As you read this, an under-pressure CFO somewhere is walking into the office of their HR benefits leader asking tough questions about employee engagement with the company's health care benefits:

• Have the expanded offerings paid off for our employees in terms of better outcomes? 

• Have they paid off for our company through employee retention and recruiting, higher productivity and happier employees? 

• Are enough employees consistently engaging with our benefits in a meaningful way?

CFOs have always had to ask tough questions and grapple with a host of macro- and microeconomic variables affecting profitability and growth. In the past few years, however, health care has rocketed toward the top of this list and is now the second-highest cost on a company's profit and loss statement after compensation. In fact, 70% of employers express rising concern about their ability to continue to afford healthcare coverage for their employees according to one recent study. 

For cost-pressured CFOs, benefits managers, and their advisors, knowing whether employees are engaged and utilizing their health benefits is both mission-critical and distressingly elusive. According to Quantum Health's just-released engagement study, 67% of employers see increasing employee engagement with benefits as essential to reducing long-term health care costs, while 73% believe it is key to improving health care outcomes and employee satisfaction. Despite this level of importance, only 20% of benefits leaders surveyed believe their employees are currently optimally engaged with their health benefits.

How can we begin to close this engagement gap?