Teaching Moments
The recently released report of the 13th Annual MetLife U.S. Employee Benefit Trends study—Benefits Impact: Delivering Dynamic Benefits for a Loyal Workforce—reveals three factors integral to benefit success: 1) the right mix, 2) more choice within a broader range of benefits and 3) enrollment education that yields optimal understanding of available benefits and selection confidence.
Key among the factors related to employee appreciation is the number of benefits offered:
- Five or fewer benefits are correlated with employees being less loyal and less likely to recommend the company as a great place to work and have a lower intention to stay (32%)
- Eleven or more benefits are correlated with employees being more loyal, more likely to recommend the company as a great place to work and have a higher intention to stay (30%)
Additionally, the study identified two main drivers of employee confidence in their benefits selection:
- easy-to-understand benefits information (32% impact)
- benefits communications that help employees understand how much they would pay for specific services (22% impact)
According to the report, “Less than half of employees strongly agreed that their company’s benefit communications helped them to understand how much they would pay for specific services and effectively educated them on benefits, revealing an opportunity for employers to further hone in on these two critical areas as they plan their enrollment activities.”
Dual Priorities
In response, Navera CEO Steve Adams said, “Two elements of this report stand out. The first is that the number of benefits offered directly correlates with loyalty and retention. The second is that the two main drivers of employee confidence in benefits selection are easy-to-understand benefits information and communications that help employees understand the cost of specific services.
“These dual priorities suggest that it’s now time to take technology-enabled ‘self-service’ benefits enrollment from theory to reality. The ‘choice-full’ benefits environment employees are expected to navigate is complex.
It requires a lot of information and guidance delivered in an easy-to-understand and accessible manner if employees are to come away satisfied with their employers’ offerings. “Carriers and employers now have access to a variety of options for providing benefits education and decision support based on users’ individual and/or family needs. Technology-enabled platforms deliver information in a way that is easy to navigate and available anytime, from anywhere.
These education and decision support tools are either contained within comprehensive ‘all in one’ benefits systems or typically link seamlessly with existing enrollment systems. Most important, effective benefits education and decision support systems engage with entertaining and compelling personalized scenarios that don’t bog users down in unnecessary details.
“To ensure decisions that satisfy from a cost perspective and meet employees’ need for complete and comprehensive coverage, the benefits education process should take a ’portfolio approach.‘
Portfolio Approach
Similar to retirement plans in which employees allocate their retirement savings among equities, fixed income, and other investments, a portfolio approach to benefits enables employees to clearly see and understand how core and voluntary benefits work together. “A portfolio approach to benefits selection replaces the traditional serial process of selecting benefits. In the serial approach, employees make their medical selections first, then dental, then vision, then disability, then group life, and so on. Employees are required to make an independent purchase decision about each of these benefits.
Alternatively, a portfolio approach enables employees and their families to see how the benefits they select work together to provide them with the most complete and cost-effective coverage. “Employers need to provide education and decision support that educates and advises employees in the context of their personal circumstances, and in an engaging manner that’s easily navigated, so employees can make optimal decisions. The most informed decisions yield the most satisfaction for employees—both with their benefit selections and their employer,” Steve concluded.
About Navera
Navera is a leading provider of a cloud-based benefits engagement service that enables consumers to select the healthcare and voluntary benefits that most closely match their needs. Headquartered in San Francisco, Navera takes a portfolio approach to benefits enrollment and provides users with an engaging and personalized consumer experience that provides a better understanding of benefit options and how they work together to provide the most complete and cost-effective coverage. Consumers are able to make confident, well-informed decisions while enjoying an informative and entertaining enrollment process. To learn more about Navera and the new 2014 Fall Release, please visit www.navera.com.
