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Employee benefits strategies are always changing as companies seek to address the needs of a diverse workforce and recruit and retain the best talent.
“As the regulatory landscape continues to shift, employers are responding in kind by evolving their benefits and compensation offerings to best support employees,” according to the 2025 Goldman Sachs Asset Management Retirement Survey & Insights Report. “From retirement and equity to health care and family care, employers are looking for ways to meet the needs of their diverse populations and attract and retain top employees and talent.”
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One thing that hasn’t changed is that workers expect their employers to help fund their retirement savings. 401(k) plans remain the cornerstone benefit in helping employees achieve retirement readiness. Despite their near universal adoption, plan sponsors continue to tweak the design of their plans by adding new features to make them more attractive, encourage greater retirement savings, keep up with new plan features introduced by legislation and remain competitive with peers.
Goldman Sachs anticipates several growing retirement benefit trends among its corporate partners in 2025:
- Roth in-plan conversion feature (59%)
- Roth automatic in-plan conversion feature (27% of those offering in-plan conversion)
- Managed account option (46%)
- Lifetime income/annuity feature (10%)
In response to SECURE Act 2.0 provisions, these corporate partners have added the following 401(k) plan design features:
- Enhanced (“super”) catch-up contributions (65%)
- Company match based on student loan payments (nearly 5%)
Among the other key survey findings:
- Employee Stock Purchase Plans are offered by 44% of publicly traded corporate partners. They are helpful for recruiting and retaining top talent, improving worker performance and increasing employee savings.
- As the price of medical insurance rises, employers are focused on cost-containment measures. Eighty-five percent of corporate partners increased employee premiums for at least one plan, and 7% have added a new no-deductible plan option in the last two years.
- Although employers have started offering access to GLP-1 drugs for managing diabetes, coverage for weight loss has been limited. For companies that do allow these medications to be used for weight loss, employees often must first be enrolled in a weight loss or nutrition program for a certain amount of time before the GLP-1s will be covered by the medical plan.
- Companies continue to focus on paid leave policies as a tool to address both mental health and caregiver needs. This includes caregiver, parental and bereavement leave, and even sabbaticals for more tenured employee. Many are allowing employees to convert PTO into student loan payments; 401(k) and/or HSA contributions; charitable contributions; and 529 plan contributions.
- Voluntary benefits have grown steadily in popularity over the last decade. In 2024, the most common voluntary benefits among corporate partners were group legal (74%); accident insurance (72%); critical illness insurance (71%); ID theft protection (64%); and pet insurance (63%).
- Employers provide long-term disability coverage at a majority of large and mid-sized companies.
- Life insurance is a keystone of financial planning for employees, and more than half of Americans have some form of life insurance.
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Alan Goforth
Alan Goforth is a freelance writer in suburban Kansas City. In addition to freelancing for several publications, he has written a dozen books about sports and other topics.
