Counseling program adapted for intranets
Benefits include empowerment, communication
Riding what it believes to be a wave of dramatic growth in corporate intranets, Westport, CT-based Dependent Care Connection (DCC), a work/life benefits consulting firm, has made its employee counseling resource service available to its clients "on-line."Intranets are on-line networks that are accessed and used in much the same way as the internet and the World Wide Web. The main difference is that they are "closed" systems that are customized and can be accessed only from within the "host" company.
Called the LifeCare Net program, the impetus for this mode of communication "came from the clients themselves," notes Peter G. Burki, managing partner, although DCC was already using its database internally. "We put it up on our own intranet for our employees and thought it would make sense to make it available on-line," he says.
This first in-house step was taken about 22 months ago, before the explosion in intranets," says Burki. "Now, almost all the companies we work with or talk to have or are in the process of developing an intranet." DCC’s current client list includes Silicon Graphics Corp., of Mountain View, CA, Wells Fargo Bank, based in San Francisco and Hughes Electronics of Los Angeles.
The DCC program "seemed like a natural," recalls Kim Perkins, manager of work and life programs at Hughes Electronics.
Hughes was already using DCC’s traditional counseling services, which enabled employees to contact them through a toll-free number for resources and referrals for a wide range of work/life issues.
"We began looking at our own intranet as a real effective means for discussing benefit programs — with the information right on-line, employees could use it to do a little research on their own about what our benefits were," recalls Perkins. "We were already looking at different work and life publications that we could put on-line for our employees to use, when we found out that DCC had already done all the work for us."
DCC provides what Burki calls "a complete database model," with educational resources on:
• prenatal care;
• adoption;
• child care from birth to 5 years;
• child care from 6 to 18 years;
• summer care;
• emergency care;
• special needs;
• colleges;
• adult care;
• international care;
• toll-free health information;
• financial planning.
Each of these services is "iconed" on the program’s "Home Page." In addition, employees can click separate buttons for resources, newsletters, E-news, forms, experts, providers, and a search engine.
With an intranet, Burki summarizes, "A company can put all its benefits and services on-line and make them available to its employees at the click of a button."
Another advantage of an intranet, he notes, is that information is available in "real time." "Often, by the time a company prints up its policies and procedures, they’ve changed," he says. "The same problems occur with an employee phone list. Benefit plans have nuances and changes almost on a daily or weekly basis. With an intranet, you can update it on the fly. You also increase your communication efficiencies tenfold."
For an employee to access the DCC system on his or her computer, an employee "just clicks right on the icon and there they are," says Burki. Once there, a number of options are available to them.
"If an employee is interested in education information on any of the major topics, it’s all right on-line," he says. "Say you want child care for your son or daughter; you can compare the different types of services that are available. If your child is bitten, you can find out what to do. Or, you could Ask the experts’ whether you should lease or purchase."
The fee for access to the DCC database is assessed on a per-employee basis and varies according to company size. "The cost can be anywhere from $10 to $25 per employee per year," says Burki.
Perkins sees continuing growth for the use of intranets in the area of benefits and health promotion. "I think we will see more [use] as folks become more familiar with scooting around the intranet as well as the internet," she predicts. "Our wellness program is publicized through written programs once a month, but a copy is also put on the intranet so people can reference it."
[Editor’s Note: For more information on intranets and LifeCare Net, contact: Peter Burki, Managing Partner, DCC, P.O. Box 2783, Westport, CT 06880. Telephone: (203) 291-3500. Fax: (203) 226-2852. E-mail: [email protected]. World Wide Web: http://www.dcclifecare.com. Or Kim Perkins, Hughes Electronics, 7200 Hughes Terrace, C158, Los Angeles, CA 90045. Telephone: (310) 568-6979. Fax: (310) 568-7830. E-mail [email protected].]
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