Creating benefits that care for the whole employee

Employers are on a never-ending quest to build benefits options that make healthcare more efficient and personalized. Looking at the entire spectrum of employee wellness and how to best reach them with solutions is a necessary part of this. 

Heather Dlugolenski, U.S. employer chief strategy officer at Cigna Healthcare, addressed this during her fireside chat at EBN's Benefits at Work conference last week. While strides have been made to make benefits more personal and adaptable, there is more work to be done, she says. 

"When you think about 10-15 years ago, it was a plan design that we gave to everyone," says Dlugolenski. "It was a disease management program that had maybe a shallow sweep across asthma, diabetes and cardiac — it was the same thing, just with a little bit of different content. The industry has definitely sub-segmented into narrower, more precise, more personal solutions."  

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Instead of a blanket health or financial program for all employees, employers are offering more targeted benefits. Dlugolenski points to examples such as multiple types of savings options for those focused on financial wellness and healthcare options that meet the particular needs of employees.

"We have solutions that are not only about having babies, they are about helping people that struggle with fertility to have babies," she says. "We have solutions that are specialized for diabetes specifically, and not just having diabetes, but getting in front of diabetes. It's not just women's health; it's fertility and babies, it's menopause. It's not oncology case management. It's breast cancer case management and colorectal care case management. And it's not just behavioral health, but it's autism, [or] neurodivergent young people with mental health." 

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While the narrower focus on people's individual health and wellness needs is good, how to get the right solutions to people keeps her up at night. The passion of influencers in the benefits community combined with advanced technology will be vital for success, Dlugolenski says.

"What is really important for our industry collectively is to create personalized [ways] to deploy [solutions] to the right people who have that need, in the time they need it, in the channel that is most appropriate for them to actually consume it," she says. "When [solutions] don't work, oftentimes it's because [employers] can't get to the people, so they don't have the engagement, and then they can't prove the ROI. The days of a blurb in the benefits newsletter, or to 100 people that you think are in a category, or a website that may have all the different things in it, that's just not going to be enough."

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Dlugolenski notes the last, often frustrating, piece of the puzzle for every employer: budget. Each company needs to start with data, figure out how much money they can invest, what the most vital points are for their workforce, and partner with the right people and organizations to put short- and long-term goals into place. 

Both companies and the advisers and partners they work with should remain flexible, and approach building better benefits packages with the understanding it will be a process of trial and error. Setting benchmarks and looking at what industry competitors are doing is important as well, she says. 

"There is no silver bullet, because every employer has a different set of objectives. The same way that personalization goes to the employee, you have to apply personalization to the employer," says Dlugolenski.