Encouraging Personal Responsibility... it Might Be Worth the Effort!
Thank you Ana Sabatino, VP of Consumer Driven Health Plans at CIGNA for being a wonderful guest on the 401(k) Fridays Podcast! If you have not had a chance to check out our interview, click below.
Now for this installment of the 401(k) Fridays Fiduciary Fact and Folly! As a reminder, during this post I extract two salient points from the podcast interview that stuck out to me and could benefit employers One that is fact based and the other a story, example or thought shared by our guest that if not followed, could lead to folly for an employer.
First a fact, there is a strong link between health and wealth. Without repeating all of the great benefits that Ana pointed out, I want to hone in on one of the key concepts she mentioned, personal responsibility. For employees in a Consumer Driven Health Plan (CDHP), where to make the most of the plan they need to become better consumers of healthcare, CIGNA has the data which supports they have fewer ER visits, more preventative visits and shorter hospital stays. It is hard for me to believe, that these new habits employees are learning on investigating and engaging with a CDHP, can not be borrowed or translated to the retirement side of their lives to encourage better decision making, more planning which can result in better outcomes!
If as an organization you decide to embrace the concept of marrying strategies to improve your employee’s health and wealth, be sure to take the proper steps. Create a three year plan, enlist key stake holders across the organization, create a cross functional team both internally and with your consultants and establish metrics and a scorecard to measure results. I am going to borrow a few tip from a prior fiduciary Fact and Folly, You can’t eat an elephant in one bite, Ana suggested a three year plan for a reason, don’t do too much and jeopardize your long term results to realize a big short term impact. Also, for your scorecard mix both realistic goals you would should hit, but a few stretch goals to work towards as well. For our folly today, I think Yogi Berra said it well, if you don’t know where you are going, any place will do!
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If you would like some more personal support to develop a strategy to create better consumers within your workforce or would like help to create your cross-functional team to develop a plan to take advantage of the savings and improved outcomes of combining the health and wealth conversation, send an email to info@401kfridays.com. There is no pressure and no commitment, and who knows, we might be able to help!
