Redefined Employer Engagement Model; New Training for MetLife Associates, Dedicated Internal Enrollment Teams and Expanded Relationships with Third Party Platforms
NEW YORK, March 2, 2017 – MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET), the largest provider of non-medical employee benefits in the U.S, has launched a new strategy to reimagine employee benefits enrollment in partnership with employers and their brokers and consultants.
The strategy brings together new research findings with action-oriented solutions that enable MetLife to work with employers, brokers and consultants in new ways to create benefits enrollment experiences that help employees understand their benefits, make informed decisions and easily enroll.
Based on in-depth research MetLife conducted with HR decision-makers and employee focus groups at four companies across diverse industries, including transportation, higher education, mass media and manufacturing, four common unmet employee needs emerged:
- Can’t navigate the information explosion
- Don’t have the time or energy to dig in
- Don’t know who to turn to with questions
- Don’t know it, (assume) don’t need it.
“Because of these unmet needs, many employees aren’t taking advantage of the benefits available to them in the workplace, and as a result are walking away from resources that can help them reduce financial stress, potentially avoid financial hardship, and improve their overall financial well-being,” said Meredith Ryan-Reid, senior vice president of distribution development in MetLife’s Group Benefits business.
New comprehensive enrollment strategy
To begin to address employees’ unmet benefit needs, MetLife has launched a new comprehensive enrollment strategy, which includes a redefined employer engagement model that assesses employer objectives and employee needs and follows a diagnostic approach to creating optimal enrollment conditions. The insurer has also developed new and expanded relationships with benefits administration, enrollment, and HR-outsourcing platforms and created dedicated internal teams to work with employers and their brokers and consultants within the scope of their preferred solutions to make the employee enrollment experience as robust, but also as simple, as possible. To activate this work, MetLife has invested in its people, providing new training to more than 250 sales and client service associates.
“At MetLife, we’re an advocate for the workforce, for both employers and employees,” said Ryan-Reid. “There is a lot of discussion in the industry about the problem of employees not understanding or taking advantage of the benefits available to them at work. As the leading provider in the U.S., we’re putting an emphasis on solutions. Our new enrollment strategy is just the beginning of our work and a broader commitment to work with employers, brokers and others to ensure employees understand and can access the benefits available to them through the workplace.”
Industry data illustrates the impact of employees not understanding their benefits. According to LIMRA, nearly half of women today are without any type of life insurance, yet MetLife’s U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study shows that life insurance is offered in the majority of workplaces. The study also shows that less than a third of employees understand most supplemental health benefits, yet more than half of employees are concerned about having enough money to cover out-of-pocket medical costs.
Some examples of how MetLife’s new strategy helps to better meet employees’ core unmet needs include:
- Streamlined enrollment materials to help employees navigate.
- Simplified, snack-able information that’s easy for busy employees to digest.
- New training for employers’ and enrollment firms’ call centers so employees have well-equipped resources for questions.
- Personalized and interactive components, as well as information aligned with life events, to make benefits more relevant to employees’ personal needs.
Learn more about MetLife’s commitment to the workforce at www.metlife.com/workforce.
About MetLife
MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET), through its subsidiaries and affiliates (“MetLife”), is one of the largest life insurance companies in the world. Founded in 1868, MetLife is a global provider of life insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management. Serving approximately 100 million customers, MetLife has operations in nearly 50 countries and holds leading market positions in the United States, Japan, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. For more information, visit www.metlife.com.
