BenefitApp
Relaying Employee Benefits Information with Ease

The importance of offering well-rounded benefits to employees cannot be overemphasized. Be it in encouraging a positive employee culture, recruiting top-tier candidates, or retaining them—employee benefits play an integral role. While the onus is on employers to design a benefits package and enroll candidates in a health insurance plan, it’s up to the employees to find out what’s offered and take full advantage of it. However, data shows that the majority of employees do not understand their benefits or even read benefit materials. If healthcare benefits are considered, it is only at a physician’s office or hospital that most employees begin to ponder about the benefits that they can avail for themselves and their family members. Unfortunately, the problem stems from employees’ lack of knowledge about their benefits and the prevalent gap between enrolling for benefits and then actually using them at the time of need.

To bridge the communication gap between the point where employers convey the benefits and when employees face the need to access that information, Maryland-based BenefitsApp has introduced a novel solution. Built securely on the Salesforce platform, the BenefitsApp mobile benefits solution enables eligible members to access all their benefits information, wherever they are, right on their phone. BenefitsApp is designed to be a fast, secure, fully customizable, and personalized mobile application that supports employers, brokers, consultants, and payers in the deployment of robust mobile benefits strategies.

In an interview with CIOApplications, Rich Wiklund, founder and CEO of BenefitsApp, along with Jonathan Anders, founding member and partner at the company, share insights into the value proposition of BenefitsApp and its benefits along with other native apps that they offer.

Could you give us more insights on how the BenefitsApp proves to be an agnostic, consistent, and reliable solution for employers and employees?

Wiklund: Depending on market conditions, carriers, as well as employee benefits, change every year or alternate year, which is a primary reason why most employees refrain from using carrier portals. These carriers typically serve the employee population and dependents enrolled in the benefits product and are not necessarily employee-centric. BenefitsApp is agnostic to the components in an employer-sponsored plan as well as carriers, which enables us to serve a client regardless of their size, in perpetuity.

Irrespective of the carrier or type of benefits, BenefitsApp compiles up-to-date information and presents it to employees whenever they need it. As such, it saves users the hassle of setting up a new profile for each new carrier on their portal and serves as a consistent, go-to application. The app also proves to be reliable as it is capable of delivering information via its secure messaging feature, which is especially crucial in the current pandemic-stricken remote working environment.

Please throw more light on the features and functionalities of BenefitsApp.

Anders: BenefitsApp pairs useful features with an intuitive interface and is available both on Android and iOS devices. Employees, as well as their family members, can readily access relevant employer-sponsored benefits information, which they can easily download and print from their smartphone.

The registration process is fairly simple and quick—users can identify the company they are affiliated with or can also log in with employee ID if we are provided with a census file by the HR officer or broker. BenefitsApp can further be integrated with the employer’s HRIS system, which equips users with comprehensive information—personal and benefits-related—consolidated in one place. It creates a personalized mobile experience that drives employee engagement while reducing benefit-related questions and employee frustration. We have our core product offerings and native tools, but our platform is flexible enough to integrate with other services as per clients’ needs and deliver additional features and functions effectively.

Wiklund: With a keen focus on data privacy and security, BenefitsApp supports two-factor authentication and is HIPAA compliant. Upon logging into the app, users can also leverage native mobile features such as facial recognition for seamless and easy access. Also, through our digital signature product, employees can now sign agreements and policy documents more conveniently than ever. This is particularly useful at the time of open enrollment that requires employees to sign various documents and has proved to be of significant value in the remote working environment due to COVID-19. Moreover, with our platform, HR officers can track who has signed the documents and save copies of those (containing sensitive PHI data) in a HIPAA compliant manner.

Anders: Typically, our clients provide their core benefit information, and we convey that into the platform. Employers can, in a matter of days, review the app and make it available for employees. With a focus on user adoption, we help our clients explain to employees how to get up and running with the app. We do that in printed as well as digital formats with email marketing. Lastly, through email, chat, or phone, we provide comprehensive end-user support.

Could you elaborate more on the COVID-19 Health Screening tool that you have launched?

Anders: We recently launched a survey tool that helps HR to inform and determine if employees should come back to work safely or not. With it, companies can send push notifications to employees in the morning to participate in a comprehensive survey based on CDC approved questionnaire. Based on the response, the employees would be assigned one of the following color-coded statuses: green—good for work, yellow—monitor symptoms, and red— self-isolate for 3-14 days and contact physician. Our platform also features a portal through which HR officers can get a comprehensive view of employees that are coming to work, and who is monitoring their symptoms and getting medical treatment.

Could you comment on the leadership team at BenefitsApp and how they plan to steer the company forward?

Wiklund: Our leadership team collectively holds almost 150 years of benefits experience. We have a strong team that is committed to driving the company to stellar heights. Our VP of operations, Nancy McCarthy, is a former senior employee of a Fortune 500 company. One of our advisors, Alfred R. Berkeley, is the former vice chairman and president of The NASDAQ Stock Market. Jonathan holds over 25 years of experience in the benefits space. The benefits space has its own culture, language, and cadence, which our team is well versed with. An incredible team at the helm layered over a world-class, highly customer-centric technology platform is what distinguishes us in the industry.

Anders: Together, we are looking to serve as many employees as possible and offer products and solutions that allow them to live healthier lives, which will ultimately save employers from incurring exorbitant healthcare costs. We will soon feature targeted messaging inside the BenefitsApp, which would be useful for communicating with employees of a particular employer, specific groups of employees, or to an individual who may be suffering from certain health conditions. As data informatics and AI-driven analysis are growing in importance to identify comorbidities and clinical and preventative care gaps, we look to partner with the entities that are aggregating data and then disseminate the data to get to each detail on a plan. While the industry works on interoperability, we aim to focus on inner connectivity and be the much needed communication conduit to help employers manage risk through precise, targeted messaging. The sky is the limit, from ideation to collaboration, if it involves effective and efficient communication.