“It’s like a quick return of premium
back in their pocket on an annual basis,
for either them or for their spouse,” he
says.
Under its “Express Wellness,” Unum
allows wellness screenings that are conducted during employers’ benefit fairs
to be used for that first year’s wellness
benefit.
As employers
continue to modify
their benefit
offerings, will
they be able to
continue to offer
their employees
the benefits
they feel are
valuable?
“If they have a blood test — usually
a cholesterol test or a blood sugar test
— at a benefits fair, they will be able to
use that right away,” Jilek explains. “It
gets people to really see a tangible ben-
efit from their product right away instead
of having to wait for that PSA test or a
mammogram later in their first year.”
A wellness screening benefit is
just one of a host of new value-added
services being added to carriers’ CI
products. Some, for example, are adding
a support network by enlisting partners
such as Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong
program, Jilek observes.
“We’ve also seen the rollout of Best
Doctors with some carriers,” Jilek says.
The newest of these value-adds
may be the addition of robust health
advocacy programs. AlwaysCare’s health
advocacy program is “another way we
give something back to employees,”
Weiser notes. AlwaysCare’s program
is very similar to an EAP. An employee
has 24/7 access to a personal assistant
who handles questions and requests
