Keep your team up and running by giving them the support they need to deal with personal and professional challenges with Spill.
Quick summary:
- Employee health insurance is an insurance benefit paid by a company to give employees quick and easy access to private medical treatment.
- The exact things employee health insurance will cover varies between providers, but in general can include 24/7 GP access, musculoskeletal treatment, cancer care, mental health support, and treatment as an inpatient, outpatient or day-patient.
- Business health insurance excludes chronic and pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes, angina, asthma, and mental health conditions.
- Employees take more days off due to mental health than any other reason: if that’s the problem you’re trying to solve, consider putting your money towards a focused mental health solution.
- Spill specialises in providing effective, affordable therapy to employees — there are no waiting lists, no callbacks, and no exclusions, just instant, all-inclusive access to therapy.
The overstretched NHS has dominated the news in recent months (and years) and with over 7.5 million people waiting for treatment (3 million of whom have been waiting for over 18 weeks). The problem isn’t going away anytime soon: the British Medical Association suggests that even if the NHS were to run at 110% of its pre-COVID capacity, it would still take five years for the waiting list to return to pre-2019 levels…and a further five to return to manageable levels.
As a result, employee health insurance has become a default employee benefit for companies looking to support their team’s wellbeing. But does it solve the real problem companies are facing?
In this employee health insurance buyer’s guide, we guide you through the ins and outs of employee health insurance, with a look at what is (and isn’t) included in workplace health insurance coverage, how it works (in the UK at least), and the alternatives to health insurance for small companies.
What is employee health insurance?
Employee health insurance is an insurance benefit paid for by the company to give your employees quick access to private medical treatment. To get workplace health insurance, your company must have at least two employees and for companies with fewer than 250 employees, many providers offer specialist small business health insurance policies.
Employee health insurance is a type of insurance that you can give to your employees through the company as part of your overall employee benefits package. Much like an individual health insurance policy, it pays for a large portion of the cost of private healthcare. If one of your employees is diagnosed with an illness, they’ll pay a small excess (which varies depending on the plan) while the insurer pays for the treatment.
As an employer, you can choose how group health insurance works for your team: it could be a standard company benefit that every employee can use, you can set eligibility criteria so that only some employees can use it (if you go down this route, the criteria cannot be discriminatory: we really recommend getting professional advice first), or it can be offered on a voluntary basis. If it's voluntary, your employees can choose whether to enroll on the scheme. If they do, they’ll pay the monthly premium themselves but it will be significantly cheaper than if they took out an individual health insurance plan.
In the UK, employees are fortunate to get free healthcare via the NHS, but with an employee health insurance plan, your team can bypass NHS waiting lists to access private healthcare when they need it.
As well as the shorter waiting times, personalised care, and accessible appointment hours associated with private healthcare, employee health insurance has plenty of other benefits — most notably, in reducing absenteeism in your team. If a member of your team becomes ill, company health insurance means they can be treated quickly and return to work sooner, which is not only good for them and their wellbeing, but good for business, too.
Health insurance for small companies
To qualify for workplace health insurance, a company needs to have at least two employees. Generally, the larger the company size, the cheaper a group health insurance plan will be, but specialist policies offer small business health insurance for companies with fewer than 250 employees in most cases.
Cost is a significant factor for small businesses and while it might seem financially sensible to opt for a more budget-friendly plan (i.e. a lower cost per employee), it's important to understand the small print. In many cases, the cheapest health insurance for small companies simply means your plan won’t include a lot of the actually useful treatment costs.
Download our free health insurance evaluation checklist
Make sure you're asking the right questions when buying an employee health insurance plan (or weighing up the one you already have)
What does corporate health insurance include?
The level of cover available through corporate health insurance will vary depending on the provider, but can include 24/7 GP access, musculoskeletal treatment, cancer care, mental health support, and treatment as an inpatient, outpatient or day-patient. Most employee health insurance providers have a core level of care with optional add-ons to help tailor your plan for your team’s needs.
Employee health insurance plans vary — it turns out— substantially in terms of what they cover. But one thing’s for sure: the more comprehensive the cover, the more expensive it will be.
In general, the well-known providers tend to have a core offering that you can then customise depending on the ‘needs of your business and employees’. What this really means is that a lot of the treatment costs your employees will really benefit from are only available as an optional add-on, and that means a higher cost per employee.
To give you an idea of what private healthcare costs are covered and what’s an optional add-on with employee health insurance, here’s a summary* of the core coverage with four of the biggest health insurance names. All of these summaries are for each provider’s small business health insurance plan, which means companies with 1-249 employees.
*It goes without saying that this is a very brief overview: every single provider will have its own small print (some of which we’ll get to later), so please do take the time to do your own research.
Bupa small business health insurance
Bupa offers four levels of cover, all of which include (to varying degrees):
👉 Access to the Bupa network of hospitals, clinics, and treatment centres
👉 Outpatient consultations and diagnostic tests, such as X-rays and blood tests
👉 Outpatient acupuncture, chiropractic, and osteopathy treatment
👉 Outpatient MRI, CT, and PET scans
👉 Day-patient, inpatient treatment, and outpatient surgery
👉 Cancer cover
👉 Mental health day-patient and inpatient treatment
👉 24/7 access to virtual GP appointments
AXA Health small business health insurance
Every cover option with AXA Health includes:
👉 24/7 access to phone and video GP appointments
👉 Muscles, bones, and joints support over the phone or online, without needing a GP referral
👉 Telephone support for heart and cancer care
👉 24/7 access to a health information phone line
👉 Wellbeing incentives, like discounts on gym memberships
AXA Health then offers a range of optional extras:
➕ The treatment option, which includes cover for hospital procedures and operations
➕ The diagnostics option, which helps your employee see a specialist as soon as possible
➕ The dentist and optician cash back option to support dental fees, glasses, contact lenses, and eye tests
➕ The therapies option, which covers referred treatments by an osteopath, physiotherapist, acupuncturist, homoeopath, or chiropractor
➕ The outpatient option to support employees with a GP referral
➕ The mental health option, which gives your employees mental health support without a GP referral
➕ The private GP option to give your team access to private GP appointments
➕ Options to include extended cover, an employee assistance programme (EAP), travel cover and health assessments
Aviva business health insurance
Aviva offers a health insurance plan called Solutions:
👉 Treatment for short-term illness or injury
👉 Cancer cover
👉 Consultations, diagnostic tests like X-rays and blood tests, specialist appointments, and hospital stays
👉 Treatment for back, neck, muscle, or joint pain
👉 Talking therapy and counselling without a GP referral
Aviva then offers additional benefits to increase your cover:
➕ Dental and optical cover
➕ Mental health upgrade, which offers cover for inpatient or day-patient treatment
➕ Routine and GP referred services, such as consultations and tests for chronic conditions, as well as radiology, pathology, and therapies for non-musculoskeletal conditions
For companies with more than 249 employees, Aviva offers even more optional add-ons, such as family and fertility support, gender identity support, and assessment for neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g. ADHD, autism, and learning disabilities).
Vitality business health insurance
Vitality’s core cover includes:
👉 Virtual and in-person GP appointments
👉 Mental health support with access to Headspace and Togetherall, and eight sessions of counselling
👉 Hospital, consultation, and test fees for day-patient and inpatient treatment
👉 Outpatient surgery
👉 Up to six weeks of physiotherapy
👉 Cancer care
Vitality’s optional add-ons include:
➕ Outpatient cover for MRI, CT, and PET scans, diagnostic tests, and appointments
➕ Upgraded mental health cover for 56 days of treatment per mental health episode
➕ EAP
➕ Therapies cover for chiropractic treatment, osteopathy, acupuncture, homeopathy
➕ Optical, dental and hearing cover
➕ Worldwide travel cover and emergency overseas cover for trips lasting up to 120 days each
➕ Personal health fund to cover health screening and chronic prescriptions
It varies a lot doesn’t it? And there’s even more variation when you look into the small print of what each cost actually includes.
What isn’t included in employee health insurance?
Arguably the more important detail, knowing what isn’t included in your potential employee health insurance plan is essential: the point of providing this benefit is to care for your team and if your plan doesn’t include the treatment they need, it somewhat defeats the point.
Bupa very helpfully lists out a whole stream of things that are excluded from its small business health insurance plan (ageing, A&E treatment, deafness, fertility, and allergies to name a few), but let’s take a general view for a moment.
Business health insurance is there to support your team for acute medical conditions. And by acute, we mean conditions that are short-term and come on suddenly.
This means that employee health insurance plans exclude a lot of conditions because they’re either:
- A chronic health problem, which requires ongoing management and cannot be cured, such as diabetes, asthma, and angina.
- A pre-existing condition, which is any illness or symptom that an employee has been to see their doctor about in a specified number of years (some say three years, others say five) before joining a health insurance plan. And yes, pre-existing conditions do also include chronic conditions. And mental health conditions.
(Employee health insurance plans also tend to exclude treatment for addiction, cosmetic procedures, and pregnancy and maternity cover.)
What does this mean?
Well, for many people, these two exclusions have a big impact — when they need support, they can’t get it.
Consider an employee with a history of depression. If their symptoms returned within this time period (and it’s likely — a study in Behaviour Research and Therapy found that half of people will experience a depression relapse within a year), they wouldn’t be able to get the help they need to navigate their emotional pain. And by not getting vital support, that particular member of your team will likely experience a more severe downturn in their mental health.
Spill surveys the wellbeing of your team every week with a team meeting integration and then gets mental health support to those in need.
How company health insurance works
Full disclaimer: we’re taking a very UK-centric approach to this section.
In the UK, everyone — regardless of their employment status — has access to free healthcare thanks to the publicly-funded NHS. It’s an incredible service that sees 1.3 million people a day.
However, while the NHS is the most widely-used healthcare system in the UK, a growing number of people are choosing to get private treatment to avoid long waiting lists. And that’s where health insurance comes in handy to do the heavy-lifting when it comes to paying the bill.
By offering health insurance to your employees, you’ll be giving them access to private healthcare at a fraction of the cost, which they can choose to access in addition to NHS services. We say ‘in addition’ because private healthcare is small in the UK: there’s no private provision of emergency ambulances, major A&E services, and few critical care facilities.
How employee health insurance works for you (the employer)
1. You decide to offer group health insurance for your team
You’ll need to decide which company health insurance provider to go for: be sure to thoroughly research the different providers and their plans as insurance cover varies significantly.
💡 Spill’s tip: During the research phase, keep a few things in mind: your budget, the needs of your employees, and a thorough understanding of what’s included in each plan will help you make the right choice for your team.
2. Your employees join the employee health insurance plan
Employee health insurance can be a standard company benefit for every employee, available to a few employees, or offered as a voluntary benefit.
💡 Spill’s tip: Before committing to a health insurance plan for your team, find out if they really want it: use 121s, company-wide meetings, employee wellbeing surveys, or even just a simple Slack poll to gauge your team’s wellbeing requirements and appetite for health insurance — you might find your money could be better spend on an altogether different kind of benefit.
3. You pay a monthly (or yearly) premium
Small businesses can typically expect to pay between £20 and £100 per month, per employee for employee health insurance, but this price heavily depends on the number of employees, the level of cover, and their age and health.
💡 Spill’s tip: If budget is a concern, there are ways to reduce the cost of your premium — choose the six-week rule (employees are only treated privately if they’re not seen by the NHS within six weeks), add eligibility criteria for your employees (e.g. employees must have worked at your company for a year before joining your company health insurance), pay annually rather than monthly, look for new deals before policy renewal, there are lots of ways to keep costs down.
How employee health insurance works for employees*
*This seems to be the most common approach for a lot of providers but as always, check the process with the provider you go for as the specific details will vary.
1. Your employee has a health concern
If a new health problem crops up, your employee will go to their GP for initial advice. This could mean an NHS GP or a private GP available through your health insurance plan.
2. Your employee asks for an open referral
If the GP recommends specialist treatment, your employee should ask for an open referral, which will refer them to any consultant with a particular speciality for treatment. It’s different to a usual named GP referral, which is a written letter to a specific specialist in a named hospital or clinic.
3. Your employee calls the employee health insurance provider
As soon as they’ve seen their GP, your employee should call your company’s health insurance provider to check that their problem and proposed treatment is covered. This will ensure they don't pay for treatment that isn’t included in the plan.
4. Your employee gets treatment
If your company's health insurance covers your employee’s health problem, they’ll get treatment. If the specialist recommends more treatment, your employee will need to call the insurance provider again to check it's covered.
5. Final bills are settled
Once they’re feeling better, the insurance provider and treatment centre (i.e. clinic or hospital) will settle any final bills. Depending on the excess in your employee health insurance plan, your team member may need to pay part of the bill, but most insurance providers will help sort this out.
Spill’s take on employee health insurance
Employees take more days off work due to mental health than anything else: if you’re looking to get the most value for money or have the biggest impact on employee wellbeing overall — like reducing the number of sick days — consider a solution that specialises in mental health support.
Here at Spill, we’re all about supporting employee wellbeing. But, what’s important to us is that companies are giving their teams the right support.
80% of employees would rather have good mental health than a highly-paid job
We came across a statistic offered up by one health insurance provider suggesting that 29% of employees want health insurance, apparently making it the second most popular perk wanted by teams. But what about the 67% of employees who want their companies to help them take care of their stress and anxiety? Or the 80% of employees who would rather have good mental health than a highly-paid job?
The state of the workforce’s mental health is as widely talked about as the state of the NHS. There’s no doubt we’re in crisis when it comes to workplace mental health and with employees taking more days off work due to stress, anxiety, and depression than anything else, we’d urge you to consider the problem you’re really trying to solve.
Employees take more days off work for stress, anxiety, and depression than anything else
A lot of health insurance providers have started shouting about the quality of their mental health cover because it’s such an important part of not only employee wellbeing, but also company success. Bupa even suggests that they offer ‘the most extensive mental health cover on the market’. That may be the case, but tread carefully: often, mental health options tagged onto employee health insurance plans are little more than a helpline and some online resources. They don’t offer on-demand therapy and they still rely on someone who is struggling actually recognising they need support — the care is not proactive. Be warned too, mental health support via health insurance is still subject to the same limitations and exclusions for pre-existing conditions.
If you’re looking to support the symptoms of mental health challenges on your team, consider putting your money towards a solution that specialises in exactly that.
Alternatives to employee health insurance
If you’re undecided on whether employee health insurance is the right choice for your team, there are plenty of alternative (and often cheaper) ways to care for their wellbeing.
Health cash plans
While still a form of health insurance, health cash plans support everyday health needs rather than serious medical conditions. Offering cash back on things like prescription charges, eye care, dental care, and therapy treatments (physiotherapy, osteotherapy, acupuncture, podiatry etc.), health cash plans can help you care for your team’s routine medical care.
Employee assistance programmes (EAPs)
Increasingly offered as part of business health insurance policies, EAPs are also available as a separate benefit, too. With the aim of supporting employees through mental health challenges, life events, and legal issues, EAPs are a service paid for by the company to give employees access to short-term counselling and other professional guidance. The cost per employee is low (for large companies at least), but so is usage: if you’re looking for mental health support, we’d recommend taking a look at a platform like Spill, which specialises in therapy.
Group income protection
Another form of insurance, group income protection goes above and beyond statutory sick pay, which currently stands at £109.40 a week for up to 28 weeks. If one of your employees becomes ill, group income protection means they’ll get a monthly payment (that’s usually up to 75% of their salary) and it can often last for longer than 28 weeks. Group income protection policies also tend to offer practical support to help employees recover and return to work, such as access to virtual GPs, consultants, and mental health professionals.
Critical illness cover
Offering support for employees experiencing serious illness, critical illness cover provides financial support to help them deal with the inevitable loss of income. Unlike group income protection, critical illness cover will pay out a tax-free lump sum in one go. EAPs and critical illness cover often go hand-in-hand to provide emotional support through a life changing diagnosis.
Spill
If your team is facing mental health challenges, a solution solely focused on therapy might be the right place to spend your money. As well as offering next-day therapy sessions with the top 13% of qualified therapists, Spill proactively screens your team and flags anyone who’s struggling. And then, a qualified therapist reaches out to offer personal support. This combination of proactive mental health screening and personal therapy has been shown to offer the highest return on investment when it comes to employee mental health support: for every £1 invested, you’ll experience a return of £6.30.
But it's not just about the money: partnering with Spill gives your team access to therapists specialising in over 80 areas of expertise, as well as therapy in 15 languages across eight time zones. It’s even been hailed as a ‘revolutionary’, ‘brilliant’, and ‘transformative’ benefit by some of the 30,000 employees we support with therapy.
Spill vs. employee health insurance for mental health support
Life in a small company (or any company, really) isn’t always easy: it can be fast-paced, and there can be high workloads, lots of change, and plenty of uncertainty (trust us, we know). For many small teams, mental health support can help them navigate this way of working, caring for emotional health while also maintaining productivity.
A way to emotionally support your team, Spill helps everyone on your team deal with life’s challenges so that they can bring their happiest, best selves to work. Here’s how mental health support with Spill stacks up against mental health support with health insurance.
Employee health insurance can be an amazing benefit for your team — but only if its the right solution to your company's problems. Take your time, do your research and speak to your employees. After all, they're the ones that know what they need to feel their best.
Download our free health insurance evaluation checklist
Make sure you're asking the right questions when buying an employee health insurance plan (or weighing up the one you already have)
Check how much it would cost to boost your team's wellbeing by providing next-day access to mental health support.
