Apr 06, 2021
Employers are just now understanding the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. So they’re rethinking their approach to employee benefits. That means offering new benefits and focusing on getting employees more engaged, soliciting employee feedback, and improving employee benefit communications, according to a survey by MetLife.
Employers are expanding the range of benefits and benefits customization, improving benefits communications, and offering more added value programs. Many employers have developed more targeted objectives for their benefits packages like increasing productivity, retaining employees, and improving employee health.
The following stats show that employers are no longer interested in maintaining the status quo:
- 80% are increasing benefit communications (or intend to)
- 80% are planning to increase the range and/or level of investment in employee benefits because of COVID-19 (60% of employees are interested in their employer providing a wider mix of non-medical benefits that they can choose to purchase on their own)
- 74% are offering more added-value services for employees, such as mental health programs or EAPs (or intend to)
- 66% are expanding the range of employee-paid benefits (voluntary benefits) offered (or intend to).
- 75% are enabling employees to have greater customization of their benefits (or intend to)
- 70% are investing in new emerging benefits (or intend to)
- 64% are expanding the range of non-medical insurance benefits offered (or intend to)
Employers are focused on a holistic approach to shift perceptions of benefits from a product-by-product model to one that treats benefits as a suite of products that work together across employees’ changing life stages and personal needs.
How Benefit Communication is Changing
Digital communications had already begun to increase before COVID-19, but the pandemic accelerated those trends, with even traditional formats like benefit fairs now taking place virtually. While 64% of employers use email as a benefits communication channel, only 41% of employees want to learn about their benefits from their inbox. Employees do want to learn about, enroll in, and manage their benefits through an online portal.
Employees who say their employer’s benefits communications are easy to understand are:
- 99% more likely to feel valued
- 67% more likely to feel successful
- 41% more likely to be productive
When employees understand how their benefits work through their employer’s benefits communications, they’re:
- 100% more likely to trust their employer’s leadership
- 78% more likely to be happy with their job
- 50% more likely to be loyal to their employer
And yet, 31% don’t think their employer's benefits communications are easy to understand. Fifty-five percent say they wish they were more informed about their benefits so that they could get more value from them.
