How employee data can shape enrollment

With the fall renewal season just around the corner, it’s time for employers and their benefits advisors to start planning employee benefit offerings.  Nailing the right benefits package helps employees feel supported and healthy, leading to greater retention rates and making it that much easier to recruit new talent. But how do you know if your current set of benefits is actually meeting the needs of employees?

The answer can be summed up in three words: employee population data. Employee population data gives you a birds’ eye view of employees’ health and lifestyle needs, so you can build an offering to effectively support them. And, while there are a virtually unlimited number of coverage options out there, by utilizing employee data, you will have the information you need to narrow down the choices and find providers that align with your needs.

There are two sources of employee data you’ll want to dig into in parallel: the employee census and the survey. Once you have access to this information, you’ll begin to identify themes that can help to guide your benefit decisions. Brokers can help their clients analyze and interpret this information by bringing specialized insights to the table to make better sense of these numbers.

Employee census

This is demographic data such as employees’ age, gender, number of dependents, and so on. Once you analyze this data, you can start to predict what types of services or care employees may want.

For instance, if your census data indicates that there is a large number of covered dependents, you might want to consider offering on-demand childcare services. Alternatively, if the company has a significant number of recent college graduates, you may want to think about offering student loan repayment and tuition assistance.

Employee survey

While a census will help you to anticipate, directionally, what employees may want, a survey of employees will tell you exactly how employees view their current plan, to what extent they’re using each benefit, and what they want in the future.

For example, the company may be offering a particular benefit that they were confident employees would gravitate to in great numbers. But the results of the survey may indicate that only a minuscule number of them are actually using it.

Here are a few tips for developing a successful survey:

• Get going early. The ideal time to distribute a survey is months before the renewal date at the same time the employer kicks off renewal strategy conversations with their broker. Doing so will provide employees adequate time to fill them out and give the broker and employer plenty of runway to analyze the results.

• Ask questions to learn if employees understand their benefits, are using them, and find value with them: Do employees know how to access and use all of their benefits? To gauge the “benefits literacy” of employees, you might ask them to “Please rank from 1-5 your level of understanding of the benefits available to you.” To understand to what extent employees are using specific benefits, you could ask “Do you and your family participate in X service?” And to learn if your employees are satisfied with their benefits, you could ask, “Does your plan adequately cover the needs of your family?”

• Encourage employees to suggest more benefits. A survey is a great opportunity to identify gaps in coverage and learn what employees value. Knowing this, you might want to ask a question at the end of the survey such as, “If your employer offered one additional benefit, what would you want it to be?”

• Provide incentives for filling out the survey. To encourage people to fill out the survey, you may want to offer a small gift or perk to those who do, such as a $5 gift card redeemable at a nearby coffee shop or a raffle ticket.

Once you’ve gathered all of this data, here are three steps you can take to put it to use:

Go through the data to identify trends. Are you seeing any trends within the data? For instance, did a significant number of respondents not understand their benefits or rate a particular benefit poorly? Did a meaningful number of people request a benefit that  is not currently being offered?

Use these trends to guide your decisions. Research and conversations between the employer and broker will help to build the right benefits offering for the company. For instance, if a large number of employees stated that they found their plan confusing, you may want to offer employees health care navigation tools. Or, if a large number of people expressed an interest in mental health services, you’ll want to add mental health services to the new plan.

You may also want to consider conducting an employee focus group as a way to complement the data from the survey. A focus group provides an opportunity to dive in on the details that emerge from the survey. For example, with a focus group, you can follow up on common survey answers and learn more about why folks responded as they did.

The employer should share these findings with their broker, leadership team and employees. By looping the broker in as soon as the data is gathered, he or she can help design an updated benefits package. They’ll then want to share the data with the leadership team so they too can understand the needs of employees as well as the rationale for choosing certain benefits. Finally, communicate the findings with employees so they can see how their input influenced your decisions.

As the saying goes, “data is the new gold.” Certainly, that axiom is true when it comes to understanding the wants and needs of your employees. By uncovering trends with data, you’ll have the information you need to create a plan that keeps employees engaged, happy and feeling appreciated throughout the year.

Bryan Davis is National Practice Leader at Nava Benefits.