The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is seeing a wave of retaliation complaints by employees. Retaliation charges accounted for more than 35% of all charges filed with the commission in fiscal year 2022.
Retaliation means any adverse action that you or someone who works for you takes against an employee because they complained about harassment or discrimination. Any negative action that would deter a reasonable worker in the same situation from making a complaint qualifies as retaliation.
Employees who participate in an investigation of any of these problems are also protected. For example, you cannot punish an employee for giving a statement to a government agency that is looking into a discrimination claim.
Employment law attorneys say that the increase is in part because employees who sue for retaliation have a higher degree of success than those who bring a regular discrimination charge. It’s important that all employers train their managers and supervisors to not retaliate against workers making complaints, as the result can be a costly lawsuit.
Thanks to a precedent-setting case, Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railroad vs. White, while an employee alleging discrimination must prove that they suffered a “materially adverse employment action,” a retaliation plaintiff only needs to show that the employer undertook some action that may dissuade them from making or supporting a charge.
Employment law experts recommend that employers do the following:
Set clear and unambiguous policies
Your company policy should clearly state that retaliation is not permitted.
The policy should describe the parameters of inappropriate conduct as well as you can define them.
Put the policy in writing.
Set reporting and grievance procedures, including the person to whom the employee can report a retaliation complaint.
Have staff sign an acknowledgment of receipt of your policy.
Investigate complaints promptly
Remember that anyone who participates in an investigation is likely protected from retaliation (not just the employee who makes a complaint, but witnesses as well).
Communicate results of the investigation to the grievant.
Take effective remedial measures, including carefully reviewing all disciplinary measures before imposing them. You should also ensure that disciplinary actions are consistent with past practices.
Train managers and supervisors
Finally, you should train managers and supervisors and ensure they understand your policies.
Make sure they understand who is protected from retaliation (participants, complainants, and even persons related to the complainant in some cases).
They should also understand what constitutes retaliatory conduct and, if they are unsure, they should speak to your human resources manager.
While the Affordable Care Act requires employers to offer coverage for employees’ adult children until the age of 26, it does not require them to offer coverage to their workers’ spouses.
As employers try to balance the costs of offering health coverage, spousal coverage is often on the table for cutting when making cost decisions. Many employers view offering spousal coverage as a way to keep up morale and serve as a recruitment and retention tool, but others consider the option a burden.
Cutting it out completely though is often a bitter pill for many employees to swallow, particularly if their spouse’s employer doesn’t offer coverage or if they don’t work. And if they are forced to go to a public insurance exchange, their bitterness could deepen further. What’s required is a diplomatic solution.
Instead of cutting it out completely, employee benefits experts suggest one of two ways to deal with the spousal coverage dilemma and reduce costs at the same time: a spousal carve-out or a spousal surcharge.
1. Spousal carve-out
With this approach, the employer defines plan eligibility so that spouses are ineligible to participate if they are eligible for coverage at their own employer. As an employer, you need to consider the following if this is the way you want to go:
Will eligibility for any type of employer-sponsored coverage make the spouse ineligible? What if the spouse is only eligible for an employer-sponsored “mini-med” plan or other limited plan coverage?
Is the cost of the other employer-sponsored coverage a factor in determining eligibility? One common approach is to make the spouse ineligible for the plan only if the spouse’s cost of the other employer-sponsored coverage is less than a certain dollar amount.
Creative approach: Create a spousal carve-out program with an escape hatch that allows the spouse to remain on your plan if the price the spouse would have to pay for coverage under his or her own employer’s plan exceeds a specified threshold.
2. Spousal surcharge
Charging a surcharge for spouses who are eligible for coverage at their own employer provides an incentive for spouses to choose to enroll in the other coverage, while still allowing eligibility in the employer’s plan for those who need it.
That said, this approach is an extra level of complexity in the communication and administration of benefits and payroll.
Creative approach: You can use a carrot instead of a stick. That is, give a monetary award to employees whose spouses switch from your plan to the spouse’s employer’s plan.
Verification
There are three ways to verify if a spouse has coverage through their employer:
Employee affidavit. Your employee signs a statement certifying that his or her spouse is ineligible for other employer-sponsored coverage.
Certification from the spouse’s employer. Have the spouse’s employer provide a letter stating that they are ineligible for health coverage. This approach may be difficult if the employer is not cooperative.
Eligibility audits. You can do spot-checking of employee spouses’ lack of access to coverage by randomly picking staff members and contacting each spouse’s employer, rather than seeking verification in every case.
A new study’s findings that many workers have a poor understanding of their employer-sponsored health insurance benefits, presents an opportunity for businesses to extend targeted support to staff during open enrollment.
The “2023 Optavise Healthcare Literacy Survey” found that 32% of employees are not confident about understanding how their plan works, meaning that many of your staff may have trouble finding, understanding and using information and services to make health insurance decisions.
As the plan sponsor, you can step in to help them during open enrollment by providing them with tailored information and guidance.
Employees who don’t understand their coverage may choose plans that are not right for them, and because of their lack of knowledge, they are more likely to stick with the same plan and not explore other options during open enrollment.
To help your staff who may not be as up to speed on how their health plan works, your human resources team has a few options.
Focus on younger workers
The Optavise study found differences in health insurance understanding among the various generations in the workforce, with millennials and Gen Z workers having the poorest understanding of health insurance terms.
The study authors recommend a return-to-basics approach during open enrollment for these workers. That could include holding meetings for them to explain the basics of health insurance, particularly how plans with higher premiums will typically have lower deductibles and copays, while low-premium plans usually have higher deductibles and copays.
Also, if you have a multi-generational workforce or workers with chronic conditions, you’ll want to tailor your pitches depending on the employee. Your presentations should focus on multiple scenarios that explain which options are best, depending on your workers’ age, health and life circumstances.
One-on-one communications
The study found that workers don’t often turn to their employers first when they have questions or need information about health insurance or their health plans:
46% said they reached out to friends and family for information.
35% taught themselves about terms and processes by going online or reading other materials.
27% sought out information from their company’s HR department.
Given the often-poor accuracy of information from online sources, and that their friends and family likely aren’t experts on the subject, it’s a good bet that many people are getting bad information about health insurance.
While group training and providing online tools and printed material can help your workers, one-on-one meetings seem to be the most effective in helping workers:
84% reported they found one-on-one sessions very or extremely useful.
68% said online resources were very or extremely helpful.
Only 49% found e-mail correspondence was very or extremely helpful.
You may want to urge your employees to schedule face-to-face meetings with relevant HR staff. One-on-one meetings let your employees ask specific questions. By having conversations about their current medical needs or family situation, employees can best determine the most reasonable option for them.
Focus on points of confusion
The study also asked workers what kind of information about their group health plans they wanted to know more about. The following answers provide a list of topics you may want to cover during open enrollment meetings:
How to avoid surprise medical bills.
How my deductible, copay/coinsurance and out-of-pocket maximum work, and what it means for my wallet.
How to review an Explanation of Benefits and medical bill for errors.
Researching health care costs, and why it matters.
How to choose where to get care.
How to choose a plan.
The takeaway
You can play an important role in educating your workers about their health coverage.
Smart employers will tailor their benefits communications, literature and meetings to meet the varying needs of their workers. It’s good to provide materials and education through various sources like a portal and literature, meetings — and in particular one-on-one meetings, which are seen as the most effective.
A personal approach can be especially helpful to ensure that your workers choose plans from which they will benefit the most in light of their budget and needs.
Physicians and employee health experts are increasingly recommending that employers include diabetes screening, prevention and management in their company-sponsored wellness programs.
Diabetes — known as the “silent killer” — afflicts more than 29 million Americans, or 9% of the population.
Type 2 diabetes — or adult-onset diabetes — accounts for about 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is associated with older age, obesity, family history of diabetes, history of gestational diabetes, impaired glucose metabolism, physical inactivity, and race/ethnicity.
The fallout from the disease has a significant impact on businesses as it can lead to stress, depression and a number of other health problems, including cancer, stroke and heart issues. That in turn leads to lost productivity for you as well as presenteeism, or the dilemma of a worker being at work but not being productive.
Medical costs and costs related to time away from work, disability and premature death that were attributable to diabetes totaled $245 billion in 2019, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Of that total, $69 billion was due to lost productivity.
With these statistics in mind, it’s imperative that employers help their workers manage their diabetes. Helping them get diabetes under control or helping them avoid developing the disease can keep your productivity strong, reduce your workers’ comp claims and also chip away at your health insurance expenses thanks to lower premiums.
Diabetes means decreased productivity
Of the roughly $69 billion that U.S. employers lost in 2019 from decreased productivity due to diabetes:
$21.6 billion was from the inability to work as a result of diabetes.
$20.8 billion was from presenteeism.
$18.5 billion was from lost productive capacity due to early mortality.
$5 billion was from missed workdays.
$2.7 billion was from reduced productivity for those not in the labor force.
Prevention and management
Employers can help by providing their employees with a voluntary diabetes management and prevention program. This wellness benefit can take many forms.
The Integrated Benefits Institute during an annual forum recently held a session highlighting what some employers are doing to educate their workers on how to manage diabetes:
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has partnered with the American Diabetes Association to deliver educational seminars on diabetes to its workforce.
The agency also offers as part of its diabetes program health risk and orthopedic assessments, glucose and cholesterol screenings, nutritional counseling, exercise classes and a walking club. (Since the transport agency’s wellness plan provider initiated the diabetes program, its workers’ comp claims have also fallen.)
Caterpillar, Inc. found diabetes to be one of its primary cost drivers, so it now provides incentives for employee risk assessments and care management. For example, half of the employees in its diabetes management program reduced their A1C levels (a measure of diabetes control), while 96% reported measuring these levels regularly and 72% reported meeting recommended activity levels.
The City of Asheville, NC, used local pharmacists to coach employees on how to manage diabetes. More than 50% of those in the program experienced improved A1C levels, and the number of employees with diabetes that achieved optimal levels increased.
Vanderbilt University expanded a pilot program of intensive exercise and nutrition that helped employees with diabetes improve cholesterol and blood sugar. About 25% of the employees were able to stop taking their diabetes medications.
The Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund works with its health insurer to offer its employees access to diabetes prevention and control programs. Employees voluntarily participate in worksite health screenings. Those who have pre-diabetes can attend YMCA-led diabetes prevention programs either at work or in the community.
The takeaway
Having a diabetes wellness program among your voluntary benefit offerings can help your employees avoid diabetes or manage it if they already have the disease. That helps not only their health, but also your bottom line.
If you would like to know more about educating your employees about diabetes and helping those with pre-diabetes or diabetes manage their condition, call us.
More hospitals and insurers have started charging patients for virtual care services as they have grown in usage and providers are spending more time meeting patients in telehealth appointments and responding to their e-mails.
Many hospital systems have started billing patients for e-mails they send to their physicians and, depending on the level of out-of-pocket expenses in their plan, they may pay just a few dollars for a copay or up to $100 if they have a high deductible.
With these forms of communication growing in use, employers may want to remind their employees to look at their plans’ benefits summaries to see how much they will have to pay for these services.
The hospitals argue that physicians spend a significant amount of time responding to inquiries and it takes just as much time for them to conduct telemedicine and phone appointments as it does in-person visits.
A short five-minute session with a patient on a phone or video appointment will typically result in associated work, including reviewing the patient’s chart, updating notes and putting in orders for medications, tests or referrals.
Billing under insurance
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services introduced Medicare billing codes for telemedicine in 2019, paving the way for providers to allow patients to seek reimbursement for messages their doctors send them using an electronic portal.
Under the rules, a provider can bill for a message only if it’s in response to a patient inquiry and requires at least five minutes of the doctor’s time.
Many of the country’s health insurers have followed Medicare’s lead, reimbursing hospitals for doctors’ e-mails. In turn, insurers may charge patients a copay or they may have to pay for the service fully if they have a deductible they must first meet. Even then, fees for these types of appointments are typically lower than for in-person visits.
It should be noted that there may not be fees associated with some services such as asking a doctor for a prescription refill or follow-up care.
How it’s being billed
The amount that patients are being billed varies among hospital systems and insurers.
According to recent surveys, out-of-pocket telemedicine visits are an average of $30-75 nationally, with most visits at around $40-50. According to Becker’s Hospital Review:
Medicare pays around $50 per televisit on average.
Mayo Clinic started charging $50 for some online emails written by its doctors after a surge in mail volume.
Humana’s health plan On Hand charges $0 to $5 per visit.
Walmart offers its employees $4 telehealth appointments.
SSM Health, a hospital system in St. Louis, charges $25.
Summa Health, a hospital system in Akron, Ohio, charges $30.
The takeaway
Hospitals and providers are all charging different amounts for televisits, phone visits and their doctors sending e-mails. As well, insurers have different cost-sharing structures for their enrollees.
It’s important that you warn your employees to read plan summaries of these costs if they are regular users of these services, as health plan coverage will vary depending on deductible and copay levels. Doing this can help them avoid surprise bills, particularly if they have grown used to paying nothing for such services.
It’s almost time for group health insurance open enrollment and your top priority should be to drive participation by helping your employees make informed decisions about their options.
You’ll want to help your staff understand all of their options so they can choose plans that are best for their age, health and life situation.
This is an important exercise to ensure that any of your workers don’t pick a plan that costs them too much in premium if they rarely use their health insurance, or costs them too much in out-of-pocket expenses if they are frequent users of health care.
It’s a balancing act, since each employee has different needs. Here’s our advice for the open enrollment:
Listen to your workforce
Before you make any decisions, you should listen to your employees and better understand their needs and preferences.
With answers and feedback in hand you can create a benefits package that is more appealing to them, which in turn gives you a competitive edge when attracting and retaining workers.
Engage employees and solicit feedback through quarterly employee-benefits round table meetings. Invite employees from different age groups and different departments to participate in these meetings, to ensure you have a good cross-section of your staff represented.
Give advance notice
You can start now with simple reminders for them to start thinking about open enrollment and evaluate their current health plans. Send out memos and place posters in high-traffic areas.
If you start with this in September or October, they can have time to assess their options, particularly if anything has changed in their lives like marital status, new children or health issues.
Costs are paramount
You can work with us to settle on plan arrangements that will be within your and your employees’ budgets, and that comply with the Affordable Care Act’s affordability and minimum value rules.
Employees have a right to understand the costs they’ll be facing in each plan, including:
Their share of the premium,
Their deductible,
Their copays or coinsurance, and
Other out-of-pocket expenses.
Typically, the higher the premium on a plan, the lower the employee’s out-of-pocket costs are. The lower the premium on the plan, the higher the deductibles and copays.
Get an early start
If your plan year starts Jan. 1, you should hold open enrollment meetings and dispense plan materials in October or November.
This will give your workers time to review all of their options and compare costs and coverages.
Communicate effectively
Your task is to get employees out of cruise control and truly assess all of their options.
This is especially true if you are making changes to cost-sharing, introducing new plans, or offer voluntary benefits, a wellness plan or health savings account or flexible spending account.
You should use a variety of different media to communicate with them. Use video, virtual and live meetings, e-mail communications, text messages and print materials to get through to your employees. Each generation will often have a preferred medium, so using a multi-pronged approach may be most effective.
Get spouses involved
If you also offer insurance to your workers’ families, you should communicate through your employees that their spouses are also invited to join your open enrollment meetings.
You may also invite them to view any electronic material you may post online, like the aforementioned videos.
If they cannot make a general meeting, you can invite them to come in to meet with your human resources manager if they have questions.
Remind staff of the ACA
You can use open enrollment as a way to remind your workforce of their responsibilities to secure coverage under the ACA.
Let them know that employees who refuse coverage that complies with the ACA from their employer and opt to purchase it on a public exchange, will usually not be eligible for government premium subsidies.
The meeting
Send out meeting notices early to give your employees time to prepare and set aside time.
Try to make the meeting engaging with props, videos, printed materials and more. You may also want to consider recording the session so that staff who can’t make the meeting can watch it, particularly if you have employees that don’t work on-site.
Provide enough time for the main presentation, as well as for questions from your employees.
The takeaway
Open enrollment can be a hectic and stressful time for both the employer and workers. By getting a head start on planning and communications, you will be ahead of the game and your employees won’t feel harried into making a decision. That benefits both them and your organization.
