Benefits administration is one of the most important internal roles at any company. Whether you have tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees, you’re tasked with providing them the personalized choices in benefits that are fast becoming industry-standard, and there are multiple national and local regulations to follow. Regardless of whether the company is growing quickly, or in a period of reassessing your strategy, you need a partner that can deliver a benefit employees will actually use, without blowing up your budget, all while integrating into your systems and providing the reporting data you need.

Provide an industry-standard benefit without the “noise”

An estimated 85% of employed Americans are leaving their jobs for better benefits. In short, even in an uncertain economy, benefits matter.

As the meaning of “total compensation package” has expanded from the simple concept of salary and health insurance to a large umbrella of benefits that encompass an employee’s entire life (personal, financial, health, etc.), companies have scrambled to meet these demands. To do so, they often partner with vendors that fall short of expectations. However, it’s the quality of the benefits that you should focus on, not the number. Offering a benefit that’s difficult to use can have big consequences and hamstring recruitment and retention efforts.

When it comes to HSAs, we’ve found that companies have fielded many employee complaints over an HSA that was difficult to use and that didn’t provide the robust investment features. When HR professionals need to respond to complaints and questions (i.e. noise) about how to use an HSA it causes them to divert resources away from other initiatives. We would call this “benefit” a net negative.

Companies that have had success with benefits administration have chosen vendors that:

• Have a platform designed based on user experience research.

• Can integrate with their existing technology.

• Offer easy plan management.

• Empower employees to make informed decisions about their benefits.

• Provide employee education, onboarding, communication and engagement.

• Provide a mobile app, since more than 12% of employees prefer to access benefits on their phones.

Keep these qualities in mind as you assess benefits platforms and vendors that can meet the needs of your company and your employees.

Get the data you need to stay compliant and manage effectively

Good HR reporting helps management and executive teams stay on top of what’s happening within an organization. When presented with clear reports that contain actionable information, they can spot trends early and address problems before they get out of control. But before they get good reports, they have to collect good data, and use a platform that makes it easy to do so. Unfortunately, many HSA and benefits platforms make reporting complicated and clunky and do not have reports and dashboards are part of their platform.

HR professionals also need a clear overview of how employees are utilizing benefits. Good HR reporting is essential to making good, informed decisions about the business. And a key piece of good HR reporting is a platform that provides good data, displayed in a clear and usable way. A benefits platform that makes reporting easy to understand and share will also help you do your job, and serve your employees, more effectively.

Get a scalable benefit that allows your company to grow

Your labor costs are already high, and may be climbing, despite an uncertain economy. According to SHRM, the cost to hire someone increased more in the third quarter of 2021 than it had at any other point since 2001. It’s not just wages that have increased the cost of labor, but the cost to provide benefits as well. In fact, the cost of providing health benefits is one of the biggest hurdles many large companies face to hiring talent.

If your company wants to grow but is navigating skyrocketing labor costs, adding a high deductible health plan (HDHP) along with a Health Savings Account (HSA) to your benefits offering can help. HDHPs typically have the lowest annual premiums of the health plans while still providing employees the freedom of a PPO network. They also come with the added opportunity to contribute to an HSA which can act as a type of incentive for workers to choose this more affordable benefit.

HSAs help offset the annual high deductible of an HDHP by giving workers the chance to save for qualified medical expenses tax-free. They also roll over from year-to-year, allowing account holders to build a medical nest egg for future needs. In addition, HSAs can also act as a supplemental retirement savings account once the account holder turns 65, giving participants added financial security. These features are making HSAs increasingly popular among employees of all ages.

Meet your HSA needs with Lively

Lively is designed with the needs of your employees in mind. We built our platform and dashboards to be intuitive, no matter what action your employee wants to take, their journey to complete it is straightforward. In fact, 70% of users say ease-of-use is their favorite thing about Lively.

Lively makes the user experience easier with comprehensive employee onboarding, continuing employee education and clear, jargon-free communication. Our resource center includes rich and up-to-date information about how HSAs function, and IRS rules about annual limits, qualification requirements and qualified medical expenses. In addition, our customer service team is available via phone, email or chat.

Other popular features include: our mobile app, easy reimbursements, and our Expense Scout feature that combs debit card activity to find qualified health expenses that are not yet reimbursed. Lively’s features encourage employee “self-service” to improve user satisfaction and reduce the resources HR Departments need to manage this benefit.

In terms of plan management, Lively’s proprietary technology allows companies to customize the data they collect and the way it’s displayed, to ensure the information their HR departments are working with is accurate. Our reports make year-end reconciliations easier and help you stay in compliance with local and federal regulations. You will also get all of the employee utilization information you need to make the best benefits choices for your company.

Get started with Lively

For many employers, benefits administration is a constant “growth area”. But with Lively, you get a true partner. Our HSA platform is not only easy for both employers and employees to use, but we take the burden of employee onboarding and education off of HR’s shoulders.

Our proprietary technology allows for personalization in design, data collection and reporting to ensure you get the accurate data you need, presented in a clear and actionable way. The nature of our pricing enables you to offer all of this at scale. If you’re ready to offer your workforce one of the most popular benefits with a provider that makes administering said benefit easy, reach out today.