While the COVID-19 pandemic has motivated many employees to take a closer look at their workplace benefits, employees are still flummoxed by what they’ve enrolled in.
Indeed, 35% of employed individuals do not fully understand any of the employee benefits they’ve selected, according to a new survey by Voya Financial. Millennials in particular have a hard time navigating their benefits, with 54% saying they don't understand their offerings
Employees are eager for educational support from their employers, with 66% telling Voya they want their employer to help them
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“Supplemental health benefits like accident insurance, hospital indemnity insurance and critical illness insurance can be confusing — especially for younger workers,” says Andrew Frend, senior vice president of product and strategy for Voya Employee Benefits. “Without the right tools and education, expecting anyone to get it right is pretty tough to expect.”
In a recent one-on-one interview, Frend shared his thoughts on the survey data, the most confusing employee benefits to navigate how employers can provide the education workers need to get the most out of their benefits.
Why are employees so confused when it comes to understanding the benefits available to them?
It’s just grown into a very complex space. Twenty years ago there was a health plan option and maybe a pension plan. Now this sort of choice menu being thrown at people is incredibly complicated. And employees wonder, ‘How do I know that the combination of decisions that I'm making is truly optimal given my particular goals? Without the right tools and education, expecting anyone to get it right is pretty tough to expect.
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What benefits are employees most in the dark about?
Employees think an HSA is federal spending they have to use in a single year and then it goes away. And why wouldn’t they think that? If we can focus on educating people around optimizing that particular solution there's tremendous opportunity.
[Another example] is that oftentimes premiums are structured in a way where the most expensive health plan doesn't make sense irrespective of healthcare consumption, because the difference in premium is so great. But people were still selecting those plans.
How can employers better educate their employees about their benefits?
We can look to some examples outside of the benefits industry. If I want to buy a vacuum cleaner, I can look at the reviews and be relatively sure that I'm making the right choice. Employers have to make the information available, but also simplify what is required to understand [the benefits] so employees make good decisions.
Rather than pushing a bunch of information onto someone and saying, here’s what you need to know to make the right choice, Voya’s focus has been on what can we learn about you? It’s an entirely objective way to help employees make the right choices, given what they’ve told us. We've been focused on improving the process and lowering the bar on what we think is reasonable for someone to sort through.
