Human resources managers know that employee dental insurance is a valuable tool for recruiting and retaining employees. However, not all employees fully understand or appreciate the excellent value provided by dental insurance. Successful brokers should, therefore, provide a note to HR: Encourage your employees to sign up for dental coverage.

Dental benefits enhance the quality of employees’ lives.

Studies show that employees are less likely to seek preventive dental care when they don’t have dental insurance. As a result, any oral health condition they may have can get worse and be more expensive and invasive. To make matters worse, poor oral health is related to other health problems like heart disease and diabetes.

Regularly seeking preventive care is one of the most important aspects of good oral health. That’s because most dental disease is preventable. Equally important is that preventive care is less expensive than the services necessary to cure or repair damaged teeth and gums further down the road. That’s why it’s important to encourage employees not only to enroll in the company’s dental plan, but also to use the preventive services that the plan provides, sometimes with no copayments or deductibles.

Helping employees understand their benefits.

Employees are busy people. Between working full-time and taking care of their families, it’s understandable that oral hygiene isn’t always at the top of their list of priorities. Or perhaps they simply forget that it’s been a year since their last dental cleaning and examination.

Most employees appreciate the steps taken by human resources to promote and encourage healthy lifestyles. But offering a dental insurance plan is only the initial step. Closing information gaps is also necessary so that employees can get maximum value from the company’s dental plan. Here are a few tips that can be implemented using a company flier, email blast or newsletter. Using multiple channels of communication is usually most effective.

1. Periodically provide information about the importance of taking care of oral health because some employees might not be aware of how oral health affects their overall health.
2. Give frequent reminders to take advantage of the dental plan’s annual cleanings and examinations.
3. Remind and encourage employees to take advantage of unutilized or under-utilized benefits, like sealants and fluoride treatments.
4. Be sure to explain new benefits or changes in benefits to employees, especially during open enrollment.
5. Emphasize the advantages of using the network. Provide a cost comparison worksheet to show the difference between in- and out-of-network dental costs. This can illustrate the cost savings of seeking care from an in-network dentist.
6. Encourage employees to provide feedback about what they like or dislike about their dental plan. The feedback can be useful when deciding which plans to offer in the future.

An employer can offer the best dental plan around, but if the employees don’t understand how the plan works and what its value is, then the benefits are more likely to be overlooked or underappreciated. Conversely, employees are more likely to enroll in the dental plan when they understand how to use it and how much money the plan will save them in the long run. That’s why education and communication is essential to making dental benefits a competitive advantage.