With healthcare costs expected to increase by as much as 8-9% next year, the pressure for balancing how much of that to pass on to employees is more acute than it's been in a long time. At the same time, the shift toward more personalized and streamlined experiences is driving significant changes in the tools and platforms used for benefit enrollment. Vendors in this space, whether benefit administration platforms, decision support tool providers, voluntary benefit enrollment firms, or companies that help with the "data and process pipes," must now adapt to new expectations.

While GenAI and APIs remain at the forefront of creating a better enrollment experience for employees, there's also the nascent - but notable - increase in how actually to "language" the delivery of recommendations in more personalized, relevant, and simpler way - which means using the language of individual employees' values, world views, beliefs, priorities and preferences (psychographic profiling).

GenAI is enabling hyperpersonalization
As APIs "hoover up" more data - from more varied sources - GenAI's ability to deliver more and more personalized recommendations is also driving broader and more complex "background" queries that can result in more simplified decision-making for the employees.

When platforms can process a user’s past enrollment choices, financial data, and specific needs to generate a set of curated recommendations for the upcoming year, employees don't have to wade through a flood of options. Rather, getting more tailored suggestions based on their unique circumstances reduces choice overload and makes the enrollment transaction process less daunting. Importantly, as the O/E "transaction" evolves towards more year-round engagement support, more employee interactions help the AI become better at understanding their preferences, which means we can begin to see an evolution toward a “virtual benefits coach.”

Delivering guided, interactive, year-round benefit engagement "journeys"
The Business Group on Health's 2025 Employer Health Care Strategy Survey highlights that many employers are embracing technology-driven solutions, especially those that increase efficiency and engagement. Direct contracting is gaining traction as employers seek to bypass traditional insurers and reduce costs, but the complexity of navigating these new offerings can overwhelm employees. Here, GenAI can step in by simplifying the myriad of choices and contracts into clear, easy-to-understand recommendations.

Additionally, GenAI enables real-time support. An employee can ask complex questions about healthcare plan details or cost comparisons, and the AI provides an instant, comprehensive response. This level of on-demand assistance elevates the experience from a transactional process to a guided, interactive journey.

Psychographics: delivering guidance in the language of the employee's values
While GenAI enhances the process through advanced data processing and real-time responses, psychographic profiling ensures that these interactions resonate on a deeper level. Psychographics go beyond demographic data, focusing instead on employees’ values, lifestyle preferences, and psychological traits.

This is particularly important as more diverse workforces demand personalized communication. For example, an employee who prioritizes family security will respond better to messaging around comprehensive health coverage and life insurance, while a tech-savvy millennial may appreciate flexible health spending accounts and telemedicine options.

An employee with a high “adventurous” psychographic score might receive enrollment recommendations focused on travel insurance and outdoor accident coverage. In contrast, those with a strong “family-oriented” profile might see higher recommendations for life insurance and critical illness coverage.

Getting past the various forms of "upper limit problems" surrounding engagement, it's no small matter to consider that tailoring benefits messaging to employees’ psychographic profiles can - relatively easily - increase employee engagement with benefit programs by 15% - 25% - sometimes more. By integrating psychographic insights, benefit enrollment tools can learn to speak in the language of individual employees.

Psychographic profiling also ensures that the platform’s tone matches the employee’s personal style. Some employees may prefer a casual, friendly approach, while others may gravitate toward more formal, data-driven communication. Incorporating these insights into the AI-driven interactions ensures that employees feel understood and supported, fostering trust in the enrollment process.

Connecting the systems
As more systems are being connected to create seamless user experiences, it's critical that the connections among and between various data sources and systems are secure, robust, and operate in at least close-to-real-time. Such capabilities are the backbone of developing and delivering personalized, multi-dimensional enrollment experiences.

From payroll systems to healthcare provider databases to product and program information resources, the enrollment experience must weave in that psychographic data, which might come from employee surveys, engagement metrics, or even external data sources. And it all has to be integrated without causing privacy concerns or technical breakdowns. The goal is to provide a unified experience where all the tools work together to provide consistent - and relevant - recommendations.

As financial stress continues to drive mental and emotional health challenges, the ability to integrate a benefits platform with AI-driven financial planning tools can enable the AI to make recommendations that not only considered healthcare needs but also aligned with the employee’s broader financial goals - and even pointing them to emotional support resources that can help the employee apply the program recommendations into their "real lives" over the course of the benefits year.

For example, by better understanding the employee’s actual (or expected) healthcare spending patterns, the AI could better recommend when a high-deductible health plans paired with health savings accounts would be appropriate, instead of just assuming that an employee will "get" how that flexibility can also empower them to increase their sense of control and flexibility while ensuring that those who count on them are fully supported, both today, and with a view towards longer-term financial security.

The last word
While it won't all happen for 2025, benefit enrollment is clearly moving towards a more human-centric experience, going well beyond employees passively selecting from a pre-determined list of options. Instead, it will become an interactive, human-centric experience powered by GenAI and psychographics. Vendors who embrace these technologies will create deeper engagement, improve decision-making, and ultimately drive higher enrollment satisfaction.

For benefit enrollment vendors, the path forward is clear. By leveraging GenAI to simplify complex decisions and integrating psychographic profiling to communicate in ways that resonate, vendors can offer a truly personalized experience. With healthcare costs rising and the benefits landscape becoming more complex, these innovations are not just a competitive advantage—they’re essential for meeting the demands of the modern workforce.

 ~ Mark Head
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