Global catalogue and internet retailer The Bradford Group/Hammacher Schlemmer added a number of new options to its voluntary benefits program during its latest enrolment in a bid to attract and retain employees, customize its benefits and fill in gaps in its previous offering.
The company, which has 700 eligible U.S.-based employees, recently added critical illness, accident insurance and universal life coverage to its plan, which had already included a number of traditional health benefits such as medical, dental, vision and disability coverage as well as term-life insurance.
“It’s the mantra of all of us in comp and benefits to attract and retain our employees,” said Tammy Osuzik, a senior analyst involved in benefits and compensation at The Bradford Group/Hammacher Schlemmer, during Benefits Canada’s Benefits and Pension Summit in Toronto last week.
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“We also wanted to customize our benefits. Your companies are probably similar to mine, where you have up to four generations in the workforce. Everyone has different needs and you’re trying to touch upon everyone. And we wanted to fill in the gaps in our current offering. The No. 1 reason that people go into bankruptcy in the U.S. is medical costs because they are so sky high. So how can we help our employees tackle that problem or at least help them have a safety net?”
Following the voluntary benefits plan’s annual enrolment at the end of 2015, 76 per cent of employees opted into its medical plan, 76 per cent are in the dental plan, 60 per cent are in the vision plan, and 31 per cent are in the voluntary term-life plan.
Enrolment in the new benefits isn’t as high, with just 4.3 per cent of employees in the universal life coverage, 10.2 per cent taking up accident insurance and 13.4 per cent opting for critical illness insurance. These figures aren’t as high as the company had hoped for, said Osuzik, noting it hopes to get better responses in the years to come.
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Communication is key to ensuring employees take advantage of the voluntary benefits offerings, she added. “You can send out as many things as you want, but there are still people who are going to come four months later and say, ‘I never knew that we had that.’
“Get it out there in many different formats: give a talk on it, send it through your online portals, send out pieces of paper. . . . Different people learn in different ways. Try to communicate as much as possible because if they don’t know it’s out there, they’re not going to take it.”
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Osuzik was relatively new to the human resources team when the company rolled out the new benefits, so she wasn’t able to communicate as much as she had hoped to, which is “why I think my enrolments were not as big as [they] could have been.”
The company is now in the fifth month of administration on its annual voluntary benefits period. “It has not been the smoothest of processes,” she said. “I wish I had more time to dig into the administrative system before it opened. The more information you have beforehand, the better it is. Once you do have all the information down, it’s pretty easy.
“If you are going to do these, make sure you understand everything,” Osuzik added. “Your employees are going to come to you, not the brokers, if they have questions.”