Why benefits decision support in healthcare is a win-win

Benefits Decision Support for Healthcare

In the healthcare space, open enrollment season can be incredibly stressful for employees and HR teams alike.

HR teams are being looked to to provide education and benefits guidance to their diverse and distributed workforce, while making sure they hit their participation goals, answer all employee questions, and save on costs for the organization where they can.

For employees, there’s a lot riding on the decisions they make during open enrollment. The plans chosen during enrollment can have a direct impact on their health and financial wellbeing for the remainder of the year. For employees in the healthcare space, there never seems to be enough time in the day, so finding the time to research plans, communicate with HR teams, and figure out the best plans can feel impossible.

These challenges facing both HR teams and employees can result in a stressful few weeks. This is where decision support tools come in.

What are benefits decision support tools?

Simply put, decision support tools are digital platforms that can empower someone to make better, more informed choices. So when it comes to benefits decision support tools, they do just that—helping employees make more educated, confident decisions when selecting their benefits.

Benefits decision support tools provide information about the different benefit plans available to employees and can help guide them through the decision making process. These tools can be invaluable for employees and HR professionals alike.

Based on a short questionnaire that an employee fills out about their personal health and financial needs and goals, a decision support tool like Nayya can recommend the right medical, dental, and voluntary plans for their unique circumstance. It can also provide powerful guidance on how much employees should contribute to pretax savings accounts like 401Ks, HSAs, FSAs, and more.

These tools can provide the personalized guidance and education that each employee needs to make the most confident decisions during benefits enrollment.

How do benefits decision support tools help HR teams?

For HR teams during open enrollment, there’s never enough hours in the day—this is especially true for HR teams in the healthcare space. Some of the ways benefits decision support tools can help HR teams include:

• Freeing up their time by taking care of employees' more generic benefits questions and concerns. This means they can focus on the more complex cases or the employees requiring more personal attention.
• Providing employees with the most accurate and up-to-date information about their benefits options in one place, taking some of the pressure off HR to create an abundance of educational materials.
• Ensuring that benefits information can reach all employees, regardless of their working arrangements. This is especially critical in healthcare, as many employees may work different shifts and hours.
• Improving employee health and wellbeing. Health concerns can weigh heavily on employees' minds, especially in fields that are often overworked and understaffed, like healthcare.
• Bolstering employee retention efforts by ensuring employees are happy and that their benefits are satisfying their mental, physical, and financial needs.
• Improving participation in the open enrollment process. By simplifying the process and providing employees with the exact information they need in a way that's concise and easy to digest, these tools can help encourage more participation in different benefits plans.
• Improving overall communication of employee benefits. Employees are often unaware of the many benefits available to them through their employers, which means that investments often go to waste. Decision support tools can help improve communication of these lesser-known benefits and ensure that employees take full advantage of them.

Open enrollment and beyond

Benefits decision support tools are not only a valuable asset during open enrollment. In industries like healthcare where there are high rates of turnover and hiring feels evergreen, a decision support tool can streamline the new hire onboarding process.

Additionally, a decision support tool can provide the guidance and education employees need when re-enrolling due to a qualifying life event.

How can benefits decision support tools help employees?

These tools are not only a great ally to HR, but they also offer employees a wide range of benefits, such as:

• Offering personalized guidance. Using the data they have about their specific needs and circumstances, these tools can provide tailored recommendations for each employee. This takes the guesswork out of open enrollment and makes it easier for employees to find the right benefits for their individual and family needs.
• Providing a central repository for all the benefits-related information, including plan details, cost information, and links to resources like provider directories. This makes it easier for employees that want to consult their family or partner when making decisions.
• Time-saving. These tools can save employees time and hassle by quickly taking care of the more fundamental benefits questions and concerns. They can also use benefit support tools whenever it is convenient for them. This is a much-needed feature for employees in healthcare that often find it challenging to step away from their duties and foresee when they'll have free time to take care of their own health needs or attend HR meetings.
• Simplifying decision-making. By simplifying complex topics, breaking down information into manageable chunks, and offering comparison tables, these tools make it easier for employees and increase the likelihood that they will make the right choices for themselves and their families.

Choosing the best benefits decision support tool for you

In the end, benefits decision support tools exist to make your life easier. When choosing the best tool for your organization, it's crucial to ensure that it provides an easy-to-use interface and is designed with the end users in mind, both employees and HR teams. Nayya’s decision support technology provides a best-in-class enrollment experience and unmatched personalization when recommending benefits.

Nayya's interface is designed to be simple to use, so employees can easily find the information they need. And because Nayya is designed to enrich, not replace, your existing approach to benefits, it provides seamless integrations and works in harmony with HCMs, BenAdmins, Brokers, and Carriers.

With Nayya, you can be confident that your employees will have all the information they need to make informed, confident decisions about their benefits. A decision support tool like Nayya can streamline enrollment and provide benefits all around, making benefits decision support in healthcare a win-win for employees and employers alike.