Just a quick scan of recent articles and blogs about what we can expect in the wild world of benefits makes it clear that economic pressures, rapidly advancing technology, and the accelerating diversity of employee desires and needs are among the key challenges we’ll be facing.

Managing costs will require more personalized technology
NFP just released their 2024 US Benefits Trend Report. It delves into the complex balance employers are trying to maintain between managing costs and meeting employees' expectations. NFP Chairman and CEO Doug Hammond summarizes this tension: “While employers want to continue the positive momentum in employee satisfaction and trust seen in 2023, rising costs and the desire to deliver individualized solutions for employees have created a complicated situation.”

Eastbridge Consulting highlights the substantial impacts from the growing use of API and AI technology. Says Ginger Bates, Eastbridge's Director of Research, "API technology has improved [carriers'] operational efficiency,” indicating a shift towards more technologically driven solutions in benefits administration. This technology is not only enhancing efficiency but also shaping how both core and voluntary benefits are managed and offered to employees.

Benefit diversity and the employee experience
January's Voluntary Benefits Voice magazine adds a wealth of observations, expectations and predictions from the Advisory Board Members of Voluntary Advantage, as well as commentary from John Allen, Nick Rockwell, Danielle Lehman, David Hoxworth, Roy Mangum, James Ocampo, Meg Collins, Marc Glickman, and Steve Clabaugh. Throughout the issue there is a decided emphasis on the employee experience, employee engagement, and personalized communications amidst the ever-broadening array of programs hoping to meet the burgeoning needs of a hybrid and diverse workforce.

Almost as if in response to the above dynamics, Wellsource (much to my approval and appreciation) speaks to using psychographic data as a crucial aspect of personalization. As we've written before, psychographic data - unlike demographic data - provides insights into an individual's beliefs, preferences and attitudes. This approach is increasingly necessary if we really want to design motivational benefit communications that resonate with diverse employee segments. The personalized approach enabled by psychographic data is essential in an era where yesterday’s one-size-fits-all language increasingly falls on today’s “multi-lingual ears.”

Towards topographic synthesis
Combining these perspectives, I see a fairly rugged but still navigable 2024 terrain. Employers will be demanding that advisors and vendors help them balance their economic challenges with the need for personalized, technologically-advanced benefit solutions. The integration of API and AI technologies in both core and voluntary benefits administration is streamlining processes, while the application of psychographic data for enrollment, engagement and health management is tailoring communications, messaging - and marketing - to individual needs. This shift marks a departure from boring, antiquated benefit tactics towards more dynamic, responsive, and employee-centric strategies.

The Amazonian experience
"Amazon knows me better than my doctor." This statement from the research data underlying our BenefitPersonas™ model has always fascinated me.

So it was with keen interest that I read through Amazon's own post* from last summer that describes the cutting-edge new benefits they're offering to their own employees. These include:

• Brightside Financial Care

• MetLife estate planning

• Fidelity charitable giving accounts

  

• Emergency savings funds

• Brightline pediatric mental health counseling

• Expanded free RFL counseling sessions

• 24/7 virtual mental health support

• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) community-based family and peer support

• In-house cancer case management, including a travel and lodging benefit

• Expanded temporary schedule adjustments program for front-line employees

• Temporary school, hardship and religious reason schedule adjustment policies

Put it all together, and it comes into clear focus that companies are embracing more comprehensive, more sustainable and more innovative employee benefit programs. And the calls for an increasingly diverse range of benefits tailored to different aspects of employee well-being keep getting louder.

The last word
More choice also means more complexity for HR and benefit teams - and for consultants and vendors. All the stakeholders will have to tap into the most robust collaborative, API-enabled systems available if we are to deliver, manage and measure enhanced, holistic employee experiences.

~ Mark Head
© 2024. All Rights Reserved.

*Thanks to Graham Chalfant from Brightside for bringing this article to my attention

Click the green button or the blue button (below) to visit our scheduling page.