How Companies Are Adapting Their Benefits To Help Employees Through COVID-19

Here’s how to make the best out of a worst-case scenario

Employees who need medical treatment for COVID could face tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills—and that applies even to those with employer-provided health insurance. While several new pieces of legislation have been passed to help Americans address COVID-related healthcare, childcare and sick leave expenses, HR practitioners around the country have worked to bring relief to employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the solutions they’ve implemented have come in the form of new or modified benefits programs. Here are some ways HR teams are helping employers and employees make the best out of a worst-case scenario. 

HR administrators have had to field an unprecedented number of benefits-related questions, often from anxious employees who have been furloughed or laid off. Of course, employees have needed guidance on what the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the CARES Act mean for their benefits coverage. 

But they’ve also had many questions about what changes to FSA, HSA and commuter plans are allowed, including whether or not the pandemic is considered a qualifying event that would allow employees to change their FSA elections. For the record, the COVID-19 pandemic is not in itself a qualifying event, although an employee may experience a qualifying event due to circumstances related to the pandemic. 

To address these and other common FAQs, employers are preparing simple, easy-to-understand communications for their employees, with a focus on providing extra guidance around HSA and FSA management right now.  

While employee-wide education is helpful, communication tailored to each employee’s unique situation is best, whenever possible. To understand an employee’s specific needs during the pandemic, give them space to share, and then listen closely to what they say. 

Through casual conversation, you can learn quite a lot about an employee’s new family and work environment. This type of exchange can help you determine which benefits solution to steer them toward, but it can also open up opportunities for a company to show personal attention and care to an employee. For example, I spoke recently to an HR executive who, after learning that an employee was working from a barstool at her kitchen island, saw to it that a proper office chair was mailed to the employee’s home. 

COBRA can be troublesome for HR practitioners to manage in house, and with all the different types of terminations, layoffs and furloughs being experienced through this quarantine, now is not the time to make errors when it comes to ensuring employees’ continuation of benefits. Especially, if you have 20 or more employees, it’s best to outsource COBRA administration from a compliance perspective. 

Now that the workplace is virtual for most employees, employers are turning even more so to digital technology to engage them with information about their benefits. 

One company I spoke with put together a benefits webinar specifically for its Spanish-speaking clients. Another is conducting its enrollment meetings via Zoom and packaging benefits information of interest to their employees into YouTube videos. 

Storytelling and brevity are key here; for example, if an employee doesn’t see how a particular benefit would be useful for them, consider how a 30-second video interview with a colleague who has enjoyed the benefit might compel them to reconsider. 

As always, if you don’t know how you’re doing, ask for feedback. At WEX, we wanted to be sure that we’ve done a good job of meeting our employees’ needs during the COVID-19 crisis, so our human resources and corporate communications teams paired up to ask them for feedback via a survey. In return, we received both important reassurances that we’re on the right track as well as suggestions of changes to implement. 

The COVID-19 crisis has been a call to action for HR practitioners. Your assistance, compassion and creativity have been needed more urgently than ever before. And the solutions you’re developing continue to inspire other companies as they pivot to meet the needs of today’s employees.