As an employer, your employees are your most precious assets. Even though you might have laid out various facilities to ensure their comfort in the office, the benefits of a Group Health plan cannot be underestimated. In today’s competitive world, it is one of the best tools to attract talented employees and retain them for a longer time.
However, it is always difficult to ensure that a Group Health Policy is best suited to the requirements of your workforce. After all, there is no significance of offering a benefit that seems attractive but does not fulfil the needs of your valued employees.
While you try to choose the most appropriate Group Mediclaim policy for your employees, keep in mind factors like the affordability of the plan, the preferences of the employees and exclusions in the plan.
A Step-By-Step Guide to Choosing the Group Health Policy:
- Decide the type of Coverage (Benefit Schedule)
The first and the foremost step towards choosing an appropriate Group Health insurance scheme is to figure out the features that are required. The scope of coverage adopted in a Group Mediclaim policy will depend on various factors like
- The size of the organisation
The organisation’s size is determined by the number of employees it caters to. A start-up that has only around 50 employees will not require as much coverage as a large-scale organisation.
- The economic background of employees at different levels
Employees at the managerial level would have completely distinct requirements than the workers at the factory. For example, the headquarter staff will be satisfied if they are given cover for day care treatments including eye surgery and dental care. But, those who work in the factories (labourers) might just feel that hospitalisation expenses are enough.
- The location of the company
The type of coverage will also depend on whether the organisation is a single entity located in only one place or has subsidiaries or extensions in different parts of India and around the world.
Based on these factors, the employer can get a policy customised to fulfill the employee’s requirements.
- Decide the Sum Insured
To Determine the Sum Insured in a Group Mediclaim Policy, the employer can choose different benefit calculations by dividing the employees into different classes. These classes can be based on the following benefits schedule:
- The salaries of the employees
Also, known as the Earnings schedule, it distributes employees to different classes based on their salaries (excluding the bonus). The amount is determined by a percentage or the multiple of annual salary
- Flat benefit schedule
All employees are considered equal in this method and given similar benefits irrespective of position and salary.
- Length of service
The employees who have served longer receive more benefits and coverage in terms of sum insured.
Also, a combination of schedules is also applied in some cases. For example, for those who work on an hourly basis, a flat benefit schedule can be applied. Whereas, for the regular employees, the cover depends on their respective salaries.
- Need for Worldwide coverage
Worldwide coverage is provided by some insurers nowadays to cover employees in case they require hospitalisation in any part of the world. This is especially beneficial if the employees need to regularly travel or stay in different countries due to job requirements. It can be availed for employees at the higher rung like CEOs, Managers, etc. or for people who need to travel frequently on a job like media persons, wildlife photographers, researchers, etc.
- Get Different Insurer’s Quotes
After you have identified your employees’ needs and preferences, it is time to approach various insurers and give details about your organisation’s size and preferences of employees. Based on the specifications provided, you will get different quotes from insurers along with the provisions of the policy offered in detail.
- Assess the Exclusions
After getting the quotes, look for any exclusions in the policy that might not go down well with a maximum number of employees or is not commonly preferred. These might include copay or limits on the room rent in case of hospitalisation.
- Buy the Policy with the Best Premium-Benefit Trade-off
After assessing all the exclusions and provisions, you can choose a policy which provides maximum preferred coverage at feasible premium rates.
Getting the best group health insurance scheme for your workforce can be easy by following the above steps. But, in case you feel, that a helping hand from experts would be better, online insurance advisors like SecureNow can be handy. They can provide you with quotes from multiple insurers, help you compare various options and manage the policies once you buy.
