Employers need a strategy if they are to offer the right cancer support at the right price to young workers, hears Abigail Montrose
Young workers are looking to their employers to offer a wide range of healthcare and wellbeing benefits. This provision has become increasingly important to them and is often a key consideration when looking for a new job.
But as employees expect more cover, choosing which benefits to prioritise on top of the traditional healthcare offering has become an issue for employers, noted Joy Waugh, senior consultant and marketplace lead at Zest.
“Employers are stretched,” she said.
“They are looking at financial wellbeing, mental health and neurodiversity – they are supporting a range of different initiatives, understanding that quite a lot of young people are also interested in ESG and there’s the climate crisis as well,” she said.
“That all comes together and you’ve got this huge melting pot of concerns, and employers are saying they don’t know where to spend the money best.
“So it’s about flipping that narrative around, it’s not about the cost of providing private medical insurance (PMI) or the cost of income protection, it’s actually about what’s the strategy behind it,” she said.
When it comes to cancer support, employers have looked primarily to offer preventative care, said Megan Millar, senior associate workplace health consulting at MMB.
“There has been a huge focus on early intervention and prevention. Cancer has become a topic that is spoken about but it is probably not the most prevalent topic concerning younger workers,” she said.
But with one in two people being diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime according to World Cancer Research Fund data, talking to young people about their lifestyles, cancer prevention and how to catch cancer early is a priority.
Cost versus care
The cost of providing PMI and other healthcare benefits to employees can be high particularly if including cancer care. This has resulted in some employers considering removing this cover for employees, said Rachel Western, principal at Aon.
“One of the things we say to clients is take a step back and let’s not see health insurance with cancer cover as a benefit; let’s view this as a risk management tool.
“How can you focus on making this risk better so that you don’t get the claims and therefore you don’t get the costs? You will always get some cases but it is about education,” she said.
Hugh Bennett, director of corporate at Howden Employee Benefits, agreed but argued there needed to be a shift away from short-term, cost-related attitudes.
Providing benefits that encourage prevention such as promoting a healthy lifestyle, good mental health and wellbeing can all pay off and help with risk management, he noted.
Although there is a cost to providing benefits like gym membership, wellbeing programmes and health screening, this is much less and better for employees than a cancer claim later on.
“The big challenge is that these benefits are having a more immediate impact on a business’s operational cost now,” he said.
“But for a business to really get behind preventative cancer, it needs to be from a position of care rather than cost.”
Senior leadership support
When it comes to cancer care, Millar believes senior leadership need to decide what their priorities are and get behind preventative measures and benefits.
But to get senior management buy-in, you need to be able to demonstrate to them the value of offering these benefits to employees, she highlighted.
“You need to be able to step back and say, what kind of effective demand data do we have to make these informed decisions?” Millar continued.
“A lot of employers are coming to us and asking how they can make these informed decisions so when they approach senior leadership, they have a business case to make these decisions or get further funding.
“In the past, cancer hasn’t been the biggest risk factor for young people to consider, but it definitely is now, as we can see from the stats. It’s something that’s emerging and definitely something that needs to be a part of the conversation,” she added.
Structuring medical plans
Informed predictive data can help employers analyse what benefits certain demographics might most benefit from and help companies make informed decisions when deciding on what provision to offer, the panel noted.
“It would be great to see corporates go down the structured route where data can then drive how you structure a medical plan and that might be structured given different age profiles, gender and stages in life,” said Aon’s Western.
“We provide cover for menopause for every employee on a scheme. Well, there is a whole raft of people who won’t require that, so why cover everybody?” she asked.
Employees could also be given the option to opt for lower levels of cover.
“We need to offer a range of covers that allow for lower cost options,” said Rebecca Rann, head of health at Benifex.
“Younger people are generally on lower wages so we need to make sure we give them access to benefits that are also cost effective for them.”
Risk reduction strategies
An effective risk reduction strategy is to ensure employees understand what cover they have and how to access this.
Whether this is information on what wellbeing apps or nutrition information is available from their PMI provider, or how to access virtual GPs or a pathway to cancer treatment, providing employees with this information is cheap and easy to do.
Regular or targeted communications with staff can include details about what’s covered by their PMI or cash plan and what screening and preventative services are available to them.
“It’s also important and cost effective to remind or educate employees about the services available to them from the NHS or their GP,” said Rann.
“There are some things that don’t cost anything such as NHS screening programmes. We should be promoting these just as much as health assessments or a particular benefit on their medical cover.
“You need to educate your workforce and make sure they are aware they have access to these services. That will also have an impact on getting things identified earlier, which will help reduce employer costs in the long run.
“Employers could also educate parents on vaccines such as the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine at school which children can have to protect them against certain types of cancer,” she added.
Education initiatives
The panel agreed that employers could do more to find opportunities and introduce initiatives to engage with employees about their benefits and how to access these.
For example, some companies give employees a few days off each year to focus on their mental health and wellbeing.
Rather than just giving people time off, employers could use this opportunity to communicate with their colleagues about how they could use this time to improve their wellbeing or check-up on their health.
Organisations could also use these days to run health education programmes for employees or to encourage them to see a health professional if they need to, suggested Waugh.
“We know everybody is time poor. Employers could use this time to put on education programmes which people usually don’t have time to attend,” she said.
“Or they could suggest to employers they use this time to book health appointments. So rather than paid time off for being sick, how about paid wellbeing days?
“Employers could have a health screening provider on site or encourage people to use NHS services. I think one of the things most people appreciate is time to discuss things.
“Time to understand, time to have the education, the information, but also time to do something about it,” she said.
Employers could also put on events to promote healthier lifestyles, suggested Bennett.
“Employers could use this time to launch a new proposition or promote an existing benefit. This is a great way to engage with people and they could be incentivised for better behaviours and doing things to look after their health,” he said.
Webinars can be another useful tool. They are low-cost and good for driving employee engagement.
Where young people switch on
As well as webinars on specific cancers they can also be on different lifestyle topics which are more likely to appeal to younger workers, said Kelly McCabe, co-founder and CEO at Perci Health.
“Talking about cancer prevention can be boring for some people,” she said.
“Where younger people switch on is when we talk about things like nutrition which can be really fascinating. There are lots of novel things coming out there, so we’re looking at how we can support employers to deliver interesting education that is a bit different.
“We do a breast cancer webinar every year and we should continue to do that. But we’re also thinking if there is more interesting stuff that we can be targeting at younger age groups?” she said.
Employers have a range of channels they can use to communicate with employers and they can also use these and different approaches to target different audiences, pointed out Western.
“There are a lot of innovative approaches you can use to educate people,” she said.
“You can keep it in-house and at a low cost. You can use different streams such as intranet sites you have as an organisation. You can get people telling their own stories and the importance of how their benefits work.”
Other initiatives the panel thought employers could adopt included producing bite-size videos on various health topics.
Cancer champions
Internal health champions who promote good health and looking after yourself, was another suggestion. These would be members of staff like mental health first-aiders.
Cancer specialists who promote preventative strategies as well as how to get through cancer could also be created.
This might be somebody that has either had cancer or been through the cancer journey with a loved one.
They would be able to talk to the workforce in a personal, relatable way, as well as providing digital content and useful information that’s relevant to younger workers as well as older employees.
Several members mentioned producing booklets to help younger employers understand what benefits they can use if they are diagnosed with cancer.
This could be a little book of benefits or a toolkit of the resources available to employees.
Sharing employee stories about what benefits and services people accessed to get the help or support they needed with cancer was another way to help others understand what path they should take if they need similar help.
Morgan Fitzsimons, co-founder and chief experience officer of Perci Health, wondered if there was a role for providers too with finding the right pathways for the care needed.
“You could imagine a digital front door for cancer, where the provider takes on the work of piecing together what’s available for that individual,” she said.
“In cancer the pathway is long from risk reduction to recovery and we’re hearing from employers that people often struggle to understand what’s available at each stage. A platform can find it and with expert nurse support help someone understand what they’re entitled to and how to move through the system,” she added.