Future-Ready Benefits: Balancing Cost, Care, and Employee Experience
& Amy Mattingly
& Lindsey Murrary
"If you can see it, you can better manage it. If you can't see it, you can't manage it, and you're just throwing good money after bad out the window."
What it was about
Employers don't have to treat cost, care, and employee experience as competing priorities; by using data (self-funding/stop loss), personalized voluntary benefits, and better education, they can build a benefits package that is affordable and still delivers a strong employee experience.
By the numbers
Key notes
- Look at a self-insured option if available, because it gives you visibility into actual claims data and utilization, which lets you manage costs instead of just cutting them.
- If self-funding isn't an option, consider a higher deductible plan paired with voluntary/ancillary products (accident, critical illness, HSAs/HRAs) that cover the gap the higher deductible creates.
- Push your broker and vendor partners hard to bring you the full range of available solutions (drug importation programs, high-performing networks, decision-support tools) rather than accepting the first off-the-shelf option.
Take this back Monday
Survey your team on which voluntary benefits (accident, critical illness, pet insurance) they'd actually value instead of renewing the same one-size-fits-all package.
Cost, care, and employee experience aren't competing priorities — with claims data and personalized voluntary benefits, we can manage cost without cutting care.
Watch out for
- Treating voluntary benefits as a 'check the box' exercise instead of a thoughtfully curated, personalized package.
- Offering only one-size-fits-all benefits packages instead of tailoring products to what different employee segments actually need.
- Not leveraging historical claims/utilization data when selecting plans, which leaves employers unable to see (and therefore manage) where money is going.
Before running strategy at Corestream, she founded Footstep Labs, a physical therapy telehealth startup, after stints at Bain and Golden Gate Capital.
