'You want to think long-term investment, not only for retention but because this can hurt the pockets of employers themselves'
More and more employees are straying from wanting traditional benefits, preferring instead more flexible offerings.
But with benefits modernizing, there is also a greater need for employees to properly understand what’s available to them.
More than half (55%) of U.S. employees want to better understand their benefits, and 80% said they want to talk to someone about their benefits, according to Buck's biennial 2024 Wellbeing and Voluntary Benefits Survey.
A lack of employee understanding can be attributed, in part, to the “information overload” employees often receive during the onboarding process. Without proper reminders afterwards, the information may get buried, leaving employees unfamiliar with the benefits available to them, said Milad Moghaddas, Ph.D. student in industrial relations and human resources and teaching assistant at the University of Toronto.
“I think ultimately it boils down to employees getting overwhelmed with information at the onset of onboarding, and that information fades into the air, and employees quite simply forget that these benefits exist,” he said.
Employees lack benefits understanding
Often, employers fail to invest in the time to go through the specificities of the benefits available to employees, Moghaddas said.
Health benefits, for example, have many nuances and technicalities that can make them difficult to understand. If employers take the time to go through these — both during and after the onboarding process — they can help mitigate any confusion, he said.
Centralizing accessibility and communication is essential for employers to avoid feeling overwhelmed and ultimately not using their benefits, he said.
“Ultimately, what can happen is, you see employees trying to navigate this process, to simply access their benefits or even attempting to just understand what these benefits entail, and oftentimes, frustration, and [feeling] overwhelmed makes them withdraw from even trying to access them to begin with. So, it really matters not only what the benefits are, but how they’re communicated, when they’re communicated and at what frequency,” he said.
“I think what employers may wish to consider is a one-stop shop, whereby employees can go to access benefit-related information, rather than having to go through several intermediaries or a general HR email.”
Frequent communication matters
Communicating what benefits are available once a year does not suffice, Moghaddas said. Instead, employers should consider giving employees periodic reminders as to which benefits do or do not roll over to allow for proper utilization.
“The frequency of benefit reminders may very well depend on the more popular benefits in the eyes of these employees. So, for example, if there are certain benefits that trump others, in terms of their importance of value, employers may want to adjust the frequency of these reminders accordingly,” he said.
Ultimately, employers are investing in these benefits, so if they aren’t being communicated and are therefore underutilized, this results in the employer losing money on their investment, Moghaddas said.
Employers should also consider why certain benefits are not used as much — whether it is because of a lack of care for the benefit or lack of accessibility or awareness — to ensure they are investing in the benefits employees truly value, he said.
“On the surface, this may sound like just a lot of extra work for employers to have to navigate, but ultimately you want to think long-term investment, not only for retention but because this can hurt the pockets of employers themselves if they are not addressing these communication gaps because they're paying into it,” he said.
Employee burnout and benefit usage
When communicating benefit offerings, employers should consider how they might be “bombarding” employees, said John Trougakos, professor of management at the University of Toronto.
Organizations are increasingly seeing burnout among employees, and if an employer is leaving employees completely responsible for understanding and finding their benefits, they may be unlikely to access the benefits they need, Trougakos said.
“A lot of times, employees are at a bit of a deficit already, in terms of how much information they can process or what their bandwidth is to take on more responsibility. If the organization is fully leaving it to the employees to look into this information, when they're probably already stretched pretty thin, they're unlikely to get to this information, sometimes, before it's too late and they’re fully burnt out and struggling.”
This creates a negatively reinforcing cycle and can cause employees to continue to burn out, while employers do not meet the objectives surrounding employee wellbeing by investing in these benefits, he said.
“[It] creates a negative cycle in which the work demands are too high for employees to actually use their benefits, especially if they don’t understand them,” Trougakos said.
Employers should also encourage employees to use these benefits and engage in work recovery to avoid burnout, he said.
“If an organization is looking to leverage these benefits for employee retention and improving their wellbeing in the long run, then it doesn't do much good if the employees don't know about the offerings and don't use them,” he said.
“So, employers should be looking for these opportunities to directly connect HR staff with managers and look at broader opportunities to be able to have HR staff communicate these things to employees more directly as well.”
