Planning Ahead for the New Year

As the month of December draws to a close and employees are taking some much needed time off, things should hopefully quiet down in terms of deadlines and client demands. This window is one to take advantage of and provides for an ideal time to do some strategic planning and critical thinking. 

It’s easy to get so busy that you forget to carve out time to gather feedback, review and analyze results. 

Now’s the time to look back on the year, your group benefits claims experience, employee satisfaction, as well as benefits and retirement savings programs goals and results. 

But…how do you know what worked well and if employees value the benefits they have available to them? 

And…if you conducted an employee engagement survey, what are you doing about the key results and how to they relate to your current group benefits plan design?  

What actions are you planning on carrying forward into the new year? 

These are key questions that can be distilled through some basic critical thinking. What does this mean? It involves consciously making time to analyze information in order to form an opinion or make a decision, and consider such influencing factors as underlying motivation.

Consider 6 Critical Thinking Questions

According to TeachThought.com, 6 critical thinking questions for any situation include:

1. What’s happening? Establish the basics and begin forming questions.
2. Why is it important? Ask yourself why this is or isn’t significant.
3. What don’t I see? Consider, alone or with others, if there’s any crucial information or perspective you might be missing, or that the ‘thing’ in question is missing.
4. How do I know? Identify how you know what you think you know and how that meaning was constructed.
5. Who is saying it? Identify the ‘position’ of the ‘thing’ – a speaker and their position on an issue and then consider how that position could be influencing their thinking.
6. What else? What if? Ask, ‘What else should we consider?’ And ‘If we consider it, how will it change X or Y?’.

You can adapt these questions to help you analyze the success of your employee experience and how your current group benefits program aligns with and supports your workplace goals and values. 

Remember to Ask for Help

You don’t have to tackle this part of a year-end reflection and analysis alone. Working with a trusted advisor and consultant can make the process much easier. They can run key reports for you, synthesize the data in the reports so it makes sense for your organization and brainstorm with you about key next steps and action items.

5 Questions to Consider

When meeting with your advisor, here are 5 questions to help you with your plan review and analysis:

1. To what degree can my plan be customized?
2. What online tools are available to support me (that I might not be aware of)?
3. What reporting is available and how is privacy factored in?
4. How can you help me effectively manage plan costs so that the plan remains affordable?
5. What value-added services are available to support employees (e.g. Employee Assistance Programs, Online Health-Risk Appraisals, and free mental health tools)

We specialize in this process and invite you to contact us with your questions. Let’s work together and create solutions that work best for you and your organization.