Companies Making Progress in Measures to Reduce Health Care Benefit Costs Says New Workscape/Workforce Management

MARLBOROUGH, MA, Jun 01 (MARKET WIRE) --
Employees across a range of companies and industries have a newfound
appreciation of benefits and organizations have been increasingly able to
partner with employees to control rising health benefit costs in a number
of different ways, according to the latest findings of a survey of 787 HR
professionals conducted by Workscape, Inc., a leading provider of
outsourced benefits and talent management solutions, and Workforce
Management.

Nearly seventy-five percent of those surveyed said that their employees
had a heightened appreciation of benefits amidst rising economic
pressures. As a result of this appreciation, companies have been able to
engage employees on a wider range of health benefit plans and options.

For instance, the survey found that CDHPs and HDHPs are now offered in
nearly 50% of small and mid sized organizations and almost 2/3 of large
organizations, with a 10% increase in adoption by employees this year vs.
last year. Similarly, about 80% of large companies offer health/disease
management programs to employees. In both cases, companies have been able
to engage employees in using these programs by the use of incentives and
other decision support tools. According to the survey, 2/3 of companies
utilize tools to help employees make informed decisions about
participating in a CDHP or HDHP, and 40% use incentives to encourage
employees to participate in health/disease prevention programs.
Reflecting the Total Rewards theme of this year's WorldatWork conference,
the survey found that roughly 50% of all organizations are communicating
the value of total benefits statements to their employees.

In further evidence of companies seeking to cut costs around benefits
administration and employee servicing, outsourcing open enrollment of
benefits is becoming more common in organizations with larger employee
counts with roughly 35% of 5000+ employee organizations leveraging at
least some form of outsourced service assistance.

"These findings demonstrate that while companies are still facing
challenges in reducing their health benefit costs in this difficult
operating environment, they are also finding new ways to engage with their
employees around the renewed value of benefits perceived by their
workforce," said Tim Clifford, CEO of Workscape.

The full Workscape/Workforce Management study can be viewed and downloaded
at www.workscape.com/benefits2009.

About Workscape

Workscape is unique in its ability and demonstrated domain expertise in
addressing the talent management, benefits administration and employee
communication challenges of hundreds of organizations and millions of
workers across the country and across the globe. For the past decade,
Workscape has been delivering Web-based software and services that are
proven to help organizations reduce healthcare costs, improve adherence to
compensation budgets and ensure alignment between employee activities and
corporate goals. As a result, our employee-centric approach has
consistently helped organizations to achieve the highest return on their
greatest workforce expenditures: healthcare benefits and employee
compensation. For more information about Workscape, visit
www.workscape.com or call 888-605-9620.

About Workforce Management

Published by Crain Communications Inc, Workforce Management
(workforce.com) is the leading business publication for workforce
management and human resources professionals, providing news, trends and
analysis to 50,000 print and 376,336 registered online subscribers. Now
in its 88th year, Workforce Management is one of the oldest and largest
continuously published business magazines in the United States.

Copyright 2009, Market Wire, All rights reserved.

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