Stop Looking at Employee Costs in Silos: A Better Way to Evaluate Your Total Employee Spend

For most businesses and organizations, employee-related expenses are managed in separate buckets.

• Healthcare is reviewed at renewal. 

  
  

• Payroll has its own provider and budget. 

  
  

• Workers’ compensation is handled separately.

  
  

• Benefits administration, HR support and other services may each have their own vendors, contracts and fees.

Individually, each decision may make sense. But when was the last time you looked at all of them together?

The Problem with the Siloed Approach

Healthcare and employee benefits are among the most significant expenses many employers face, but they are only part of the total cost of employing and supporting a workforce.

And the impact of rising healthcare costs doesn’t necessarily stay within the healthcare budget. Recent research shows that these increases can have a ripple effect across other areas of employer spending, reinforcing the importance of looking at employee-related costs as part of a bigger picture.

Those numbers reinforce an important point: employee-related costs are interconnected.

When each expense is evaluated independently, it can be difficult to see the bigger picture.

Employers may be paying for overlapping services from multiple vendors.

Administrative fees may be buried within different programs.

A solution that appears cost-effective on its own may be less efficient when considered alongside everything else the company is purchasing.

The question shouldn’t simply be: “How can we spend less on healthcare?”

A better question is: “Are we optimizing the value across our total employee spend?"

Look at the Total Employee Offering

A more comprehensive review starts by putting the major components of employee-related spending on the same page.

That can include:

• Healthcare and other employee benefits

• Payroll and payroll administration

• Workers’ compensation

• HR and benefits administration

• Compliance and related services

• Other employee programs and vendor costs

Are you paying for: services your employees rarely use, overlapping services across multiple vendors, or hidden and embedded fees you may not even realize are there?

The goal isn't necessarily to cut each category. It's to understand where you are receiving the strongest value and where certain costs can be structured differently.

Those questions are much harder to answer when every expense is viewed through a separate lens.

Efficiency Doesn’t Have to Mean Fewer Benefits

Cost efficiency isn’t simply about taking something away from employees. In fact, a coordinated approach may uncover ways to maintain or improve the employee offering while managing the employer’s overall costs more effectively.

That can be particularly important for small and midsize businesses, which often want to offer competitive benefits but have fewer internal resources to analyze multiple vendors, programs and cost structures.

Before making the next benefits, payroll or HR decision in isolation, take a broader look.

Put your total employee-related spend on the table. Examine the vendors, fees, services and programs behind it. Then ask whether those dollars are working together as efficiently as they could be.

The TeamREX Ecosystem, an Alternative Solution

TeamREX gives employers access to a broad range of workforce solutions that work together to create cost efficiencies, simplified administration, and better value.

Rather than relying on a collection of unrelated providers, employers can access options across healthcare, employee benefits, payroll, workers’ compensation, HR administration and related services. And TeamREX coordinates administration and costs across vendors.

That broader range of options can help businesses build an employee offering that is well-rounded, practical, and affordable without assuming that every employer needs the same combination of services.

For small and midsize businesses in particular, having access to multiple solutions through one ecosystem can make it easier to find the right balance between cost, administration and the benefits that employees value.

And with a broader range of affordable workforce solutions available through the TeamREX ecosystem, employers have more options for building an employee offering that works for both their people and their business.

TeamREX connects employers with health plan options through our partners, Premier Health USA and Otegrity Insurance Solutions, Inc. Dental, vision, life, critical illness, and other insurance options are also available through Otegrity Insurance Solutions, Inc.