Understanding Integration: Size Matters

Employer size affects both how employers define integration, as well as their goals in integrating their employee benefits programs. 

From the results of our study of 800 employers, we discovered that different sized employers define integration differently, depending on how they are organized internally to deliver benefits - either a siloed approach with authority for different benefits residing in different parts of the corporate structure or in a consolidated organizational structure.

Smaller employers

For small employers, the goals they seek are cheaper coverage, lower benefits costs, administrative ease and the direct benefit of having their small, often specialized workforce on the job and not absent. With a limited workforce small employers simply can’t cover absent employee’s duties with temp workers or overtime as easily as larger employers.

Smaller employers that manage benefits from the same unit tend to define benefits integration as programs involving a single vendor or partnership of vendors while smaller employers in siloed organizations believe all medical treatment should come from one program regardless of injury cause.

Large employers

Benefits integration goals for large employers are to minimize the costs of absence including the productivity effects of lost time on the corporate mission and bottom line. They also seek to beef up their benefits tracking systems across benefits lines and simply access to benefits for their employees through integration.

Large employers organized in a consolidated manner tend to define integration as one single, seamless benefits program that that provides the same disability and medical coverage. When large employers retain a traditional, siloed benefits delivery structure, they tend to define integration as providing disability management and return to work the same way for all injuries, regardless of cause.

Mid-sized employers

Mid-sized employers share characteristics of both large and small employers. Their first focus is on medical care and quality as a means to assure employee satisfaction. They also seek to control lost days and unnecessary absence while simplifying benefits access through a single source.

Mid-sized employers organized in a consolidated fashion define integration as the means to a broader end: an employee-centered approach to benefits delivery. When they are in administrative silos, mid-sized employers view integration in the most basic manner, containing only one element of integrated claim management, such as a common intake or RTW program.