Does your employee offboarding process to formally disengage an employee when they are terminated, resign, or retire include a health insurance transition option? Employee offboarding is an essential stage of the employee life cycle, yet many companies often overlook the importance of a supportive last impression.
When employees exit from your organization, they either become antagonists or advocates to your company. An advocate will tend to speak positively about your company, its products and services and recommend potential new employees. On the other hand, an antagonist will speak negatively and that can damage your company’s reputation.
Don’t turn your back on departing employees
By taking a supportive stance with your ex-employees you honor them as people who have contributed to your company’s success and help them adjust to their new situation in a healthy way.
As we all know, we are all fortunate to have provincial health insurance coverage, but those plans are often not enough. Your employees really value having your employer sponsored health insurance to cover the costs of items and services not paid for by the provinces like:
- Prescription drugs
- Dental care
- Vision care
- Ambulance Transportation
- Hearing Aids
- Home Support Services
- Medical Items
- Registered Therapists
- Emergency Travel Medical
- Hospital Accommodation
Its critical to consider that when an employee loses their employer health insurance when they leave your company, they not only lose access to financial aid for medically necessary services or items they also lose the peace of mind that having insurance provides.
As the ex-employer, you are not helpless in this situation. There are ways you can be supportive and help your former staff gain access to much-needed coverage. The best solution is to assist employees in purchasing a plan for themselves, one that’s hopefully comparable to the coverage they previously had to help them continue to offset the out-of-pocket healthcare costs they face for themselves and their family.
End an employee’s benefit plan on a good note with Health Insurance support
It’s relatively easy to help employees transition their employee health insurance benefits to their own personal health insurance plan. Creating a positive employee offboarding experience can be healthy for your business.
An employee who’s exiting the company with a positive experience may might refer a qualified replacement, or even return to your company in the future. Rehiring former employees (so-called boomerang employees) can give you the benefit of knowing that person’s skill fit and personality, their compensation objectives and exactly where they may succeed in your organization. That’s why companies have become more open to the idea of taking positive steps to leave the door open for ex-employees to return.
The first step to take is to provide your employee brief but practical advice that they have a ‘window of opportunity’ of up to 90 days from their departure to take advantage of guaranteed acceptance health insurance designed for individuals just like them.
They’ll appreciate your guidance
Many people losing their group health benefits are intimidated by the idea of applying for their own, thinking that if they have a pre-existing condition or there’s some other factor, this might jeopardize their coverage. This is not necessarily the case.
There are many plans that an individual leaving a group plan can choose from that can keep healthcare service costs down while helping them maintain their health and their family’s health.
You can do the legwork and investigate the numerous plans out there, or you can contact our SBIS office today and we can point your former employee in the right direction. Here’s how we can help:
- we have access to over 40 individual health and dental plans
- we can help your people figure out what coverage they may need
- we can present plans within their budget that fit those needs
- we can assist them in signing up for the new plan.
Link to healthy employee offboarding at www.sbis.ca/health-insurance.html
Your employees deserve a kind farewell as much as they deserved a warm welcome when they started their job. Make employee health insurance a priority on your offboarding task list and turn what may be an uncomfortable goodbye into a healthy experience that benefits everyone.
If you are unsure as to how to go about helping your staff with finding a plan, please call us at 1-800-667-0429 or 416-601-0429 today and we will be happy to assist you.
