Yesterday’s Leadership Daily Advisor set the stage for some far-reaching employee benefits design change in the works. Bolstered by fresh research showing that the Millennial workforce is quickly shaping new strategies for the entire benefits arena, we touched on three studies identifying what’s ahead. Today, we describe three main priorities that will drive the most successful benefits design and delivery to this largest segment of your workforce.
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Opening the Wallet of Choice
- The rise of the “benefits wallet.” If there’s one thing that’s clear in benefits, it’s that employers are moving away from the one-size-fits-all benefit package. Today’s workforce values having benefits personalized to meet their individual circumstances, generation, and life stage.
Several surveys of Millennials, for instance, reveal a basic theme: They’re most drawn to employers that offer flexibility and least-drawn to traditional sets of benefits. A pick-and-choose menu of options that includes a hefty helping of voluntary benefits can do the trick, experts suggest.
- The expansion of voluntary benefits tied to generational life stages. Many employers have traditionally geared voluntary benefits to the needs of Baby Boomers, offering the mainstays of dental, vision, life, and disability insurance. Now, however, they’re adding specialty benefits, such as identity theft protection, critical illness insurance, student loan repayment programs, and pet insurance that appeal to Millennials.
Driving this focus is the fact that a worker’s life stage strongly influences the types of benefits he or she values most, according to a recent study by LIMRA, the Windsor, Connecticut-based insurance and financial services research organization. Millennials tend to most favor education benefits and paid parental leave, the study found, which no doubt reflects life-stage issues as well as the student debt load they likely carry.
Lastly, voluntary benefits are appealing for another important reason: They add little or no cost to employers because they are often employee-paid.
- The addition of tech tools into the benefits mix. When it comes to benefit technology, Millennials expect up-to-date data and easy-to-use tools for evaluating, selecting, enrolling in, and managing benefits. In deploying new tech, employers are using private benefit exchanges with decision support tools such as out-of-pocket cost calculators and recommendation engines that offer a consumer-like shopping experience, web-based enrollment portals, and mobile apps, say survey data from global advisory firm Willis Towers Watson.
Tech-enabled lifestyle coaching and fitness wearables available at low or no cost are especially popular perks, as are mobile apps for smartphones and tablets that can be connected to back-end systems to automatically send employees wellness-related recommendations or benefits reminders.
Indeed, the ease of phone apps, e-mails, and texts has the majority of Millennials snubbing phone calls and voice mail. For instance, Salesforce.com Inc.’s 2016 Connected Patient Report of 2,025 adults finds that 70% of Millennials would rather use mobile apps to book appointments or check health and benefit data.