The ROI of Benefits Technology
At our recent webinar, we outlined some of the best methods to drive return on investment (ROI) from your annual enrollment (AE) experience, like using an employee’s preferred communication preferences, marketing the value of your total rewards program, or building year-round opportunities to engage employees. With the methods now covered, let’s discuss the results and what that ROI can do for you.
Improved employee benefits engagement
One client-panelist highlighted their organization’s increase in employee benefits engagement in an annual enrollment with very few changes to their benefits plans. So why the uptick in engagement? They think it was their switch to their new benefits platform, Benefitsolver®. And they’ve got data to back it up.
For starters, they saw 94% of their employees self-enroll in benefits during their active enrollment. This self-service offers many benefits, but a simple one is that employees are getting to know their benefits better because they’re dealing with them more intimately during enrollment. And after AE, this panelist saw 30% of employees continue to come back into Benefitsolver four or more times–this data tells us that they are thinking about their benefits in an ongoing manner.
But that ongoing benefits engagement isn’t simply because of an engaging enrollment experience – it’s also because their employees receive and engage with benefits communications during AE and beyond. This client has seen a 36% average open rate for benefits-related emails among their population, above the health and wellness industry average of around 35%. Impressive, but maybe not drastic, right? Well, when we break these numbers down further, we see an interesting upward trend:
- 31% open rate during AE
- 44% open rate in Q1
- 50% open rate in Q2
This level of engagement with benefit-related emails is enormous in improving overall employee benefits engagement. It shows that employees are actively looking for benefits messages, and it gives the client a way to communicate many different topics, creating a more engaging and helpful benefits experience.
Improved HR efficiencies
Tools like the MyChoice® Recommendation Engine and our AI chatbot, SofiaSM, can be total game changers for HR teams and how they operate. With the same client as above, the MyChoice Recommendation Engine is the reason that 94% of their employees can successfully self-enroll in their benefits. This fully integrated decision support tool walks employees through a visually engaging series of questions to help them select the best plans for their needs–all without a sit-down with an HR team member.
The time savings provided by this tool are apparent. It creates a much more efficient enrollment process for employees and HR teams. Given that health literacy stays pretty high, with 85% of employees saying they are confused about their benefits, employees will continue to need help during enrollment. Either an HR team can be bogged down with countless questions, or they can deploy a tool like the MyChoice Recommendation Engine to save themselves and their employees time.
And while the MyChoice Recommendation Engine is a big-time saver during enrollment, it can’t actively help employees with questions that come up outside of it. Enter Sofia, our AI-enabled personal benefits assistant. Sofia can alleviate HR teams from countless questions by acting as their first line of defense. She took 48% of all member chats last year during AE, helping HR teams greatly during their busiest times. Regarding efficiency, she saved more than 4.8 million minutes of members’ waiting time thanks to her first chat resolution abilities and no wait times.
Best of all, Sofia can serve employees around the clock, seven days a week. She took 34% of all her chats after hours or on the weekends, giving employees help when needed and keeping questions from building up for 8:00 a.m. the next day or the following Monday morning.
Better benefits equity and diversity with one wallet
Creating a one-wallet experience in which electable benefits are linked with total rewards is one way to help employees take advantage of programs that will help them the most. We can’t decide which benefits are most important to our employees; that’s up to them and will be different for all. But, if we promote our programs and ensure they’re seen, we can help each employee find the benefits programs that will serve them best.
Common front doors, where benefits and programs are accessed, help employees simplify their experience. When members can see and access all their benefits in one place, they get a greater sense of their coverage and options—making it that much easier to take an active role in their benefits experience. A one-stop shop helps them get the most out of your offerings and makes your offerings more worthwhile.
Check out our recent AE webinar to see how you can get ROI out of your AE!
