In many cases, the most difficult part of understanding how SDOH impacts the workforce is knowing where to start. The first step should be gaining visibility into the assets, attributes and resources in a given community and how they impact an individual based on where they live and work. This means determining if an area where a worker resides or the location of an office, warehouse or distribution center has adequate public transportation, sufficient healthy food options and easy access to health care. From there, employers should establish the individual level of social risk and whether a person, based on their role, who spends most of their time in these locations will be more likely to face socioeconomic challenges. This will help them understand how their home and workplace environments will impact their health and wellbeing.

The shortcomings of traditional approaches

Many employers have invested significant resources into enhanced benefits and health equity initiatives with little return. The lack of progress is not due to the absence of quality benefits or support programs, but rather a lack of precision when it comes to benefit design. One-size-fits-all approaches that fail to account for individual social risk and community factors often go underutilized, and the lack of data and benchmarking with these programs precludes employers from making improvements. The fact of the matter is you cannot improve what you’re unable to measure. The only way to refine these benefits and service offerings is to understand why previous efforts were unsuccessful and make the necessary adjustments moving forward.

For employers and advisors to make a genuine effort to address SDOH, they must leverage data and analytics to generate a holistic view, tailor their offerings and match market resources with community and individual needs. By developing a better understanding of the social risk employees are facing, organizations and benefits advisors can better allocate resources to provide comprehensive support for their teams. This can include non-insurance related benefits, such as rideshare vouchers for trips to the doctor’s office, pop-up produce stands at work locations, coupons for healthy food options and financial literacy courses.

Improving benefit utilization and outcomes in 2025 and beyond

With the appropriate services and offerings in place, it’s important for organizations to ensure people are using them. As the cost of health care continues to rise, it’s important for employers and advisors to extract as much value as possible from existing programs and benefits by increasing utilization. This starts by making sure people are aware of the benefits available to them and understand how to use them. Research shows that 25% of employees either don’t know where to find information about certain benefits or the information was never communicated to them. This issue can often be attributed to the fact that nearly 90% of adults in the United States have substandard rates of health literacy, which is the ability to find, understand and use health information and services to make health-related decisions and actions.

Benefits advisors and the employers they work with must recognize that not every employee interprets or absorbs information the same way, and many are unable to utilize company resources through no fault of their own. By gathering information about the employee and his or her community, organizations can connect with their workforce in a culturally competent manner and provide easily consumable information that is applicable to target cohorts. While a strong support system of family, friends, colleagues and community allies has been found to improve health outcomes, empowering employees with benefits that foster self-sufficiency throughout the navigation process will have an even greater impact. Eliminating this deterrent will not only bolster utilization, but it will also improve health and wellbeing outcomes across the organization.

Employers, employees, benefits professionals, doctors, payers and every other health care stakeholder wants a world with efficient, effective and equitable health care. However, delivering it is a challenge as costs continue to rise and premiums reach $8,400 for individuals and close to $24,000 for families, according to The Kaiser Family Foundation.

For employers and advisors looking to mitigate this unsustainable trend, it’s very reasonable to reduce what they might consider to be fringe benefits. But they should do so thoughtfully, and with caution. When you consider that the average person spends 63 minutes in the health care system each year, versus more than 500,000 minutes outside the system, including 115,200 minutes with their employer, it makes perfect sense that the social factors in their lives are the primary driver of their health care costs and outcomes. In order to truly bend the cost curve while delivering better and more equitable care, initiatives for addressing social risk need to be part of the equation. We just need to be more precise and efficient in how we deliver them.

Trenor Williams, MD, is co-founder and CEO of Socially Determined.