Working Americans aren’t being pennywise and dollar foolish when it comes to their employee benefit offerings, and in fact, are prioritizing their financial commitments to various coverages.
Ronald Leopold, M.D., vice president of MetLife’s U.S. Business, describes these findings from MetLife’s new 2009 Open Enrollment Poll of 1,000 full-time employees as “the silver lining” in a stormy economic climate.
“Benefits represent tremendous added value,” he says, “but in the past, employers have struggled with trying to get their employees to pay attention to and leverage their benefits in a way that makes sense to them.”
Although more than one-third of the respondents have seen their discretionary income dwindle this year, nearly 90% have pledged to maintain or expand benefits coverage for the coming year. Just 11% of employees said they planned to decrease their coverage, and of those individuals, nearly one-quarter reported that they will do the opposite this time next year if the economy improves.
Confidence levels in selecting the correct benefits are high, which Leopold suspects is a reflection of the good work that more employers are doing in terms of effectively communicating their benefit programs.
Power of personalization
One problem spot is the amount of time employees devote to reviewing their benefit options. Despite the challenging economy, 76% of the open-enrollment poll respondents said they will spend about the same amount of time on benefits selection this year as they did last year and only 13% were willing to spend more on those decisions this fall (57% cited an additional hour or longer).
According to the poll, employer communication is linked to employee engagement in benefits decisions. Of employees who say they’ll spend more time making benefits decisions this year, 29% say their employer has been communicating more about the importance of employee benefits.
Personalizing coverage information in a way that’s relevant to each individual is the most effective approach to benefits communication, adds Leopold, author of “The Benefits Edge” and “A Year in the Life of a Million American Workers.”
An area that’s ripe for improvement is in illustrating the tangible value of benefits within a larger context. For example, MetLife’s 7th annual Study of Employee Benefits Trends showed that only 43% of employers offer a total compensation statement, which can not only increase understanding of their benefits package but may also help employers address their morale, employee loyalty and productivity goals.
“I have never talked with an employer that offered a total compensation statement that wasn’t extremely pleased with the results they obtained,” Leopold reports. He suspects many smaller employers that lack the resources of their larger counterparts are missing out on this opportunity, while others just haven’t considered it a high enough priority.
Valuing voluntary plans
Leopold calls insurance coverage the heart and soul of benefits that provide employees with protection from many of the risks to which they were over exposed in the past few years. As such, MetLife’s research suggests that people are now smarter and more thoughtful about how they’re spending limited dollars on risk protection during the difficult economy, and in some cases, they’re increasing those investments.
“When people review their benefits, they recognize that they should reconsider what they are availing themselves of and not roll over their previous year’s coverage,” according to Leopold, who notes that 54% of U.S. households experienced a life event change in the last year.
One promising benefits conduit is in the employee-pay-all arena where plans are offered on a voluntary basis. Employees appreciate having access to a wide range of benefits that include life, disability, dental, vision, long-term care, critical illness and pet insurance, as well as several buy-up options. And, although they pay out of pocket, a group discount and convenience of payroll deduction help soften that cost-sharing.
To call even more attention to a particular benefit, MetLife suggests off-cycle enrollment as a strategy for employers to deploy in response to 38% of the open-enrollment poll respondents expressing interest in learning about and modifying their benefits choices more than once a year. Employers could, for example, consider a life insurance-focused enrollment as a way to ensure that employees consider ‘buying up’ to appropriate levels of personal risk protection.
MetLife’s latest benefit-trends study suggests that “employees have a greater appetite for voluntary benefits than employers necessarily recognize,” Leopold notes. “At the end of the day, I think it comes down to employees knowing that they get a good deal and can buy additional benefits – almost like having a membership to a coveted club.”
In an effort to help increase employee understanding and appreciation of workplace benefits, MetLife offers the Employee Benefits Simplifier – an easy-to-use online tool that helps employees make the most of their employee benefits. The Simplifier is available to anyone, anytime, at www.metlife.com/employeebenefits.
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Metropolitan Life Insurance Company |
