These numbers can improve if the scope of EIS is expanded to any non-trivial absence, whether the expectation is that it will last long enough to become a claim or not.
Where EIS is in place, it is evidenced to work, and effective absence management is a good habit for employers to get into (saving both Statutory and Occupational Sick Pay).
Communicating the best way to engage with EIS is an area for insurers to work on, providing a compelling case for advisers to engage with those responsible for benefits purchases.
52 per cent of the 2,989 referrals (1,554 of these cases) were for mental health. While the claims report states that 24.5 per cent of all claims were for mental health (up from 23 per cent in 2016) the situation could have been worse.
The GIP claim numbers could have been as high as 18,311 without EIS; in which case mental health would have represented 29 per cent of them. Even in this most complex, emotive area of absence insurers can support many more employers and employees.
Specialist nurses and rehabilitation experts, and the expertise to signpost to pertinent materials and groups, are often overlooked benefits of engaging with insurers and their EIS propositions.
For the first time, group risk development has reported on the volume of referrals to support services – 7,879 people – showing the growing importance of this aspect of the benefits.
This is only the tip of the iceberg: it excludes self-referrals.
When organisations have access to Employee Assistance Programmes, Second Medical Opinion services, online and phone-based legal services, bereavement and probate helplines, it is clear that the non-traditional service elements of group risk benefits are as important as the financial ones.
The burgeoning utilisation of support services is in no small part due to the efforts of insurance providers, strenuously making their case to advisers.
Beyond EIS, group risk as a whole in the UK is being gradually, but inexorably, changed. Simple, reactive financial payments are unsuitable for the modern workplace.
Employers and employees both are more health-aware and greater emphasis is being placed on flexibility and non-traditional work practices to improve productivity and wellbeing simultaneously.
The cost of insurance is easier to justify to key decision-makers in organisations when there are a wide range of services which can be used day in, day out.
Better still, when those services have demonstrable benefits to the business in terms of improved productivity, reduced sickness absence and associated costs, recruitment and retention support and an evidence-based return on investment model.
