HR Brew wants to hear about how your team makes the business case for benefits

The value of total rewards packages often boils down to one central question: What return does an employer see from the investments it puts toward employee benefits?

While the concept of return-on-investment (ROI) is simple, measuring it isn’t always so straightforward. High utilization rates can translate to positive ROI, but certain benefits aren’t typically used by a large percentage of the workforce. Parental leave, for example, might not be used by the entire employee population, but is nevertheless highly valued by the workers.

“It’s very difficult to put an ROI on programs that might be fairly narrow,” Andrew Gregg, VP of employee benefits for Prudential Financial, told HR Brew last year. “It’s hard even to determine whether there's an ROI. It's just the right thing to do.” Prudential tracks utilization, but also wants to invest in benefits that serve as “a differentiator” between other employers, he suggested.

In conversations with employers, the mental healthcare platform Modern Health tries to differentiate between “hard dollar ROI” and other factors that are “harder to quantify,” said Chief People and Strategy Officer Alison Borland.

Last September Modern Health published an analysis that quantified the healthcare savings employers typically see from using its services, to the tune of $2.39 for every $1 invested. But Borland also recognized that issues like stress, anxiety, and depression can also affect the workforce in ways that aren’t immediately evident from such an analysis.

“Employers…need that hard-dollar ROI to take to their CFO or to demonstrate the business case, and then there’s generally a really robust discussion of all of those other things that have clear, significant value to the business,” she told HR Brew.

Today, companies are under increasing pressure to demonstrate hard-dollar ROI from their benefits, as businesses grapple with historically high health costs and ongoing economic uncertainty.

Some HR teams are considering changes to their companies’ health benefits in light of this pressure. In some cases, this might mean workers pay higher out-of-pocket costs for healthcare. Before limiting or reducing coverage, employers might consider switching vendors for better pricing or referring employees to “centers of excellence,” which are designed to lower care costs for certain conditions.

Given the proliferation of benefits employers are offering today, HR may lean more heavily into data to demonstrate ROI as well, Cristina Goldt, Workday’s general manager of workforce management and payroll, told HR Brew last year. In 2024, Workday launched an AI-powered tool to provide real-time insights into health and wellness benefits, recognizing that HR teams want to make decisions based on data that’s “as current as possible,” she said.

Tell us about your benefits and ROI. In 2026, HR Brew is hoping to learn more about how HR teams are making the business case for benefits to their executive leaders.

Tell us about a benefit your company offers that you’re particularly proud of, as well as how your team is measuring its ROI, via this Google form.

You can also reach out directly to Courtney Vinopal, HR Brew’s total rewards reporter, to chat all things benefits: [email protected]