So, what’s your wellness strategy? This has become an everyday question, as human resources managers everywhere are taking a fresh look at employee wellness as a means to lower medical costs and boost employee productivity and overall satisfaction.
Adopting this philosophy is great, but amid the quest to find and implement the “perfect wellness program” for your company, it becomes all too easy to overlook an incredibly effective resource you may already have sitting in your toolbox—the vision benefit.
As assistant vice president of corporate benefits for 26,000 employees in nine hospitals and 25 allied health businesses, I view vision as a core benefit that should be part of an overall wellness benefits package for employees. I recognize that a vision plan has incredible potential to lower health care costs and boost productivity—a win-win for employers and our employees. However, for everyone to see the benefits, employees actually must first take advantage of their plan. And in terms of who’s responsible for making this a reality—we’ve been tagged; benefits managers are “it.”
A Fresh Look at the Vision Benefit
For some employees—and employers, for that matter—a vision benefit has historically been seen as an add-on benefit used on occasion to get a free eye exam so that you can get a new pair of glasses or a few boxes of contact lenses.
In reality, a quality vision benefit really serves as an “eye care benefit” and has so much more to offer. Getting regular, comprehensive eye exams allows an eye doctor to not only determine prescription changes, which can obviously be addressed with a lens correction, but also detect vision issues and diseases early. I’m a perfect example. Knowing my family history of glaucoma, I’ve been very diligent about getting regular exams. And, sure enough, a recent exam uncovered early signs of the disease in my own eyes, fortunately at a stage where I am able to seek treatment and hopefully keep the condition from progressing.
Plus, eye exams can also detect chronic health problems like diabetes and hypertension—often in their earliest stages, when employees can still take steps to change their lifestyles and stop these diseases in their tracks.
Awareness of the eyewear side of the vision benefit is undoubtedly limited among employees—and many employers. Sure, employees can get their new pair of basic glasses, but there are also many new lens options to help them see better and avoid potential damage. For example, there are photochromic lenses to provide UV protection and minimize light sensitivity from sun and glare, anti-reflective coatings to minimize reflections, and impactresistant materials to protect the eyes from trauma.
Coverage and discounts on products like these can help get employees in the habit of exploring the options that best suit their lifestyle needs. When employees see well and comfortably, it’s easier for them to perform their best, on and off the job.
Employees Want Vision Benefit but Don’t “Get It”
Offering both an employer-subsidized and voluntary version of our vision plan between our multiple employee locations in Maryland and Washington, D.C., I can attest to the fact that employees do value this benefit.
In our Baltimore hospitals, we subsidize half the cost of the vision benefit for employees, but in our Washington, D.C. locations, vision is completely voluntary. However, employee enrollment is similar.
This said, HR managers should keep in mind that vision plan enrollment does not necessarily equate to vision plan utilization. For example, at Medstar, our participation is about 66%, yet our utilization is approximately 48%. And the same type of thing is happening nationally.
I recently attended the annual education conference Transitions Academy for a managed vision care audience hosted by Transitions Optical Inc. At this event, we learned about new research results showing that nearly half of U.S. employees with access to a vision plan through their employer aren’t taking advantage of it, either by not enrolling (24%), or by enrolling but not actively using the plan to get an eye exam (30%). These findings suggest employees don’t necessarily see what they are missing. (Table 1)
In fact, one of the most common reasons employees list for not enrolling is not having vision or eye health problems. Even among employees who do enroll, they are most interested in discounts on eyewear, and while that’s no surprise, only about one in five chose detection of systemic disease as another reason. Since we know the importance of eye care for early disease detection, that data show a real disconnect.
I Agree, You Agree, We All Want Productivity
Depending on the structure of your company, you may have more or less of a need to focus on the costs associated with actually offering employee benefits. But regardless, everyone can agree on the importance of keeping employees well, lowering health care costs, and maintaining productivity in the process.
You may already have heard some of the alarming statistics on the impact of vision problems and diseases in the United States; for instance, that it costs $8 billion in annual productivity alone.* However, it’s easy to look at this big number and not really think about how it might translate to your own workforce.
Consider a recent tool launched by Transitions, the Healthy Sight Calculator, which shows how a premium level vision plan can affect your individual workforce. Available at HealthySightWorkingForYou.org/calculator, this complimentary online program tells you how many employees are likely to have several eye diseases, eye-related health conditions, and other vision problems, based on your location and the mix of age, gender, and ethnicity within your workforce.(Table 2) For each disease or condition, it provides a breakdown of potential medical costs and productivity losses that could be avoided by providing employees with a premium vision plan, and then provides an overall return on investment. For me, the numbers were compelling, especially when I realized, for the first time, the productivity gains if our associates not only enrolled, but utilized the vision benefit as a way to maintain eye health, and not just for glasses and contacts. This is so critical in our health care industry, because we have to maintain staffing levels, and if a bedside care giver isn’t able to perform his or her duties, we need to hire personnel to fill the void.
Education the Key to Realizing Vision Plan Potential
Even if you have a great plan in place, you can’t expect to reach your vision plan potential without communicating its worth to your employees.
Educate employees on the importance of regular eye exams and vision wear options; encourage them to make use of the benefit; and help them realize the true value you are offering them. This entails providing them with information on the connection between eye and overall health, the power of vision care for prevention and the importance of taking advantage of the right vision wear to help them see their best.
Part of my involvement at Transitions Academy was participating in a panel of HR managers to discuss our experiences with the vision benefit and brainstorm strategies for educating employees. Here are just a few highlights:
An additional strategy is to determine how many of your employees with chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes are making use of their vision benefit to receive regular exams. At Medstar, for example, we recently began gathering disease data on our employees, such as diabetes, and are finding that those who are enrolled in our vision benefit are more compliant with getting regular eye exams. Depending on the guidelines at your company, consider reaching out to diabetic or hypertensive employees who either aren’t enrolled in your vision benefit or haven’t used their vision benefit in a while, to remind them of the importance of eye care as part of their health care routine.
When you really look at all the things a vision benefit can do—at a very inexpensive cost, especially when compared with medical premiums—it’s a shame to think that we aren’t all making the most of it within our workforces.
To achieve greater employee wellness, we have to address the whole person, and recognize that there is more than one way to get employees thinking about their overall health, eye care being one. Considering that many employees probably find a visit to their eye doctor less intimidating than one to their general health physician, they may actually get an eye exam more frequently than they get a physical—making eye care a great way to get employees into the health care system.
We know employees value their vision but need guidance from professionals like you and me to realize how their vision benefit can help them make the most of
it. Together, we can capture their attention and succeed in making our workforces healthier medically and financially in the process.
Wendy Marshall has been with MedStar Health Inc. for 10 years in various roles. Her role at MedStar includes responsibility of the health and welfare and retirement programs for 26,000 associates. Prior to MedStar, Marshall was an implementation/project manager at ADP Benefit Services. She can be reached at 410-772-6931 or wendy. marshall[at]medstar.net.