Trends in Benefits Plan Survey Results

Many companies offer a wide range of benefits packages to their employees, yet there’s a clear gap when it comes to employees using and understanding these benefits. Our survey data revealed that a startling two-thirds of employees find it hard to fully grasp and take advantage of their benefits.

What’s the solution for better engagement and utilization? Personalized communication and a streamlined benefits experience stand out as critical components, according to the insights provided from over 2,600 managers and higher-ups in the HR and benefits space that we surveyed. By focusing on these strategies, employers can significantly improve how employees perceive and use their benefits.

Want to know more about how you can optimize your benefits approach? Keep reading for more key insights from our recent survey below.

Organizations have a desire to elevate their benefits plans to be more engaging, create a holistic employee experience, and support retention and recruitment efforts. See the top six organizational priorities for next year and beyond below.  

What strategic organizational goals are a priority for your next plan year and beyond? 

Eliminating friction and easier access encourages employees to become more informed about their benefits. As you can see from the top three priorities respondents list here, they all complement each other in achieving this goal.    

What is the top priority for your employees’ experience when engaging with your benefits platform?

How can HR teams help achieve these priorities? 

• Invest in a user-friendly, intuitive, single-source benefits administration platform to create a seamless employee experience.  
• Provide personalized support and guidance through decision support tools, chatbots, and user-specific communications through text and emails to encourage benefits activation.  
• Offer comprehensive resources to employees to empower them to better understand the benefits available to them.  
• Implement ways for employees to provide feedback to continually refine and improve your benefits user-experience. 

Every HR team experiences challenges from time to time—but with nearly half of our survey respondents saying that poor employee engagement and communications are a challenge for them, it’s clear that employees aren’t engaging in all the benefits available to them.

Do you experience any of these challenges with your current benefits administration solution?  

How can HR professionals work to combat these challenges? 

• Partner with a benefits admin solution that automates manual processes to improve efficiency and accessibility.  
• Foster open communication channels to enhance employee engagement.  
• Implement robust decision support tools to help employees make more informed decisions about their benefits.  
• Establish clear vendor selection criteria when implementing a new solution and maintain ongoing communication with your current vendor to ensure consistent service.  

Curious about how Businessolver can help address any of these challenges?

Check out our Capabilties ebook

From the data we collected, employees generally have trouble understanding and activating on their benefits. 61% of respondents said their employees needed support to activate on their benefits, and just 36% of respondents claim their employees had a strong understanding of their benefits package. This is why you need the right benefits technology partner to support your employees. 

How well can your employees engage with, understand, and activate their benefits?  

Out of all the tools available for supporting year-round activation, most respondents agreed that a comprehensive mobile-app, combined with text message reminders, is the best way for increasing year-round employee benefits engagement and activation.  

Which tool would best support year-round employee activation for the programs you offer? 

If you need more proof as to why your benefits strategy should include a comprehensive mobile app and text communication, check out the stats below. 

• Millennials and Gen X find the most value in text message reminders with 42% of Millennial and 33% of Gen X employees opting-into benefits text reminders.
• 35% of all employees opt-into text message reminders indicating that over 1/3 of employees want key benefits information delivered via mobile.
• 93% of Businessolver clients use our mobile app in conjunction with our benefits platform.
• 170k HSA and FSA claims have been submitted through our mobile app last year.
• Businessolver has seen a 2x increase in mobile downloads over the last year.

Out of all employee support programs and tools that our respondents were interested in exploring, three stood out as beneficial to a third of respondents. These tools included a tool to help employees make decisions about their benefits offerings, personalized communications, and a Total Rewards Solution.  

Which of these employee support programs or tools are you most interested in exploring? 

Additional Benefits of Implementing a Decision Support Tool:  

• Employees are nearly 2x as likely to elect voluntary benefits alongside medical when they have personalized decision support at enrollment.
• Nearly 67% of employees enroll in a HDHP and HSA when using decision support compared to only 19% when not using it.

AI is Supercharging the Benefits Experience

Our sixth annual report shows that personalization, when powered by empathetic AI and backed by real people, unlocks incredible results in the employee benefits experience. Download our report to read more about how you can deliver an empathetic experience for your employees while driving down costs and increasing efficiencies in your team.

See the data for yourself

See our Tech in Action

Curious about how to take your organization’s benefits strategy to the next level this year and beyond? Register here for a 20-minute live overview of Businessolver’s technology.

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