The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the way employees work and how employers need to think about the benefits they are offering.
In the last year, employers have
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Benefitfocus, a cloud-based software solutions provider for healthcare and benefits administration, published a report on the current state of employee benefits. The research provides insight into employee enrollment behavior for the last four years, and takes a closer look at how 2020 impacted
“Employers are expanding their benefit packages to address all the different needs of a multi-generational workforce,” says Misty Guinn, director of customer advocacy, at Benefitfocus. “In the past it was really a transactional relationship with benefits. Now, employers are embracing that one-size doesn't fit all.”
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In a recent one-on-one interview, Guinn shared her insights on the report, how benefits have been evolving and what employers have learned about employee needs over the years.
What was Benefitfocus’ goal with this report?
One of the things that we wanted to do was take advantage of the massive amount of employee and employer data around benefits and look at the trends.
One of the biggest ones was in employee health premiums. We saw moderate growth as employers were taking on more of that cost burden in 2021. With the advent of COVID-19, we didn't know how that was going to impact our healthcare expenses. In the benefits industry, we're always looking at strategies of how to support and balance our employees' total well-being and how to mitigate healthcare inflation and costs. Employers were actually stepping up to the plate and taking on more of that cost burden.
Another big thing that we looked at and did a lot of data mining around was the consumer directed healthcare plans and HSA participation. We saw that participation in health savings accounts more than doubled and contributions were up 94%. We started to break that down even more and we saw that Gen-Z participant numbers really accounted for the highest growth rate across the last four years. We're looking at the multi-generational workforce and it makes us ask the question: what is the appeal of consumer directed healthcare? And can that extend to others?
Which employee benefits are on the rise?
I’m excited to see a rise in some of the income protection benefits — your critical illness and your hospital indemnity. We saw those definitely become more popular within this report, not just in employers offering them but actually employees adopting and participating in the plans. Those types of benefits really should go hand in hand with the rise of HDHP adoption, because they provide that financial safety net and peace of mind for those “what if” moments. It's encouraging to see that people are wanting to protect their financial nest egg. What that increased HSA participation shows us is that [employees] are taking some ownership in that consumer directed healthcare design.
Employers are starting to offer more medical plan options like a PPO and an HDHP, but they're also starting to offer some of those voluntary ancillary benefits. We've gotten a call to action in HR and benefits to really support the whole person. Just offering a health insurance option no longer checks the box for individuals when they're looking for an employer that's truly going to take care of them.
