Good Benefits Rise to the Top: Our Ancillary Close-Up Issue
Five Ways to Help Your Clients See Their Vision Benefit in a New Light

by Robert Pariseau

You’ve just signed up some clients for their first-ever vision benefit, giving their employees access to comprehensive eye exams and numerous eyewear options. Fantastic! Now you can sit back and relax. Not so fast. We know that nearly half of today’s employees don’t take advantage of their company vision benefit, either by not enrolling or not using it to get an eye exam, according a 2010 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for Transitions Optical.
The disconnect may be a lack of communication since 60% of employers only talk to their employees about their vision benefit during annual enrollment. When employers do talk about vision, they usually stick to basics, like the cost of the plan and how often the employee can get a pair of eyeglasses or box of contact lenses. Only one employer in four includes information on eye health.
You might argue that just offering the vision benefit is a value-add, so why should brokers care whether employees actually take advantage of it? A quality vision benefit can do much more than most people realize. It’s a low cost way for employers to enhance other wellness efforts and improve their bottom line by minimizing medical costs and boosting productivity. But for this to work, employees need to use their plan, which means their employees need to be motivated to push them to do so.
That’s where your expertise comes in. Clients need your help to see the light about the potential behind their vision benefit, and, just as important, help them influence employee enrollment and utilization so they can see results. Consider these five key strategies to adopt with new and existing clients:

1. Introduce Them To a Neighborhood Fortuneteller

To illustrate how a vision benefit can affect the overall health of employers, explain to your clients how eye doctors are like fortunetellers in lab coats. With the eyes serving as a window to the body, a dilated eye exam can serve as a crystal ball, allowing an eye doctor to see the first signs of not only future eye diseases – like glaucoma or macular degeneration – but also medical conditions – like diabetes, hypertension, and even certain cancers that can affect vision and eye health.
It makes sense that early detection allows for early treatment and even prevention, which can have a huge affect on medical costs paid by the employer. For instance, 76% of people who find out they have pre-diabetes take steps to change their lifestyle to prevent the disease, according to CDC research. Taking these steps prevents or delays the development of diabetes by up to 58%, according to the American Diabetes Association. Results like these can mean significant savings, considering that estimated annual healthcare costs for someone with diabetes are about three times that of someone without the disease, according to the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Regular eye care can be a stepping stone to getting needed medical care, especially for high-risk employees who don’t see their general physicians as often as they should. This is especially true if they don’t realize they are at risk or they already have a medical problem.

2. Help Them Know Their Numbers

A picture may speak 1,000 words, but sometimes it’s the numbers that put the picture in perspective. Most employers would be surprised to learn just how many of their employees are at risk for eye disease or systemic diseases that can be detected through an eye exam. Even fewer probably know the extent of other vision problems in their workforce that can affect productivity.
If clients aren’t able to get eye-related disease information through their medical provider or another source, they can turn to the publicly available Healthy Sight Calculator (HealthySightWorkingForYou.org). It uses CDC prevalence data and a specific company’s workforce demographics to provide a breakdown of how many employees are likely to have several eye diseases, eye-related medical conditions, and vision issues. It then breaks down the potential medical cost and productivity loss that may be saved through early detection and eyewear options for vision management.

Based on my experience, your clients should be pretty impressed by the results since breaking down the vision-related costs associated with common medical problems really puts matters in perspective. Taking a look at these numbers helps your clients see that they may be throwing away precious dollars by not utilizing a premium vision plan.

While employers are evaluating a wide range of wellness plans based on incremental returns-on-investment, many have no idea that the modest vision plan they may already offer could be a powerful tool just waiting to be utilized.

3. Show Them the – Productivity Power Play

The huge affect that vision issues have on productivity (even among healthy workers) is one aspect of a vision benefit that most often surprises my clients. Research suggests that employees’ productivity can drop by up to 20% when their vision is only slightly miscorrected, so that they don’t even notice it. And even when employees do notice, they often put off seeing their eye doctor to update their eyewear or check for more serious problems. One of my clients even had an employee who walked around for a while with his glasses taped together instead of getting new ones!
Other employees may be wearing the right lens prescription, but still not be seeing well, due to environmental factors. For example, eyestrain is the number one complaint of all workers and 80% of Americans agree glare and bright light outdoors affect eyesight. A study by ISE Ergonomics reveals that employees may lose up to 15 minutes per day due to eye focusing problems, costing employers $2,103 per year for each employee who is suffering from this issue. Imagine that effect across a workforce and over time.

This is where sight-enhancing eyewear options can come in handy, both inside and outside the office. For instance, photochromic lens treatments minimize glare to lessen eyestrain and fatigue while protecting the eyes from UV damage outdoors. Anti-reflective coatings minimize reflections from sunlight or office lighting.

Many vision plan providers offer premium level plans that include full coverage or discounts on sight-enhancing lens options like these. It’s important to consider this when recommending plan options to employers since employers are likely to see the best possible return-on-investment with a comprehensive plan that allows for these important lens options. And interestingly, six out of 10 employees say they’d be more likely to enroll or re-enroll in their vision benefit if it included premium lens options, like Transitions lenses. Just offering the right options in your plans could be part of the key to increasing usage. But if employees don’t know products like these are available or they don’t understand how they can help, the resources will just go to waste and employers will have squandered their productivity power play.

4. Track Down – Real-World Results

People want proof. That’s understandable. So, start building your arsenal. Begin with the anecdotal. Nothing is more powerful than a personal story. Gather feedback from your clients about what’s working or not working with their current vision plan. Did an employee discover an early stage eye disease through a routine vision exam or even something more serious, like cancer? Did a company vision screening reveal that several employees weren’t seeing their best? What happened when they were fitted with the right eyewear?

Depending on their company guidelines, help your clients establish their own metrics to measure success. Many employers don’t even ask for vision plan utilization. They should be comparing data before and after implementing a premium vision plan and educating employees on the plan. Has enrollment and utilization gone up or down? Has there been a change in medical costs related to preventable disease, such as diabetes? What about days out of the office?

Try to incorporate anecdotes or quantitative results based on these kinds of questions when talking to a new or existing client about offering a vision benefit. Don’t forget to emphasize the low cost of even a premium level plan. It’s about $80 annually per employee compared to annual medical premiums (about $4,300 per employee, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics).

5. Help Them Bridge The Gap

Help clients identify why employees may not be enrolling in their vision benefit or are enrolling, but not using it to get regular eye care. You can help them implement an employee survey or conduct individualized outreach to ask questions about eye health, like whether they’ve had a comprehensive eye exam in the last year and why or why not and whether they are aware of the connection between the eyes and body. The results, which may be surprising, will probably suggest that employees just don’t understand all that a vision benefit can do for them.

One of the most common reasons that employees don’t enroll is that they think they don’t have eye or vision problems. But, eye doctors tell us that many eye diseases and problems can develop before people notice any symptoms. This is why comprehensive eye care should be a regular part of their healthcare routine, along with other critical health screenings.

Perhaps your client’s employees don’t like to go to the eye doctor or they feel that their employer did not explain the benefit well enough. Education about the importance of eye care and eyewear can address both of these problems. Your clients may discover that it would better meet their employees’ eye and overall health needs and expectations to upgrade to a more premium level plan, which ensures an eye exam once a year and coverage or discounts on premium lens options.

With the right vision plan in place, brokers can be a real help by offering their clients realistic employee education strategies to help their workforce understand the value they’re getting through their vision plan and why they should be using it as part of their overall healthcare routine. Some of the strategies include the following:

• Promote the vision benefit strategically throughout the year. Some employees are too overwhelmed with making decisions about their medical benefit to fully absorb information about their vision benefit, especially if they’re just automatically -re-enrolling. Upcoming national health observances that link to eye health, such as Eye Safety Awareness Week (June 27-July 5), UV Safety Month (July) or Diabetes Awareness Month (November), can be good opportunities to remind employees about the importance of early disease detection or UV protection for the eyes.
• Point your clients to complimentary educational materials to share with their employees via e-mail, direct mail, or in person. Many resources are available through your vision plan providers or independent organizations that focus on education about the importance of the vision benefit for the workforce.
• Remind employees that they can use their flexible spending accounts to pay for extras like lens option upgrades or an additional pair of glasses. Many employees stockpile their funds unintentionally until the end of the year, so it’s a great time to remind them to get their annual eye exam and to make sure they have the right eyewear to help them see their best.
• Shake things up by arranging for an eye doctor, such as one associated with your vision plan provider, to come to the enrollment meeting. Have the doctor available for individual questions with employees afterwards. It’s a great time to talk about eye and overall health needs of particular employee populations and who better to explain the importance of eye care than an eye care professional? If the enrollment meeting doesn’t lend itself to this approach, schedule a visit right before, to get employees thinking about vision before the barrage of general enrollment materials hit.

Your clients probably already know that employees want a vision plan (more than eight in 10 say they do!). However, they just might be seeing it a little fuzzy. So help your clients bring into focus the aspects of a vision plan that will interest them the most and then help them integrate vision – first into their benefits package and then into their employee communication plan. They’ll have you to thank for the results.
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Rob Pariseau is the president of Benefits Solutions Group. He has more than 25 years in the benefits and HR industry, with expertise in technology, plan design, funding, and communication of healthcare and retirement plans through his previous work at Mass Mutual, Cigna, Ceridian and Wachovia. Serving as a consultant to Transitions Optical Inc., he has tested the Healthy Sight Calculator with employer clients, and recently presented their feedback at Transitions Academy 2010. The calculator is available as an educational resource at HealthySightWorkingForYou.org, along with additional employee education materials, and selling strategies for brokers. Rob holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Colgate University, the CEBS designation awarded by the Wharton School of Business and the International Association of Employee Benefit Plans, and the CLU designation awarded by The American College. He is a frequent speaker at industry functions and conferences. He can be reached at rob@bsgtoday.com