With employers facing greater competitive challenges regardless of company size, industry, geography and other key factors, brokers and advisers can become more aware of local standards and employee expectations by benchmarking their clients’ employee benefit programs. This, in turn, will strengthen their recommendations and produce more savvy advice at a time when HR and benefit professionals need to control costs.
“Experienced workers may consider switching industries before considering locating to a different region for a job in the same industry,” reports Anthony J. Nugent, MetLife’s executive vice president of employee benefits sales. His point is that making sure benefits match or beat regional peers may be just as important as benchmarking against industry peers.
The MetLife Benefits Benchmarking Tool, designed to help users maximize the value of employee benefits programs within the competitive landscape, recently underwent major enhancements that paved the way for greater ease of use.
These enhancements include 15 new topics targeting key issues facing employers today, such as employee financial security, retirement, the aging workforce, health, wellness and work-life balance. In addition, a simplified navigation allows users to quickly tailor their analysis and save critical data when developing a benefits strategy. Through customized queries, users can compare benefits offerings, objectives, strategies, and preferences based on more than 80 variables.
Better metrics
The aim is to optimize benefit offerings and to help achieve business objectives, as well as address employee loyalty, satisfaction and retention – a mission that transcends this difficult economic climate. “Talent remains a source of competitive advantage, in good economic times or bad,” Nugent says.
More employers and brokers are using the benchmarking tool in order to measure a broader array of metrics and may use these metrics to better inform cost-containment efforts with regard to plan design adjustments, according to Nugent. This helps them be more strategic about decisions that help maximize benefits return on investment, which means emphasizing benefits that have the most impact on employees.
Using the tool involves three key steps, which feature several sub-categories that can help further customize a user’s search. The subcategories allow users to choose from employer and employee themes involving perceptions and priorities, benefit strategies and communications, benefit offerings, and advice and guidance.
Employers and their broker partners are also able to determine which of four distinct corporate profiles best describes their culture, offering valuable insight into trends and preferences. They include “traditional” (i.e., preserving commitments), “standard” (i.e., providing the basics), “progressive” (i.e., innovating for a competitive advantage) and “flexible” (i.e., balancing employee choice and cost).
“If you understand an employer’s profile, then it’s easier to determine which benefits will be most effective for the company’s culture and budget,” Nugent says.
Demographic differences
How benefits rank depends greatly on workforce demographics. For example, while both white- and blue-collar segments consider medical benefits their most important benefits, there were differences in terms of the next echelon. Blue-collar workers valued prescription drug coverage and dental insurance, but white-collar workers preferred vacation time and retirement products.
But there also are some surprising similarities, with Generation Y employees and Baby Boomers expressing the same level of interest in their employer providing access to retirement planners in the workplace (46% each).
The suggestion is that “employers cannot underestimate the value of retirement planning advice for employees of all ages,” he says. “Given the uncertainty we’ve seen in the past 12 months and the impact it has had on retirement plans, the Gen Y group is realizing that they have to start planning early.”
When analyzing the data by industry, MetLife found that about half of public administration employers, followed by organizations in manufacturing and education (39% each) offered a workplace wellness program. Still, the information in the benchmarking tool shows that participation among public administration employees wasn’t as high as those other two industries. Nugent surmises that perhaps public administration employers may want to take a closer look at employee motivation methods and communication strategies.
As plans are designed for the upcoming open enrollment season, it’s important to understand expectations in order to better deliver employee benefits that are highly valued.
“We use the benchmarking tool to help employers be precise in choosing the types of benefits to offer and how to best communicate them,” Nugent says. “It is important to understand what the competition is offering and how your benefits compare. This tool allows you to do that quickly and easily, putting employers and brokers closer to ensuring that benefits packages are more relevant to the employee population, to strive to positively impact benefits satisfaction, employee loyalty and retention.”
The complimentary tool is available at whymetlife.com/broker/benchmark.
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