Josua Joubert, CEO and principal officer at CompCare Medical Scheme, challenges HR leaders to look beyond the price tag of healthcare benefits and consider the value they deliver to employees and the business.
He highlights how prioritising prevention, early intervention, mental wellbeing and easier access to care can transform healthcare from a standard employee benefit into a strategic advantage, while ensuring that solutions reflect the diverse needs and income levels of today’s workforce.
Q: When HR talks about healthcare benefits, are they still thinking too much about what the benefit costs and not enough about what it enables?
Cost will always be an important consideration for HR, particularly as healthcare costs continue to rise. But the conversation needs to move beyond “How much does this benefit cost?” to “What does this benefit enable our employees to do?”
A healthcare benefit should enable employees to access appropriate care when they need it, identify health risks earlier, manage their wellbeing and get support before a health issue becomes more serious.
For HR, the real value lies in understanding whether the healthcare offering is helping employees stay healthier, access care earlier and remain productive, rather than simply looking at the cost of providing the benefit.
Q: What does it actually mean for healthcare benefits to become a workforce advantage rather than simply another employee benefit?
It means making healthcare an active part of the organisation's people strategy, rather than something that simply appears on the list of benefits employees receive.
A workforce advantage is created when employees have healthcare options that are affordable, accessible, relevant to their circumstances and easy to understand and use.
Different employees have different needs. A young employee starting their career may have very different healthcare priorities from an employee supporting a family or someone managing ongoing health risks.
HR therefore has an opportunity to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach and consider whether the healthcare offering can support employees at different life and health stages as well as income levels.
That is where healthcare can become a workforce advantage – by helping employees feel supported while also contributing to a healthier and more resilient workforce.
Q: What are employers missing when they measure the success of a healthcare benefit primarily through uptake and claims?
Uptake and claims are important, but they only tell part of the story.
If HR only looks at how many employees joined a medical scheme or how much they are claiming, they may miss whether employees are accessing preventative care, getting help early, understanding their benefits or using the healthcare services available to them effectively.
For example, low utilisation doesn't necessarily mean employees don't need a particular service. It could mean they don't know that it exists, don't understand how to access it, can't afford the associated costs or don't see healthcare as something they need to address until they become ill.
The bigger question should therefore be: “Is our healthcare offering helping employees manage their health proactively, or are we only seeing them when there is already a problem?”
Q: How can HR move from reacting to healthcare problems once they become expensive to identifying risks earlier?
This is where prevention and early intervention become critical.
Rather than waiting for employees to become seriously ill or for healthcare costs to escalate, HR can encourage a culture where employees are supported to identify and manage potential health risks earlier.
That could include greater awareness of preventative screenings, regular health assessments, mental wellbeing support, primary healthcare access and making it easier for employees to seek advice when they have a concern.
It is also about making healthcare easier to access. If getting help is complicated, expensive or time-consuming, employees may delay seeking care.
HR therefore needs to ask: Are we supporting and educating employees to take action early?
Q: How can CHROs make sure their healthcare offering keeps pace with what their workforce actually needs?
The first step is to understand that the workforce is not one homogeneous group.
Employees differ in terms of age, income, family responsibilities, health needs and life stage. A healthcare offering that works well for one group may not necessarily meet the needs of another.
CHROs should therefore regularly look at workforce demographics, employee feedback, healthcare utilisation and emerging health needs when reviewing their healthcare strategy.
The question shouldn't simply be: “What healthcare benefit can we afford to offer?”
It should also be: “Does this healthcare offering make sense for the workforce we have today?”
This could mean providing different levels or types of healthcare options that allow employees to choose solutions that are more appropriate to their individual health and wellness circumstances and affordability.
Q: How can CHROs make healthcare benefits work harder for both employees and the business?
CHROs can make healthcare benefits work harder by looking at the whole healthcare journey, rather than focusing only on the medical aid product.
That means considering:
- Can employees afford the healthcare option available to them?
- Can they access care easily?
- Do they understand what they are entitled to?
- Are preventative services encouraging them to identify risks earlier?
- Can they access support for mental wellbeing?
- Are there digital or convenient ways to access healthcare?
- Does the offering cater for different employee needs and income levels?
When these elements work together, healthcare can support both employee wellbeing and business objectives.
The benefit becomes more than something employees use when they are sick. It becomes a tool that supports prevention, early intervention, access to care and, ultimately, a healthier and more supported and productive workforce.
The healthcare needs of today's workforce are increasingly diverse, and a successful healthcare strategy needs to recognise those differences. The focus should be on creating a healthcare offering that supports employees before they become seriously ill, when they need help and throughout their different stages of life.
A simple five-point checklist can help HR leaders assess whether their healthcare strategy is delivering real workforce value:
- Affordability - Can our employees realistically afford the healthcare available to them?
- Access – Can they get the care they need easily and when they need it?
- Prevention – Are we helping employees identify and manage health risks early?
- Relevance – Does our offering reflect the different needs, life stages and income levels within our workforce?
- Engagement – Do employees understand their healthcare benefits and know how to use them?
The ultimate shift is from seeing healthcare as a cost or a standard employee benefit to seeing it as an investment in the health, resilience and potential of the workforce.
