In the U.S., employers are constantly looking for new, cost-effective solutions to drive health outcomes and better support employees. Easily accessible data is critical to making these decisions.

But north of the border, where government-funded medicine is the norm, the priorities are much different — as are privacy laws that make it harder to access data that can help determine what Canadian employees need from their benefits plans.

Organizations based in the U.S. with Canadian operations are familiar with this issue. They know it’s critical to learn about employees and discover what they need and want. And even with a dearth of data compared to the U.S., the best means to do that for Canadian employees is through data analytics.

Making data come alive

Digital analytics connects data across different sources and creates interactive visualizations that tell a story that’s more robust than simply numbers on a page. For instance, data analytics can pull together an organization’s history of drug claims with other information to produce a visual record of benefits by medical condition or average drug benefits for employees with certain medical conditions.

Digital analytics for cross-border operations can have a profound effect on benefits, specifically through the following:

  • Providing familiarity: When American companies move into Canada, they usually don’t have a deep understanding of benefits. A local HR team is essential to help operations, but appropriate data analysis will create a sense of familiarity to building localized benefits packages.
  • Developing strategy: Translating benefits strategy to a different country is challenging, no matter the similarities between nations. Digital analytics data can parse differences and provide necessary background to drive benefits strategy in Canada.
  • Creating synergy: On its own, data is meaningless. However, data analytics for benefits not only can improve benefits, but find ways that leverage U.S. resources to help inform Canadian benefits.

Finding data where it’s available

Compared to the U.S., Canadian organizations’ access to employee data is much more limited. Canadians’ health data is largely housed in provincial systems, shielded by strict privacy laws. Canadian organizations are sometimes unable to access the level of data that might be expected in the United States.

Organizations may spend time and resources trying to locate appropriate data, weeding out unreliable information in order to make it usable. Still, it’s important to source appropriate data to help organizations make appropriate choices for Canadian benefits.

Consider the questions being asked and what’s available. For instance, there may be a spike in claims related to mental health or an increasing number of disability incidents that can be connected to drug use. Without collecting personal identifiable information (PII), data analytics can help connect data sets so the organization can take steps to better support its employees.

Data analysis for benefits has become common. But doing data analysis well — bringing it to life through dynamic visualizations that rely on live data — is rare. Many organizations rely on American information to draw conclusions about what’s happening in Canada. But working with the right analysts and data can help ensure organizations reach the right decisions in building their benefit plans for Canadian employees.

To learn more about improving your benefits offerings through employee benefits data analytics, contact your HUB broker.