3 reasons why benefits are frustrating today’s HR leaders

Today’s workforce has spoken: salary alone is not enough to keep them from jumping ship. Employees value employer-sponsored benefits more than ever – so much that a recent Forbes Advisory survey found that 40% of workers would leave a job for a position that offers better benefits.

To be clear, they would leave for a position that they perceive to be offering better benefits.

After all, it is one thing to provide a great benefits program, but it is a completely different thing for your employees to adopt and engage with these programs in a way that advances your organizational goals.

Many of the HR leaders I speak to are frustrated. They say the pace of change is unsustainable and makes it impossible to keep up with shifting employee demands. Others say that they’ve gone to great lengths to align their plan with employee needs, but benefits adoption and engagement are dismal.

They also say they struggle to make the C-suite understand the positive impact a successful benefits strategy has on its bottom line, putting its benefits budget in jeopardy.

Company culture is one of the strongest influences on organizational success. Benefits are the most tangible expression of company culture, so it makes sense that when benefit goals are not reached it can create a cascading effect on people and organizational performance.

Benefits support every people-related initiative at any organization, but if they aren’t connected to business outcomes, organizations risk creating a vicious cycle of turnover, low workplace satisfaction, weak employer brands, and poor company culture.

Getting benefits right can be hard, especially today. Here are some actions you can take to make improvements and reap the rewards of building connected, engaging benefit experiences for your people.

1. The pace of change is unsustainable

Your people want benefits that serve them in their life as it exists today. They expect benefits to support their total health and wellness at an individual level and in ways that are personalized for their unique life stage, medical history, financial circumstance, and lifestyle.

They want benefits that serve them in the here and now, but the here and now is changing at warp speed. It’s a complex and chaotic time, and there is tremendous pressure on HR leaders to keep up.

The pandemic permanently changed what people want from their jobs — and how they want to do them. The twin impacts of inflation and slow economic growth have introduced high levels of financial uncertainty for both employers and employees. And to top it off, we still face a growing nationwide mental health crisis and have not yet felt the full repercussion of delayed medical care brought on by the pandemic.

This is a lot for HR leaders to manage, especially in the wake of such an intense few years.

So, how can HR leaders structure their benefit programs in ways that are meaningful to their people while meeting budgetary demands? And how can they do it in a way that is scalable and flexible, because everything could change again tomorrow?

Employers should focus on understanding the types of benefits their people say they truly value. This can be done through surveys, focus groups, or by analyzing your adoption and utilization data.

Benefit programs should not be designed as one size fits all, so look at your populations to find opportunities to improve benefit experiences across geographies, lifestyles, and life stages.

And most importantly, make it easy for your people to use their benefits. Because again, offering a rich benefits program and driving an engaging benefits experience with high adoption are two entirely different things.

2. Employees are demanding “better” benefits – including ones you already offer

Nothing is more frustrating than designing the perfect benefits program that nobody uses – except maybe the fallout from low adoption.

We all know the feeling. You’ve invested countless hours and huge budgets to get your design just right, working closely with your broker and advisors and using all the great data you collected from employees. Your program meets your employees’ exact demands for mental health and wellbeing benefits, access to telemedicine, lifestyle benefits, caregiver benefits, and financial wellness programs.

And yet, your turnover is still high, you struggle to attract talent, and your workplace satisfaction and engagement levels continue to decline. Your carefully designed programs are not only under-utilized, but your people complain that they need access to the very same benefits you already offer.

Thinking back to the Forbes Advisory study that found 40% of U.S. workers would leave a job for better benefits, it begs the question: How many good people have left your organization for what was unknowingly a worse benefits program?

To improve adoption, you must fix benefit education gaps. Benefits jargon is complicated and hard to understand. Design your benefits communication strategy to make it easy to understand the coverage and support these programs provide, and how it could be useful in their unique situation.

Leverage technology to create scalable, personalized benefit experiences that help your people understand how to use their benefits to help them today.

You will see higher rates of engagement and adoption by tailoring communications at the individual level, and higher open rates for messages people know were built just for them. For example, the advantages of your legal benefit are likely different if you’re approaching retirement or just entering the workforce. Tailoring these messages will help your employees understand why the benefit is of value to them, increasing rates of adoption and engagement.

Technology that integrates individualized health data takes that personalization a step further by helping your people understand likely coverage needs and associated costs based on their own health history. Insight into predicted health care events will help your people not only choose right-sized coverage, but drive personalized messaging to help them better understand and use the benefits they have elected.

Your people need guidance throughout the entire benefits year, not just at enrollment time. Creating a single, connected benefits experience also increases adoption and engagement by making it easy for people to view their entire benefits program in one place, instead of through disconnected carrier apps.

3. The C-suite views benefits as a cost-center

It can be tempting for organizations to cut benefits to lower costs – especially if those benefits aren’t being adopted and utilized. But beware of the negative effects those decisions may have in the future.

Many in the C-suite still view benefits as a cost center, so it’s critical that HR leaders link benefits strategy performance directly to the organization’s bottom line to show the true impact.

By leveraging your benefits program early in the candidate experience, you can shorten the time to hire, saving resource time and reducing the impact on remaining employees. Using benefits to support total wellbeing decreases absenteeism and improves productivity. It can cost three to four times an employee’s salary to replace them, but building a positive workplace culture through benefits strengthens your employer brand and reduces turnover.

You may know how much your benefits strategy influences the balance sheet, but do other leaders across your organization? Demonstrate the total return on your benefits investment by linking benefits to organization-wide strategic goals and outcomes.

Helping executive leadership understand the value of your benefits program is just as critical as showing this value to your employees.

Related: The important role of employee benefits during the pandemic and beyond

Conclusion

It’s a challenging world out there, and it’s no wonder HR leaders are frustrated. Take back control of your benefits strategy by helping your C-suite and employees recognize the value of your programs. Leverage technology to drive a personalized benefits communication program and create connected benefit experiences to help your employees choose and use the best benefits available to them.

Not only will you rediscover your purpose as an HR leader, but you will be seen as the strategic contributor you truly are.

Rich Wolfe is the co-founder and CEO of Empyrean, a benefits technology and services company committed to helping organizations build better corporate cultures through benefits.