Helpful resources for employers

At Aetna, we’re committed to contributing to your success. Below, you’ll find links to online tools and valuable resources that add up to a powerful benefits package for you and your employees.

Online Resources

Our online tools and educational materials can help make your job easier. Learn about reporting tools, web-based enrollment, our Employer Secure website, and more.

Employee Health Tools

Help your employees become more engaged in their health care and make more informed decisions. With Aetna's online tools, members can:

• Access www.Aetna.com - and log in to their secure member website anytime 
• Manage their medical history from one secure location 
• Estimate the cost of care before going to a doctor or hospital 
• Perform a personalized health search 

Watch videos to learn more about Aetna’s online tools.

Worthwhile Reading

Keep up to date on some of today’s hottest issues for employers. 

• Employee Turnover
• The Costs of Turnover
• Keeping Employees
  

Hourly employees, especially those working part-time, tend to look at their jobs as temporary and not as a career. This doesn't tend to foster a sense of loyalty.

Lacking loyalty and any incentives to stay (like benefits or perks) they tend to drift in and out of the labor force. This can be voluntary or involuntary, or from one employer to another, usually looking for a few cents more per hour.

Why is turnover occurring? 

Turnover occurs because there are far more hourly jobs being created than there are people to fill them. More money, benefits, perks, better working conditions, if someone else has it, they may dislodge your employees.

Why it's not getting better. 

Demographic trends are working against you too. Jobs are being created, but the labor force is shrinking. The "baby-boomers" born at the close of WWII are aging. What was a plentiful supply of cheap labor that fueled the explosion in service industry jobs is gone. Another demographic trend is starting families later in life, which has resulted in what is termed the "baby-bust," and smaller families.

Long-range population projections make it clear that the competition for workers within a reduced labor supply will continue for some time.

The impact of turnover on a company's bottom line is significant in both direct and indirect costs.
Direct costs are what you spend to recruit and train replacement workers.

Indirect costs include:

• Lost productivity
• Lowered morale among employees left to cover for the missing worker
• Customer dissatisfaction from dealing with new and inexperienced employees
  

What is it costing your company? 
Unfortunately, that's not easy to answer. In part it depends on three things:

1. The cost to recruit replacements.
2. The training required to establish a new employee.
3. The value you place on lost productivity.
   

A Society of Human Resource Management study estimated this cost to be 30-32% of annual pay. A $6 per hour position might be costing you $7.92, simply because of turnover.

Probably more than you think.

It's much harder to place a cost on the negative feelings of employees and customers. To what extent does lowered morale contribute to even more turnover? And as for customer dissatisfaction, it has been said that a bad customer experience is retold eight times. The loss of customers can cost a business a great deal!

We recently counducted a survey of hourly employees; of those surveyed, 80% indicated that benefits were important in their decision to join or to stay with an employer. Benefits make a difference.

What benefits do employees consider important?

There are a variety of benefits from which to choose, employees that participated in our survey ranked the following highest:

• Medical coverage
• Dental coverage
• Paid vacations
• Paid sick leave
• Vision coverage
• Prescription drug coverage
• Short Term Disability (STD)
  
  

What do they want most?

The list is probably not a big surprise, but what was remarkable was the large margin by which medical and dental plans were ranked over paid vacations and paid sick leave. Clearly, these are the benefits that employees want most.

Benefits can provide a competitive edge.

Most new jobs are being created in industries that have not traditionally provided benefits. The employer who can satisfy employees' need for healthcare benefits will have a competitive edge in retaining and attracting quality core employees.