Three Benefits Metrics HR Should Measure to Track ROI 

Benefits are one of the top line items for your organization. Here’s how you can keep a pulse on performance to improve employee engagement and prove ROI to your stakeholders. 

Employers invest heavily in their benefits program, and rightfully so. But how do you quantify the success of these investments? Benefits ROI isn’t as simple as headcount and premium spend. As one of the top line times—and one of the top reasons employees stay or leave their organization—measuring ROI is a crucial outcome of your benefits strategy. 

Here are four ways you can evaluate how your benefits strategy is performing and a few tips to help you boost employee engagement year-round.  

What does benefits administration ROI look like? 

ROI in benefits can be a bit tricky to measure as the success metrics go far beyond financials—you’re measuring the impact the program has on your workforce. Benefits ROI should identify and help you quantify that value, looking at multiple factors across your program. 

Measuring success and performance of your benefits plan should look at multiple factors, like:  

• Enrollment and participation rates 
• Cost and risk management or reduction 
• Efficiencies 
• Employee satisfaction and engagement 
• Overall wellbeing 

A great benefits strategy is a well-rounded one. It balances cost management objectives for your organization with the wellbeing needs of your workforce. Here are four you can use to prove the success of your benefits strategy along with some tried-and-true tactics that have helped our clients achieve more results. 

Metric 1: Are Employees Logging In After Enrollment? 

A strong benefits strategy engages employees beyond enrollment, transforming the benefits experience into a year-round support program. An open-enrollment communication campaign might drive a healthy spike in logins during the annual enrollment window, but that won’t sustain long-term engagement.  

42% of our clients’ employees log back into Benefitsolver 4 or more times after enrollment. Why? Because they have year-round engagement strategies in place alongside a single platform for employees to go to enroll in and access their benefits. 

How to drive year-round engagement: 

• Make benefits accessible 24/7: Mobile apps are especially helpful for this. But even ensuring employees know where to go after hours or outside of your company firewall to access their benefits can be helpful.  
• Build a benefits communication plan: Nearly all employees in Benefitsolver prefer some form of email as their primary benefits communication channel. A third also opts in for text message reminders. But a good communication plan goes beyond just delivery method and makes communications easy to understand with plain language, helpful links, and timely sends. 

Metric 2: Are employees enrolling and using their benefits? 

Utilization rates of various benefit options directly correlate to their usefulness and the program’s overall success. It’s one thing to have great benefits; it’s quite another to ensure they’re being utilized. For example, higher participation in wellness programs might propose an improvement in workplace health, which can reduce absenteeism and boost productivity. Ensuring employees are aware starts with a solid communication framework: 44% is the average open rate for personalized emails from Benefitsolver as compared to benchmarks from marketing email open rates which don’t achieve half that at 21%. 

How to make benefits easier to understand: 

Use nurtured campaigns and personalized messages based on employee data to encourage more active usage. Make sure enrollment processes are straightforward and eligibility is clear to avoid any unnecessary barriers.  

Metric 3: Are employees enrolling in right-fit benefits? 

84% of employees are confused about their benefits. But they shouldn’t have to be benefit experts to make sound benefits decisions. Decision support tools can help make choosing the right benefits easier for employees. 67% of employees elected a right-fit-for-them benefit with a savings account (like an HSA) when they used Businessolver’s personalized decision support tool at enrollment. 

How to support right-fit benefit decisions: 

Embed decision support into the enrollment experience and remove the healthcare jargon.  

Employees will never be benefits experts—and they shouldn’t have to be! Right-fit enrollment is more than just election numbers; it’s about ensuring your workforce feels confident in their benefits decisions.  

Real ROI in benefits programs is not a mere number on a report; it is the cumulative effect of countless strategic decisions and empathetic actions that elevate the employee benefit experience and your organization’s success. By tracking the right metrics, you can start digging into the performance of your benefits plan to drive meaningful change for tangible results.  

Want to learn more about how to supercharge your benefits strategy? Check out our latest Benefits Insights report to see how technology is playing a big role in driving results for HR.