Willis Towers Watson

Survey: Most US Employers Won’t Change Health Plans if ACA Repealed
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May 24, 2017 - 11:47am
Survey: Most US Employers Won’t Change Health Plans if ACA Repealed
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Amid major uncertainty over the future direction of health policy in the US, CFO’s David McCann passes along a new survey of 666 employers from Willis Towers Watson which found that most employers don’t intend to make major changes to their health plans, even if Republican lawmakers succeed in their goal of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act:

For example, if unlimited lifetime benefits are repealed, employers are more than three times more likely to keep them in place (50%) than they are to reinstitute lifetime dollar limits (15%). And if contraceptive care at a 100% benefit is repealed, employers are nearly six times more likely to maintain coverage at that level (59%) than they are to reduce it (11)%. The survey also found that were the age-26 dependent coverage rule to be repealed — which is not expected to be an element of a potential replacement bill — more than twice as many employers would keep the eligibility age at 26 (48%) than lower it (22%).

All of those ACA provisions have had a positive impact on employee engagement, and employers that don’t maintain them will be viewed negatively from an overall rewards standpoint, says Julie Stone, a national health care practice leader at Willis Towers Watson. …

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Employees Care When Pay’s Not Fair
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Nov 22, 2016 - 10:01am
Employees Care When Pay’s Not Fair
Debbi Smirnoff/iStock

Willis Towers Watson’s 2016 Global Workforce Study has forged another link in the chain connecting perceptions of pay equity and fairness to employee engagement. The survey showed that compensation is still a top driver of employee attraction and retention (CEB’s Global Talent Monitor agrees), but also found that only a slim majority—53 percent—of employees believe they are paid fairly compared to people in similar roles at other organizations, and most organizations do not have plans in place to address this perception problem:

So far, many employers have not laid the ground work to ensure employees are paid fairly. The 2016 Global Talent Management and Rewards Survey, a survey of more than 2,000 companies globally, including 441 from the U.S., found only half of employers (52%) have a formal process in place to ensure fairness in compensation distribution.

The Global Workforce Study also measured whether employees understand how their base pay is determined and how their total compensation stacks up compared with others. Only about two-thirds of employees (65%) say they understand how their salary is determined, and less than four in 10 employees say they understand how their total compensation compares with that of the typical employee in their organization (39%) and with the typical employee in other companies (34%). When organizations begin to report on the CEO pay ratio and the pay of the median employee, these employees will not have the context to properly interpret those numbers.

This finding speaks to some of the trends motivating the increasing pressure on employers to be more transparent about what they pay their employees and why.

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