The result? Many employees who take charge of their health will have those savings to use when they reach Medicare eligibility at age 65 – and their employers will have saved a lot of money on benefits costs in the meantime.

Here’s the catch: HSAs cause lots of confusion in the typical workplace. A recent survey found that 94 percent of employees eligible for HSAs did not understand at first how these plans work. They reported concerns about using high-deductible health insurance policies. They were worried about the deductions needed to fund their HSAs. And, they were simply afraid of making the change from the traditional health-care plans they’ve used for a long time.

If you’d like to boost adoption of HSAs in your workforce – or if you’re thinking about introducing HSAs as a benefit this year – order this audio conference recording as our expert walks through five proven strategies for teaching employees the advantages of HSAs. He’ll explain (in plain English) how you can communicate the value of HSAs to your workers, how you can resolve the most common complaints about them, and how you can work with your vendor to handle employees’ questions and reduce your HR benefits workload.

You and your colleagues will learn:

• The best techniques for giving your workers commonsense explanations of what HSAs are and why they give many employees more control over their health-care dollars
• How to address the most common misperceptions and fears about HSAs (especially if you’re just making the transition from traditional health-care coverage)
• What issues can crop up in administering HSAs and managing HSA distributions that can trip you up if you’re not careful
• The best practices for working with HSA vendors to handle customer service questions from your employees as painlessly as possible
• What you must do in the first 90 days of implementing HSAs to tackle employees’ fears before they derail your new benefits program
• How you can spread the word among employees about the success of your HSAs (without violating HIPAA rules in the process)
• What steps you can take with employees who strongly resist adopting the HSA approach for their health-care needs

Cora Tellez is chief executive officer and co-founder of Sterling HSA, an independent firm founded in 2003 that specializes in administering health savings accounts. She brings more than 25 years of management experience in health care finance and delivery to her work. She served previously as president of the health plans division of Health Net Inc. (an insurance provider with more than $8 billion in health plan revenues), president of Prudential's health care operations in the western United States, senior vice president and regional chief executive officer of Blue Shield of California, and vice president and regional manager of Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii.

Approved for Recertification Credit

This program has been approved for 1.5 recertification credit hours toward PHR and SPHR recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI). For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HRCI homepage at www.hrci.org.

Questions? Speak with a customer service representative.