Scientist Proves Employee Benefit Meetings Are A Waste of Time

The Ebbinghaus Study is widely accepted as a definitive study in human intelligence. The study concluded that within 24 hours we will forget 75% and within 30 days we will forget 90%. The remaining 10% will remember only 5%.

By Bill Rusteberg

Human resource directors should take note, but haven’t.

Instead employees are packed into a room once a year to hear about things like co-insurance, EOB’s, ACA, three month carry-over, maximum-out-of-pocket, PCP, HMO, PPO, FMLA, TPA, ER definition of emergencies, formulary, step therapy, carrier, appeal process, out-of-network balance bills, open enrollment, dependent eligibility, premium, co-pay, deductible credit, primary/secondary coverage, spousal definition, grandfather/non-grandfather status, benefit year/calendar year, pre-certification, dual choice option, FSA, HSA, HRA, and other foreign terms which is all communicated in a typical hour long meeting.

And of course, there’s always someone in the room hell bent on venting their anger about a personal claim issue starting with a statement  like “Our insurance is worthless…………I went to the emergency room last month and……………..!”

There is no doubt whatsoever employee benefit meetings are a waste of time. The good news is the literacy rate in this county is fairly high. We must assume that’s why employees are given a benefit booklet…………………….but then we’re back to the same problem of memory retention aren’t we?

The best learning process for memory retention of one’s health benefits is to use it. Like the angry lady attending the benefits meeting, she now completely understands the plan won’t cover sore throats and common colds in the ER.