Most employers take a reactive approach to employee benefits. Every few years or so, they review their plan—putting most of their focus on cost. Which leads to a tendency to continuously choose insurers that offer basic benefits at the lowest price. There is little room for innovation in this reactive cycle, and it’s difficult to provide offerings that address the needs of a younger, more diverse workforce.
Today’s workforce values different types of benefits aside from traditional healthcare and retirement plans—they expect a broader array of benefit offerings and more flexible and thorough communication and administration styles. In order to attract and retain top talent, employers have to be more proactive about their employee benefits administration strategies.
In 2019, take a new approach by utilizing your resources to engage employees, anticipate benefits trends and the growing needs of your workforce, and adopt new, innovative plans to suit those needs.
Engage employees
Replace outdated brochures and complicated plan documents with more modern styles of communication. Today’s employees are most comfortable online and appreciate simple and intuitive tools. Test out some new digital platforms and communication tools that will grab and hold your employees’ attention, and provide a rich yet simple user experience.
Digital solutions—like interactive magazines or virtual benefits fairs—are great ways to not only keep employees engaged, but also communicate essential information. This is an important first step because, without a proactive strategy to engage your employees, it’s far less likely that they’ll respond to your other efforts.
It’s also important to consider digital solutions as a way to identify your employees’ benefits-related needs and address them.
Gather and analyze the data
This year, proactively poll your employees about their needs and how the current offerings could be changed to better suit them. You can also track employee benefits usage to determine which offerings are less important to your workforce than others. This will help you identify which products to continue to invest in, which may be outdated or irrelevant, and which new products your employees would value if offered.
Embrace modern benefits options
In 2019, employers will notice the rise of more personalized and customized benefits options—including the types of products offered and new, innovative technologies to support a more tech-centric workforce. Products like health tracking technology and genome testing are growing in popularity and are effective ways employees can take an active role in their personal health.
Young, tech-savvy workers are already utilizing these types of technologies on their own, and by adopting them into your refreshed benefits administration approach, you can attract more unique, high-quality talent.
Offer voluntary options
On top of new technologies, it’s also important to begin considering plans with voluntary benefits options. Then, employees can select the benefits they (and their dependents) may need, creating a better, more personalized administration experience.
Lastly, choosing the right digital platform or software is essential to a proactive approach to benefits administration. Clarity Benefit Solutions offers a variety of products and services to help streamline benefits administration and save your employees time. Visit our website today.
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