How have healthcare changes impacted your organization and what are you seeing going forward?

• Author: Whalen, Monica

The national discussion around healthcare reform has prompted employers for the first time in many years to look very open-eyed at creative solutions to providing benefits. There is such an array of choices about how best to do that in concert with your company goals in terms of your culture and financial needs that it has opened the possibilities for creative solutions to providing a safety net for employees. Employers are spending much more time with their brokers and much more time researching on their own all the different options and creative ways that might make the most sense in the package they offer their employees.

DYCHES: Long-term planning has almost ceased to exist in healthcare. It's a year-to-year proposition. It's very difficult for organizations to make long-term plans when the employer mandate is a moving target. We are seeing clients making decisions today and recognizing that next year it might be a completely different decision and they're going to have to go through a whole bunch of work to revamp whatever decision worked in 2014.

FEN WICK: It's driven our company to more consumer-directed plans. These plans have driven us toward wellness. If you go to our company and you can't find somebody in their office, check outside because they are probably having a walking meeting. The end result is driving us to be more accountable for our own wellness. I hate to give any credit to any politician that they have helped our company look more closely at wellness, but it has.

ATWOOD: I'm seeing shifts from full-time to part-time. I'm seeing that in restaurants, in retail, in construction. Some employers have failed to recognize that it's starting to hit their workers' compensation, because where employees don't get medical, they look at workers' comp as a medical provider opportunity.

I was recruiting for an international organization that does not offer medical. They say, "Oh, employees can just go to the exchange." Ifs not that easy. There is literally a gap and a deficiency there, and what do they have to do? In turn for not offering medical, let's look at a higher wage. What are some other incentives that would cause this individual to choose us over another organization? I'm...