Taking the Benefits Pulse – Trends and Insights to Watch

When school closed last spring, I never imagined that we would still be facing difficult decisions around schooling come September.

But here we are. So much has changed, and yet, we are back to school as of last week and hoping for health, safety and dare I say, some semblance of normalcy.

While many parents face difficult decisions this fall on where, how and when to send their children back to school, employers have faced these hard choices all summer long. When do I bring my workforce back to the office? How do we continue production or productivity in a safe environment?

The answers aren’t simple and they certainly aren’t perfect. One thing we have found most helpful during this time is to lean on each other. Crowdsourcing during COVID-19 has taken on new meaning. There’s never been a time where we have counted on each other more in making decisions, seeking advice and learning from other’s trials and efforts.

It was in that vein that we implemented the Businessolver Benefits Pulse back at the start of May. We saw so many in the workforce with questions that we wanted to provide a resource to show what we are seeing in workplace benefits trends, through Benefitsolver data.

To level set, from March 30 to May 11, we saw a 245% increase in the number of people moved to a Leave of Absence status. That was a massive spike like nothing we have ever seen. It was data like this that helped inform employers’ decisions on how they would move forward.

I wanted to spend some time today reviewing what we are seeing this month in our workplace benefits data trends.

• Since that spike May 11 in Leave of Absence, that number has steadily decreased week after week. Over the last month, LOA has decreased 11.8%. Compared to the total population on Benefitsolver, it makes up only 2%.
• Another key stat we are continuing to look at is around loss (or hopefully gain) of medical benefits. Those numbers have leveled out in recent months with only small gains or losses depending on the week. On average over the last month, those enrolled in an employer medical plan has steadied with a minimal decrease of just .03%
• The last stat I’ll review today is related to industries. Obviously, some industries were hit much harder than others in this environment. But good news, major changes in an active status across all industries has leveled out (with one outlier in the past week).

The Businessolver Benefits Pulse is updated weekly. I encourage you to subscribe so you can stay in the know on how this data continues to evolve as we as a country work through what’s next.

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