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

MARLBOROUGH, MA--(Marketwire - June 1, 2009) - 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.