The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Broker Innovation: Health, Welfare, Outplacement and More as Employee Benefit Brokers Expand their Partnership with HR

    SAN DIEGO, CA, May 19, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Affordable Care Act (ACA) changed the playing field for many employee benefit brokers. The self-service nature of Healthcare Exchanges, Medical Loss Ratios (MLR), and increasing migration to self-funded and defined contribution plans has challenged traditional broker services. It has also put pressure on commissions.

In response, many brokers began to reinvent themselves. They increasingly embraced things like enrollment services, HR consulting, and other forms of ancillary support. Many became experts on innovative cost-saving solutions and compliance. By diversifying their portfolio of services, they enhanced their value as trusted advisors and improved their ability to partner with clients in finding the right solutions, products, and business partners.

This is good news for HR executives and their organizations. They benefit from the expertise, research, and consulting services available through their brokers - often at little or no cost. In the process, they get better integration of services and gain support along a broader continuum of HR services.

As brokers look to the future, they see ever-increasing needs for value-added services. Indeed, covering a wider spectrum of employee lifecycle services is becoming vogue and some early adopters have grown their businesses dramatically.

Brokers as Partners with Human Resources

There has always been a symbiotic relationship between HR and their brokers. Brokers are continually nurturing that relationship and there's no better way to do that than to demonstrate the value they provide relative to HR's primary focus - their human capital.

While the ACA may have been a catalyst for some changes, there are many more reasons (competitive and otherwise) for brokers to add value to their services. To this end, brokers are pursuing new and creative approaches to enhance their value proposition. Outplacement is a great example and brokers play a starring role.

Until recently, outplacement services were not within the purview of employee benefit brokers. That changed when subscription-based outplacement came on the scene. Now, 100% of an employer's workforce can be covered for a small amount per-employee-per-month (PEPM) - less than a dollar PEPM for larger employers.

A shortcoming of older outplacement models is their high cost and limited utilization. The adaptive subscription model capitalizes on new technology to cover 100% of an employer's separating employees. By spreading risk and cost, it makes outplacement affordable for the masses.

Full employee coverage, including seasonal employees, facilitates significant unemployment compensation savings for the employer. These savings can more than offset the cost of the outplacement services and can result in a windfall of savings for large employers.

The cost-saving potential of the subscription model will be clear to most CEOs, CFOs, and HR executives. They know it is generally far more cost-effective to pay monthly premiums than to pay for episodic events as they occur. In much the same way organizations pay monthly premiums for medical, dental, life, etc., they would pay a small monthly premium for outplacement services. It's a perfect fit with the way other broker-provided benefits are managed, and firms like US Marketplace are working with employee benefit brokers to help set it up.

With cost barriers broken and the availability of 100% employee coverage, socially responsible outplacement is a reality. Brokers can now offer a high-value, low-cost benefit that is good for employees and employers alike. It's a "win/win" situation for everyone involved.

Job Hunter Pro - Our Goal and What it Means to You
We think of outplacement as a socially responsible employee benefit. Each year, millions of displaced employees in America are left to fend for themselves in their quest for reemployment.

Old-style outplacement is way too expensive and hugely underutilized. We want to bring socially responsible outplacement to the masses. The commoditization of high quality outplacement that retains personalized support will help us get there.

www.jobhunterpro.com

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