Let's be honest - most 20- and 30-something employees aren't thinking about being out of work on disability leave. Youth tends to create a sense of being invincible.

Yet three out of 10 workers between the ages of 25 and 65 will experience an accident or illness that keeps them out of work for three months or longer, reports the Council for Disability Awareness.

Seeing how more employers are educating baby boomers about long-term care insurance, experts say the same efforts must be made for younger workers regarding disability insurance.

For many employers, especially those with a large Gen X and Gen Y workforce, that means spending extra time during orientation and open enrollment explaining disability benefits and insurance.

It's key that workers under the age of 40 understand their short-term disability and long-term disability benefits so that they can obtain the proper level of disability insurance.

"It's incumbent upon employers to spend more time helping and educating young employees about how their disability program works," says Robert Taylor, president of CDA.

The Maine-based group, which represents disability insurance companies, focuses on raising public awareness of the growing realities and consequences of becoming disabled.

"Younger workers have to understand that disability is an event that is growing in likelihood in terms of the working population," he adds. "Therefore, they need to incorporate disability financial planning into their overall financial planning," even if they think they probably won't become disabled.

Communicating with the invincible generation

Last year, during opening enrollment, Laura Smith, U.S. human resource director at Edelman, a public relations firm, sent an e-mail urging employees to look at their disability options.

At Edelman, a large percentage of the workforce is in their 20s and 30s, and the average employee age is 33.

The e-mail asked workers whether they could pay for their daily living expenses, health copays and deductibles, and contribute to their 401(k) plan, if they were out on disability due to: suffering a sports injury; being in a car accident that required surgery and long-term recovery; delivering a baby and time out for recuperation; or experiencing a serious illness, such as cancer, with time off for treatment and recovery.

The e-mail went on to say, "If the answer is no, then how will you protect your savings and income in the event of this type of disability?"

Smith says the e-mail was an experiment to gauge whether workers understood the financial implications of a disability. Edelman, which employs about 3,000 workers, offers short-term and long-term disability benefits.

Employees pay into the short-term disability plan, and during the initial waiting period of 10 days, the company pays the employee's full salary for those two weeks.

Workers do not have to use any of their paid leave days. The short-term disability plan then provides 80% of pay for disabilities and illness. The long-term disability plan is employer-paid and provides about 70% of salary up to a maximum of $6,000 per month.

Shortly after sending out the e-mail, Smith says she received numerous replies from employees, saying, "You really made me think about this topic."

"Overall, our workers understand disability insurance, but what we struggle with is that most think that they don't need it," says Smith, who plans to develop more employee communication efforts similar to the content in the e-mail.

Meanwhile, when she talks with Millennials about disability insurance, she asks, "If you could not work, for whatever reasons, could you afford to pay your bills for three months?" "Astoundingly, the answer I would get back from some is, No, but my parents would take care of me.' I then reply, Do you think that would put an unnecessary financial burden on your parents?'" she adds.

"Most would say it probably would, so then we would have a dialogue about disability insurance. I've learn to adopt the way I talk to the Millennials a little differently than I do the baby boomers."

Balancing disability insurance

"Younger workers take disability benefits for granted because it's typically an employer-provided benefit," says Kim Stattner, national practice leader for disability consulting at Hewitt Associates.

However, they may want to take the benefit more seriously as employers trim expenses by making some offerings completely employee-paid, looking to offset inflation in health care.

Stattner says disability coverage is one such example at many companies.

Many employers are considering whether they need to provide such a lucrative long-term disability benefit, scaling back on what they pay for and giving employees the ability to at least have base coverage.

So if workers want to buy up, then the policy can enhance the long-term disability benefit with employee contributions, explains Stattner.

Thus, explaining the value of disability benefits and the financial commitment it might carry to younger workers is all the more important for benefit managers at all companies to focus on.

Resources

Best practices to help employers capture the benefits of integrated disability management

For more information about how disability can affect your company and employees visit www.disabilitycanhappen.org.