Seven Reasons to Focus on Vision During Your Customer’s Annual Enrollment
by Tracy L. Dieterich, CRPS

It’s enrollment season and the stakes are high for your customers. This is their best opportunity to educate employees about their benefits and to lay the foundation for employees to take advantage of these offerings to promote their health and well being throughout the year.
It’s tempting for your clients to focus almost exclusively on the medical benefit since it’s where they’ve placed the biggest investment, but they could really be missing the boat if they don’t take the time to educate employees on the vision benefit as well.

It’s a relatively simple benefit and that’s one of the things that makes it so appealing, but there’s more to the vision benefit than meets the eye. The benefit enrollment period is the perfect time for your customers to open employees’ eyes to the value in this small but mighty complement to their overall benefits package.
Just consider these top seven reasons for focus on vision during your customer’s annual enrollment this year:

1. Deal With Rising Healthcare Costs

Health insurance costs are the fastest growing expense for today’s employers. Over the past decade, employer-sponsored health premiums have jumped up 119%, according to a study by the Henry J. -Kaiser Family Foundation. Employee Health and total insurance costs for employers are projected to reach close to $850 billion by 2019, according to a 2009 report by the National Coalition on Health Care.

It’s pretty obvious that a vision benefit can promote the eye health of employees, but it’s also a powerful weapon in managing their overall health and their healthcare expenses as well. That’s because comprehensive eye exams (that include dilation of the pupil) can provide early detection of costly medical conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, neurological disorders, and even certain cancers. Also, many people don’t realize that these diseases and the medications they take for them can affect vision, so getting an eye exam and wearing the right vision wear is really important even when the diseases are in the early stages.

2. Show You’re Ahead of Pending Healthcare Reform

If you’ve been following the two healthcare reform proposals laid out by the House and Senate, you know that both include a provision about essential benefit packages. If some form of the legislation passes, employers may have to include vision plans as a standard offering to their employees and they may need to cover a large percentage of the cost.

If employers eventually have to integrate a vision plan into their benefit package anyway, providing it up front (before the hassle of meeting all the new mandate provisions) will reassure employees that their company has made a commitment to their eye health and their overall health without being forced to do so.

3. Improve Productivity

It’s pretty obvious that employees need to see well to work well. But employers may be surprised to hear that miscorrected vision can reduce an employee’s productivity up to 20% even when it’s so slight that it’s not even noticed. Imagine the impact on the performance of a worker who is putting off getting a new pair of glasses because she wants to avoid the cost of an eye exam and new lenses and frames.

Plus, consider that up to 90% of workers, who use a computer regularly, develop symptoms of Computer Vision Syndrome, according to a 2009 report by the American Optometric Association (AOA). Computer Vision Syndrome can include eyestrain and fatigue, headaches and blurred vision. Fortunately, certain eyewear products can help alleviate these effects.

Keep in mind that full-blown vision problems, such as cataracts or glaucoma, can lead to higher absenteeism and lower productivity. This presenteeism can result in productivity losses that are 30 times greater than just absenteeism alone, according to The Vision Council.

4. Take Advantage of the Benefits of Today’s Vision Wear

Many employers and employees assume that a vision plan just covers basic eyeglasses and contact lenses, but today’s lens options are much broader; they‘re designed to address employees’ lifestyle and eye health needs. Many vision plans are now covering these products or providing deep discounts.

For example, photochromic lenses, like Transitions lenses, offer anti-reflective coatings, which can minimize glare and reflections, helping reduce eyestrain and fatigue. They also battle light sensitivity frequently caused by common medications and systemic diseases like diabetes. These products can also get rid of reflections from office lighting. When used outdoors, photochromics also block ultraviolet (UV) rays, which can contribute to cataract and macular degeneration. These lenses are also available in impact-resistant lens materials, which can help employees avoid eye injuries on the job on during high-impact activities.

5. Meet the Needs of Older Workers

The number of workers aged 45 to 54 will increase by more than 20% by 2010 and the number of workers aged 55 to 65 will more than double, according to a 2005 Conference Board Report. It is especially important for this population to have eye exams and vision wear to protect their eyes from UV since several eye diseases become more common with age. Plus, studies have shown that workers over 60 need more light in order to see optimally, so lens options that reduce reflections and glare might be particularly helpful. One last thing to keep in mind is that older employees may have renewed interested in ancillary benefits, such as vision, since Medicare may subsidize some medical benefits.

6. Meet the Needs of Employees with Children

Parents will appreciate a vision benefit that supplements the health and well being of their families, but only if they know why it’s so critical to their kids’ health. During benefit enrollment, your clients can emphasize that proper vision is a key component to children’s learning. One in four U.S. children suffer from undiagnosed vision problems, according to a 2006 report by The Vision Council.

Aside from allowing an eye doctor to provide children with a proper lens correction, eye exams help detect eye conditions, such as strabismus (crossed eyes) and lazy eye, which can be treated successfully, without surgery, if caught early.

On the vision wear side, kids spend more time outdoors than adults and are much more susceptible to eye damage from the sun. They need eyewear that blocks UV and glare and has impact resistance to protect their eyes from trauma. Many plans recognize the unique eye health needs of kids and have special coverage options for them. Your customers should make sure employees are aware of these aspects of their benefits.

7. Respond to A Higher Risk for Women and Ethnic Groups

Women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, making their unique healthcare needs even more important for employers to address. Many of your employer customers may not know that women are more likely than men to suffer from eye-related diseases and certain conditions that can affect the eyes, including autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. According to a recent survey by Transitions Optical, they are also more likely than men to experience trouble seeing at night, eyestrain, light sensitivity, and dry eye. Pregnancy can also contribute to temporary and long-term eye problems. The appropriate eye care and eyewear can address all of these factors.

Similarly, several minority groups are growing quickly, so understanding and helping them understand their unique eye health needs is important to ensure they are taking care of themselves so they can do their best on the job.

Employees of several ethnic backgrounds, such as Hispanics and African-Americans, are more susceptible to serious vision problems or diseases, such as diabetes, that can affect visual health. It is especially important for these employees to get regular eye care and protect their eyes from damaging factors, such as ultraviolet light. Unfortunately, they are less likely to seek and receive the vision care they need, which is where employer education on your part can make a difference.

The Importance of Education

Despite all of the reasons why comprehensive vision plans are important for employee health, productivity and satisfaction, employers aren’t that aware of them, so they tend to spend little time discussing vision with employees. This disconnect is unfortunate because consumers aren’t aware of the importance of eye health or how they can use their vision plan to protect the health of their eyes. Only 7% of people know that the sun can damage their eyes, according to a national survey by Transitions. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that one in five people has never visited an eye doctor and fewer than half request eyeglass lenses that provide UV protection.

Despite this general lack of awareness and action, eight out of 10 consumers say a vision plan is important to them although only six out of 10 need vision correction, according to a 2009 survey by Jobson Research.

Also, most HR professionals agree that their employees would be interested in learning about the importance of regular eye exams to promote eye health and about eight out of 10 think their employees would like to learn more about lens technologies, according to an HR.com Survey of HR professionals.

Armed with this knowledge, challenge yourself to make a difference by weaving vision into your healthcare discussions with your clients. Once you’ve helped them understand the value in their vision plan, help them get the word out to their employees with resources like educational newsletters, fact sheets, and Websites, which are some of their preferred methods.
Be sure to use this approach to promote vision during your client’s annual enrollment periods and throughout the year to demonstrate your commitment to helping them improve their bottom line while also helping their employees feel and perform their best.
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Tracy L. Dieterich, CRPS is senior vice president of Employee Benefits at Wells Fargo Insurance Services. In this role, he helps employers throughout the southwest region design and manage their insurance programs.
Personally affected by the impact of vision loss (his mother has age-related macular degeneration), he uses educational resources to promote the importance of vision benefits for today’s workforce, such as the broker white paper “Communicating the Value of Vision to Employers,” which is available for download at HealthySightWorkingForYou.com. Dieterich is also a member of the board of directors for Prevent Blindness Texas. He can be reached at tracy_dieterich@wellsfargois.com.