Prompt attention, quality treatment and a speedy return to work make medical insurance a highly valued benefit for employee and employer alike. Alternative options that are as diverse as an individual and interact with them across a full pathway of health needs work more than ever as an effective recruitment and retention tool. More powerfully, they help reduce absence and get employees back to their best, quicker.
Here are some of the more popular healthcare benefits:
Private medical insurance
The benefits of private medical insurance are immediate:
- Prompt treatment so members can be returned to health as quickly as possible
- A high value employee benefit to aid recruitment and staff retention
- Reduce sickness absence
- Reassurance of knowing that treatment is available promptly
- Flexibility in how, where and when treatment is received
Cash plan
From as little as a £1 per week, a healthcare cash plan is an affordable, low cost option that is still seen by employees as a valued and popular employee benefit.
Members can get help with the costs of everyday healthcare including trips to the dentists or opticians, physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic or counselling, while your business can benefit from reduced sickness absence levels, more productive employees and improved staff retention and motivation.
Travel insurance
If you send staff overseas either on short business trips or on longer secondments, you’ll know how important it is to look after your employees, before, during and after they travel.
As well as providing cover for personal possessions, a travel insurance policy will also include limited kidnap and ransom insurance cover for business travellers working in high risk areas.
Business travel insurance is intended for short business trips and has a maximum number of days that a person can travel each year.
Personal accident
If an employee is injured or killed in an accident, personal accident insurance pays a sum to the worker or their dependents to help cover any potential loss in earnings.
For businesses, losing an employee temporarily or permanently can have huge financial implications. Personal accident cover helps an organisation with the costs involved in finding and hiring staff replacements, providing employee training or even helping to pay the injured employee’s salary while off work.
Employee assistance programme
Problems faced at work or at home can affect an employee’s performance during the day or even result in stress-related absence – which can prove costly to your business.
An employee assistance programme (EAP) can help staff to understand or overcome any personal concerns and work to resolve problems that are affecting work. In addition, an EAP represents an employer’s commitment to taking preventative and protective measures to reduce health risks in the workplace, in line with the Health & Safety at Work Act of 1974.
Most EAP providers offer employees and their households:
- Immediate access to qualified and experienced counsellors
- Telephone access 24/7
- The opportunity to talk in confidence, with anonymity if desired
- EAPs are a proven, cost-effective solution to many of the problems faced by employers today including sickness absence, work related accidents, compensation claims, lost time and management resources.
Dental insurance
With the number of NHS dentists dropping and treatment costs on the rise, dental insurance can prove a very cost-effective way of looking after your employee’s dental health.
A dental policy can pay for both routine and preventative dental care, and cover employees in case of more serious and costly accidents and injuries.
It usually provides a large contribution towards many common dental costs, whether treatment is provided privately or by the NHS, proving a popular employee benefit and minimising time off work.
Optical care
Employer funded optical care is a tangible and value benefit for large number of employees, offering preventative care on a range of emerging health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol, as well as ensuring employers meet duty of care and HSE requirements.
Through strong relationships with all the leading eye healthcare programme providers, we have extensive experience designing, managing and broking eyecare plans for clients large and small.
There are 3 ways we can help you to look after your employees’ eye health:
- A corporate eye healthcare programme
- Optical benefits, using a cash plan, to cover every day optical expenses
- Occupational Health assessments and consultancy
