Preston’s Message – May 2013

According to numerous studies; “Healthier employees lead to lower premiums.” And if employers can make their employees healthier without cutting benefits or shifting more premium costs to their employees, where is the downside? After all, Fortune 1000 companies have been using wellness for years to combat the rising costs of healthcare. So, the question is, why aren’t smaller companies using this proven method to lower their insurance costs? And maybe the answer is, because their insurance agents aren’t showing them how to do it.

 

This is not to suggest that a good agent doesn’t know that having a solid health & wellness plan in place will benefit their client. But sometimes the litany of objections from the employers—“There’s nothing I can do about healthcare costs going up,” “It’s too expensive,” “We don’t have the facilities for exercise,” “My employees won’t want to do it”—can sometimes be overwhelming.

 

Randy Boss, a Risk Architect for Ottawa Kent Insurance in Jenison, MI, works with companies on implementing wellness campaigns. And he says he can understand the employer’s frustration. ”Employers are frustrated because most likely they have tried things that didn’t work,” says Boss. “They tend to think short term and not long term, and want to see solid and immediate benchmarks.”  Boss says the key for agents is to make it a priority before something happens and not after.  “They need to be proactive and not reactive, because I believe that safer, healthier employees are good for our business.”

 

Initiating a health and wellness plan in your initiatives to your client can be a great benefit to you in that it will create stronger relationship, one so strong that it will, as I like to say, create a crocodile-filled moat around your client in these competitive times.