In our last blog post, we covered why it is critical to align your benefit offerings with your company culture, as discussed in our recent webinar, “Maximizing Employee Benefits Utilization: Strategies for Success,” hosted by our Senior Director of Data, Analytics and Research, TC Riley, and featuring HR leaders from two of our client companies, Hylant and Goodheart-Willcox.
As we continue this series, here are some industry-wide trends to help inform your benefits decisions so you can align what you offer employees with both your company values and the needs of your workforce.
Family-related benefits are in high demand
The rise we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic in needs for family-related support—including options like backup care, caregiving support like Cariloop, dependent care FSAs, and parental leave—has held strong. Many employees express that this is the area where they could use the most support, and benefits that offer any of the above continue to trend upward in utilization. In fact, our family-related needs across our book of business have increased 43% year-over-year.
Insight in action: Caring for whole families at Hylant
Hylant prioritizes family and authenticity as core brand values. As a multi-generational company with a workforce of more than 1,000 and an average employee age of 46, they’re present to the challenges faced by the “sandwich generation” of people caring for children and older adults simultaneously, and offer Cariloop as a solution to ease the stresses of caregiving for any and every loved one in each employee’s life.
Tighter home budgets call for employer-sponsored options
As prices have increased due to inflation over the last few years, employees face tighter budgets at home and are more likely to utilize options that deliver a clear financial benefit. Knowing that they need to get the maximum impact out of every investment, employees will seek out benefits that come with as little additional costs as possible. Looking at the numbers across our member base, financial assistance needs have grown 71% year-over-year.
Insight in action: Addressing financial well-being at Goodheart-Willcox
A core value at Goodheart-Willcox, a pioneering career and technical education publishing company, is “always improving.” They continually evaluate their benefits options to provide a tailored program that promotes employee well-being and individuality at every stage of life. Recently, they revamped their benefits to address financial, career, social, mental, and physical well-being, finding strong engagement with their employee-sponsored caregiver benefits through Cariloop.
Maximizing utilization requires consistent communication
“If you build it, they will come” doesn’t hold true when it comes to driving employee utilization of their benefits. Consistent employee communication and education—including outside of open enrollment periods—remain the most critical success factors in ensuring your employees see the full value of what you offer. You can put considerable time and intention into a best-fit benefits solution for your people, but if they aren’t aware of it, they can’t utilize it.
Insight in action: Partnering with Cariloop clients to meet members where they are
In addition to providing our clients with multimedia communications and training tools to help them seamlessly roll out Cariloop benefits to their employees, we work with them to dig into data about their workforce and help identify what types of strategies can increase utilization among specific groups. That way, we can supplement our communications plans with webinars, Q&A sessions, and even in-person meetings to give employees a better understanding of what’s available to them.
Stay tuned for our next blog post delving into effective communications strategies you can employ to help your entire team make the most of their benefits, and catch the full webinar recording here.
