesitant to provide employee benefits if they perceive their workforce as being made up of younger and healthier workers who are less concerned about insurance. 

Practically speaking however, the best time to secure coverage is in fact when you are young and healthy.  If you’re young, healthy and have a good family health history, your insurability is at its peak and you’ll be rewarded with the best rates on life, health and disability insurance.  

As you age and your health declines, you become less insurable.  A major health crisis could render you completely uninsurable for certain types of insurance coverages.  A disability policy offered through the workplace can help otherwise uninsurable employees gain coverage.  Through our strong carrier partnerships, we are able to offer plans with lessened or waived underwriting requirements. 

As a benefit communications, enrollment and voluntary benefits provider, we begin by helping you design a benefits package that will be well rounded enough to provide true options for your employees.  During the enrollment event, we help employees understand the options they are being offered, and help them select plans that will work well together to maximize the dollars spent.  After the enrollment, we follow up to ensure the needs of the employer and the employees were met.  We also provide ongoing support for new hires throughout the year.

Contact us and give your employees access to smart benefits that help them prepare for their tomorrow today!

A Disability Insurance Story

Meredith Moore

A former NCAA Division I college swimmer and dedicated triathlete, Meredith Moore was the portrait of good health and fitness at age 30.  But just weeks after giving birth to her first child, Erik, she began suffering from headaches so strong they reduced her to tears.
A series of doctor visits culminated in a CAT scan that revealed the cause:
A malignant, fist-sized brain tumor called a glioblastoma multiforme that is almost always fatal.


Though unable to work for a year, Meredith’s disability insurance replaced 60% of her income, ensuring her illness would not add a financial burden to the challenges that she and her husband, Keith, already faced. 
What followed was an aggressive treatment strategy that included three brain surgeries, a seven-week chemotherapy regimen at Duke University’s renowned brain tumor center and more chemotherapy at home in Alpharetta, Ga.

Meredith with son Erik

Fortunately Meredith, an insurance agent, knew exactly what to do when she was in her twenties.  She had purchased as much disability, life and long-term care insurance as she could.


Told she would be lucky to live for one year, Meredith has now been cancer-free for more than two.  She has even returned to work part time, with a partial disability benefit supplementing the income she now earns.  Most remarkably, she’s once again competing in triathlons.  


Meredith knows a recurrence of her cancer is more a matter of “when” than “if.”  But she’s determined to make the most of her new lease on life, both in her personal relationships and her professional ones.  “I really push my clients to plan and put things in place now because I know personally that bad things can happen,” she says.


Perhaps it was Meredith’s profession that helped her understand the critical role that insurance can play in financial planning.  For the vast majority of employees, such presence of mind may not naturally take place.  That is part of our core mission at Complete Benefit Solutions.  As an benefit communications, enrollment, and voluntary benefits provider, we help employees maximize their benefit dollars for a better tomorrow.


Contact us today for assistance in providing that same planning and stability to your employees.  Our Benefit Counselors play a critical role in helping employees gauge the right amount of coverage, based on their actual needs and budget requirements.

Why Disability Insurance Through The Workplace

Last week we talked about disability insurance as being insurance for paychecks.  Disability is an unpredictable event and it has a tremendously negative impact financially.  After the limited paid personal leave time and even more limited personal savings of most individuals and families, things can get very tough financially.

As an employer, one of the most valuable benefits you can provide to your employees is disability insurance.  Our employee benefit solutions include disability insurance and discount plans aimed at helping employees protect their income.  Additionally, we offer the following built in benefits:

 ü Ease of underwriting – makes it easier for employees to obtain coverage

ü  Payroll Deducted – easy to build into the budget

ü  Portability – employees can take their coverage with them if their employment changes

Disability insurance can be offered on a voluntary basis or with an employer funded benefit bank.  Coverage is available for up to 66 and 2/3^rd of their monthly income and we can customize how the coverage is offered. 

During the enrollment process, a benefits counselor assists each employee in selecting a plan based on their monthly income, expenses, available savings, paid leave time, and other available resources.  Our 1 to 1 benefits counseling method allows each employee access to a dedicated professional who can help them analyze their specific needs.  As a result, they purchase only based on their individual needs.

This benefit can be offered at no cost to the employer.  If you would like to learn more about our different approach to employee benefits, let us know.  Our approach is based on providing real value through benefits that help both the employer and its employees.  

The Most Important Thing to Insure

A recent graduate, Darien Smith had began working at a local home improvement store while attending a community college in Miami.  During a regular shift at work, he accidentally fell and hit his head.  Two weeks later, he was accidentally struck in the head by another employee moving stock around.  The injuries from these two incidents left him paralyzed from the neck down.  At age 19, he became a ventilator dependent quadriplegic - permanently disabled due to injuries suffered on the job.

Injuries on the job, even those less severe than Darien's, force three out ten Americans into disability before retirement.  And once disabled, the ability to earn a living can disappear altogether, adding another layer of devastation to the family.  But disabilities don't just occur on the job however.  Accidents and injuries can happen anywhere and when serious enough to result in disability, even for just a few months, the loss of income earning ability can derail a family financially.

Disability insurance is insurance for your paycheck.  It provides specific payments directly to you if you become disabled whether for a short or long period of time.  The coverage is available whether the disability resulted from injuries suffered on or off the job.  It can also cover spouses under similar terms.  The payments from a disability policy help offset your loss of income from not being able to work.

Have you and your family discussed how you would cope financially with a period of disability?  How would you continue to meet the family's living expenses?  The Council for Disability Awareness (CDA) suggests a simple starting point to planning for the unthinkable:

1. What are your necessary monthly living expenses?  These are often fixed costs such as rent or mortgage, utilities, food, medical insurance.
2. Can your savings carry you for one month?  three? six months or longer if necessary?

Answering these two questions will help you begin the planning process.  You can also visit the CDA's website for additional resources and tools at www.disabilitycanhappen.org.  Simple planning today can help you put a few dollars a week away, to ensure that you and your family could continue to meet regular living expenses after disability.

The (Dollars and Cents) Value of a Wellness Program

As we have been discussing these last few weeks, cost (or the fear of it) is a major barrier to small businesses really committing to a wellness program.  Benefits are reflected as expenses on corporate balance sheets, and in tough economic times, they can become glaring expenses.  

But as Catherine Rudat titled her article in Corporate Wellness Magazine, "corporate wellness doesn't just save money; it makes money".  Too good to be true?  Actually, it’s black and white finances that will also reflect on your company’s balance sheet.  And when you partner with Complete Benefit Solutions, it becomes a no-brainer. 

Ms. Rudat puts it this way in her article: “[If your company currently provides major medical insurance, t]he obvious savings are via reduced claims.  Healthy employees need less medical attention.  A low ball estimate points to at least 50 percent of healthcare costs being attributed to preventable illness.  Looking at the risk factors – smoking, inactivity, weight gain, depression, high stress, and hypertension being the most referenced – and the fact that most employees spend the majority of their waking hours working, it seems elementary that a workplace health program would mitigate a number of these factors and the associated health issues [and] costs. Of course, healthy employees are also more alert and engaged, tending to work more carefully and with better focus, resulting in fewer accidents and reduced disability claims, stabilizing or even shrinking disability insurance.”

The results of a recent four year study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion shows an actual dollars and cents value to corporate wellness programs.  The study found that companies who consistently offered a wellness program to their employees experienced a 15% slower rate of increase in health care costs.  This translated to an average savings of $332 per wellness program participant.  Could your company use these kinds of dollars, say for other business expenditures or a raise for the smart HR person who realized what this would mean? 

At Complete Benefit Solutions, we know that understanding the importance of a need doesn’t make taking the next step any easier.  That’s why we have taken all of the hassles and confusion out of employee benefits, and created a streamlined process that makes offering benefits and managing enrollment a breeze. 

Rising health care costs and absenteeism are real drainers on corporate finances.  Companies are sometimes shocked to realize the real cost.  Don’t get trapped into inaction because of costs or other concerns –  we can help!  We will show you up front how we can make a monetized difference for you, your HR department, your employees, and your company’s bottom line.  And if we can’t help, we will tell you that too – up front. 

Contact us today, and let’s get started on your customized employee benefits program.

Wellness When You Don’t Have (much of) a Budget

So we’ve been talking about wellness programs and the impact they can have on a small business and its employees.  Positive impact does not always facilitate action however.  With limited resources, employers sometimes forego cost-savings measures because (ironically), they cannot afford the upfront costs of implementation.

The great news here is that no matter what your budget is, you CAN offer your employees a solid wellness and benefits program.  And you can do it at no additional costs to your company.  How is this possible? Through the soundness of voluntary benefits!

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that

• ·         65% of adults do not exercise regularly
• ·         ½ of all adults have high cholesterol
• ·         1 out of every 4 adults have high blood pressure
• ·         30% of adults are obese

By now you've probably learned that these factors contribute to chronic and critical illnesses.  You probably also know that these factors have a measurable impact on absenteeism and productivity in the workplace.  Many of these conditions can be managed or prevented altogether through the resources of a benefits program that includes wellness.  Using voluntary benefits as a vehicle to deliver wellness benefits is a means to giving your employees access without incurring additional costs.

There are many companies in the marketplace currently touting specific or packaged voluntary benefits.  But most are simply aiming at premium dollars without taking the time to structure offerings that will really help employees.  This is where Complete Benefit Solutions is different. 

Our unique process is individually tailored to both the needs of the business and its workforce.  We often find that after implementation, we have actually saved time and money for our clients.  Employees love us because we understand that matter how much they earn, those dollars are need for their families.  Spending it on random products included in a benefits menu does not benefit them or their families.

We specialize in helping businesses of all sizes help their employees secure a solid foundation beyond their paychecks.  Our programs help both employers and employees – a source of pride for us.  Contact us for your free, no strings attached, benefits analysis.  We will tell you, up front, whether we can help you, and how much we will save you in real dollars.  We look forward to hearing from you.