Even though hospitals are no longer overwhelmed with the pandemic-related influx of patients, which drove many employees to become burned out and in search of new employment opportunities, healthcare organizations are still troubled by high levels of turnover. The driving factor for many employees, including physicians, nurses, administrative staff, and other employees, is a desire for improved compensation and a better work-life balance. For many healthcare HR departments, managing benefits can be a challenging task, as companies look to balance the desire to provide attractive benefits with the need to remain cost-effective and control benefits costs. Thus, healthcare CHROs can gain significant benefits when they outsource employee benefits administration instead of keeping it in-house. 

Employment Challenges Facing Healthcare Organizations

Turnover within healthcare organizations can cause many challenges across the entire organization from patient and employee experience to the HR department. Patients are affected when healthcare organizations have high turnover rates because it can cause staff-to-patient ratios to increase, negatively impacting the quality of care or causing patients to lose faith in their healthcare providers. At the same time, replacing employees can be a significant expense, with regular positions costing between eight and nine months of the employee’s salary to fill. For even more specialized positions, expenses may reach as much as 200% times that of the employee’s annual salary.  

In many instances, turnover can be attributed to burnout, heavy workloads, and a perceived imbalance between this workload and compensation. A valuable strategy to improve employee satisfaction and reduce turnover is to outsource employee benefits administration to control costs and offer comprehensive benefits packages to employees throughout healthcare organizations. 

Controlling Costs to Offer Better Benefits

Benefits administration is often one of the top expenses for many companies, eroding profits over time. However, choosing to outsource employee benefits administration can help keep costs under control. While there are many ways that choosing to outsource to a benefits administrator can keep costs down, such as by reducing HR headcount, when it comes to benefits, they will be able to use an aggregate number of employees for the companies they serve to negotiate better deals with suppliers like health or dental insurance companies. Thus, they’ll be able to help you put together comprehensive, competitive benefits packages that can incentivize retention and recruitment. For industries where demand for talent is fiercely competitive, such as healthcare, this can be a competitive advantage that can position the organization for success.

Improving Employee Experience

In addition to offering better benefits packages, outsourcing employee benefits administration can give the existing HR team time to focus on more strategic activities. As a result, freed from menial, repetitive, and time-consuming administrative tasks, the HR team will be able to be more responsive to employees’ other concerns, leading to higher employee engagement and retention.

For some employees, discussing employee benefits can be a sensitive subject, especially regarding health and medical benefits. By discussing these topics with an outsourced benefits administrator, it can remove some of the discomfort associated with talking about the subject with coworkers. They may also feel more comfortable asking questions to an external resource, which can ensure they fully understand and utilize the benefits they have access to.

When healthcare CHROs decide to work with a benefits administrator like Corban OneSource, they can rest assured that their organization’s benefits needs are being expertly addressed. Corban OneSource has more than two decades of experience in providing benefits administration and other HR services to companies with 75 to 6,000 employees. To learn more about how we can help your healthcare organization, contact us today to learn more.Â