Employers will want advice on the best ways to communicate and design benefits that will appeal to each group. Connectivity with these employees and the enrollment techniques that support the benefits is a major area of planning for change. One of these days this column will cover “new ways to manage smart phone enrollment.” Most of the planning today for enrollment success is access planning – deciding how to best gain access to employees. In the future, this might be described as interest planning – deciding how to best get employees interested in benefit-related messages.

3) Legislation and regulation. Health care reform is a great example of legislation changing the core of the benefits business – and it’s not the only example. We can expect government at every level to continue to create laws, rules and regulations that affect us. And like health care reform, the effects of these rule changes will have ramifications for years to come.

4) The economy and “competing with the price of gas.”* The economy has by no means recovered from the great recession. Uncertain employment growth, uncertain wage levels and shifts in the power of various sectors seem to continue. Meanwhile, the price of corn, a major staple, is increasing. And the price of gas, which has been lower than it was in 2008 during most of the recession, is edging back toward record levels for the United States.

The core reason for thinking about the drivers of change in our business is clear. We can either decide to ignore them, and risk obsolescence, or we can join in saying “all I see is opportunity.”

* January 2008 Benefits Selling column.

Marty Traynor is vice president of voluntary benefits at Mutual of Omaha. He can be reached at [email protected].