Mednefits, an employee flexible benefits platform, recently announced the launch of their 2022 Employee Benefits Trends. Clarence Zhang, Co-Founder and Country Manager for Malaysia Mednefits, shares insights from the survey with Asia Connects.
The survey contains the results and analysis from a survey conducted among 200 HR decision-makers spread evenly across Singapore and Malaysia, with responses collated across various industries, from accounting to pharmaceutical. Additionally, the survey shares insights into the challenges of administering employee medical benefits and the industry’s future.
“The talent market today is challenged by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and rising healthcare costs that outpace inflation. To attract and retain the best talent, employers across Malaysia need to understand their employees’ healthcare needs and where they stand regarding the total health cost of employment. We hope that employers will use the key findings of our survey to invest in their employee’s productivity and well-being in the long run, as well as develop a well-rounded policy of flexible benefits to attract better and retain top talent.” – shared Clarence Zhang, Co-Founder and Country Manager for Malaysia Mednefits.
Key insights from the Mednefits 2022 Employee Benefits Trends:
A flexible benefits programme is essential to many employees nowadays, as 60% of employees consider benefits and perks as major factors when deciding on a job offer. However, SMEs and MNCs see benefits as an additional cost to their businesses (30% vs 20%), and medical benefits are seen as an additional cost by 3 out of every 10 businesses.
The most common method of providing medical benefits in Malaysia is engaging with insurance providers for inpatient and outpatient medical benefits (74%). In comparison, other companies prefer to manually self-manage via company reimbursement (46%), engaging a third-party administrator (27%) or any combination of the three services.
According to the survey, even though 1 in every 3 Malaysians suffers from mental health issues, it is not given as much priority, with only 20% of companies offering wellness benefits to their employees. Trying to manage one’s mental health while balancing work may impact an employee’s performance, ultimately costing the company.
However, more Malaysian employers are slowly starting to emphasise wellness benefits such as gym membership, supplements, yoga classes, physiotherapy, and so on to help employees improve their health and well-being. Despite these efforts, employers still struggle to develop suitable employee benefits and often offer ones that are not tailored and can sometimes depend on the employee’s performance.
Although companies are willing to implement flexible benefits (70%), implementation has several obstacles. The most difficult challenge for most companies (34%), is creating a flexible benefits plan tailored to each employee’s needs.
Clarence shared, “Employee benefits are an important aspect of any company. At Mednefits, we are building the future infrastructure of employee benefits, which makes it easy and affordable for companies to curate flexible benefits programmes for their employees. Managing all medical and flex benefits on a single platform and offering cashless payments improves accuracy and consistency in claim submissions and eliminates the need for manual reimbursement. At the end of the day, companies find that they can improve their operations while also saving money – best of both worlds.”
