As many companies head into open enrollment season, the gap between employer offerings and employee understanding is widening, according to recent data from insurance company MetLife.
Fifty-seven percent of full-time employees surveyed by MetLife said they “fully understand what their benefits cover.” That’s the lowest level since the company began tracking this issue in 2020; at that time, 66% of respondents said they had a full understanding of what their benefits do and do not cover.
A few factors may be at play here, according to Todd Katz, head of US group benefits with MetLife. Benefits are becoming more expensive and complex, and as a result, plan design may be changing. Employers are grappling with higher health costs and, in some cases, navigating new statutes that mandate they provide benefits like paid leave to workers in certain jurisdictions.
At the same time, employees are feeling more disengaged and less connected to their work compared to previous years, the survey found. As a result, employees may struggle to understand their benefits, as well as “access those benefits the way that they were intended to be used at the time of need,” Katz said.
The open enrollment playbook. To address this disconnect, MetLife is encouraging employers to double down on personalizing the benefits experience for workers, as well as adopt an “always-on” communication strategy.
The concept of offering workers enrollment tools to help them make better decisions about their benefits is likely familiar to many total rewards leaders. Companies like MetLife have doubled down on such solutions in recent years, sometimes enhanced with newer technologies like AI.
Such platforms typically rely in part on employees’ medical and financial data (provided they elect to share it) to deliver “curated recommendations” for workers, Katz said. Allowing “employees to add personalization at every touch point where they possibly can” may help them feel confident in their decisions without having to study up on the entirety of their employer’s benefits offerings, he suggested.
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Once employees elect benefits, HR teams can think about how to communicate with workers throughout the year to ensure they’re actually using them, Katz said.
“Whatever way you’re communicating to your employees, you’re nudging them to use the benefits the way they’re supposed to be used,” he said. Ideally, the process of using the benefit should be easy, even if it’s administratively complex on the back-end—as may be the case with paid leave, for example.
An effective benefits communication strategy should be “proactive and year-round,” Tim O’Connor, VP of HR technology partnerships & enrollment services with Prudential Group Insurance, told HR Brew via email.
HR teams should consider how communication styles and access to technology may differ across their employee populations. Ideally, he said, they’ll communicate about benefits across multiple channels, and ask workers how they’re doing throughout the year. He added, “HR leaders should regularly revisit not just what is being communicated, but how and how often, then measure effectiveness and ask for employee feedback.”
Communication isn’t one-size-fits all. Overloading employees with benefits information is certainly possible, a separate survey from Alight Solutions, a benefits technology platform, suggests.
That survey found 46% of workers were overwhelmed by the amount of communication they received about pay, benefits, and well-being. This was particularly true for respondents in HR (67%) and senior management (69%), but not individual contributors (25%). This suggests that while decision-makers who are steeped in this information might not see the need for additional communication about benefits, lower-level employees are “actually craving a little bit more,” said Laine Thomas Conway, Alight’s VP for delivery, enablement, and engagement.
Ensuring that employees fully understand their benefits, then, may require leadership to consider how their needs may differ from rank-and-file workers, she said.