Managing Health Risks in Your Workforce

When it comes to receiving the right care, at the right time, in the right setting, employees may not always be equipped to make the best decisions. This may result in over-utilization of unnecessary, high-cost healthcare services that drive up costs for employers. Ensuring that employees make better healthcare choices becomes the responsibility of the employer.

Employers must identify the employee behaviors responsible for driving health benefit cost increases and must encourage employees to change their behavior and utilize benefits in a more meaningful way. In this way, employers can develop effective, value-based cost-containment strategies that maintain a balance between care and costs.

Use a data-driven approach that promotes a healthy workforce

All good risk management plans contain strategies to eliminate and manage intrinsic threats and your healthcare plan should be no different. 

According to the Mercer Marsh Benefits Health Trends 2020 Insurer  Survey, circulatory, gastrointestinal, and respiratory conditions continue to drive the top claims by cost and frequency in the Middle East & Africa (MEA) region. These health risks are largely related to lifestyle choices, therefore by encouraging employees to make smarter and healthier choices, employers could reduce costs associated with these risks.

In addition to these regional findings, the global MMB Health on Demand Survey 2020, found that one in three workers reported not being in good health or being in fair health, and one in five had a chronic health condition.  (Source: MMB’s Health on Demand 2020.) 

Managing health risk involves: 

• Keeping individuals well through health promotion, a culture of health, health education, vaccinations, and other illness and injury prevention initiatives. 
• Identifying who is at risk of illness due to lifestyle, family history (where allowed under local laws), and/or working environment and eliminating or managing those risks. 
• Providing support to people with illness to halt or stem the progression of the disease. 
• Rigorously managing high-cost claimants to optimize care and, where possible, getting them back into productive work. 

Understanding the health risks of your employees and their dependents — and managing these through data-driven initiatives and personalized support focused on changing behavior — can have a significant impact on costs over the medium and long term. Employers should re-assess their current health and benefit plans to determine if there are any gaps and inefficiencies.

Read our point of view paper on ‘Balancing Cost and Empathy in Employee  Benefits – Keeping health and benefits plan costs under control’ to learn how you can manage your medical costs more effectively.