How are employers being ‘innovative’ with benefits?

In looking at trends in employee benefits, “innovation” is one that comes to mind, judging by a recent survey.

For example, financial wellness is a newer trend, with 51% of Canadian organizations providing employees with budgeting and financial education, while discount programs on purchasing are being provided by 59% of survey respondents, and another 36% of organizations are offering financial coaching.

“I’ve been in the business for 30 years and I like to say for the longest time, benefits used to be just defined as health and dental, LTD, STD and life insurance, basically. There was not much that we’ve seen over the past 30 years in terms of innovation,” says Marie-Josée Le Blanc, Montreal-based partner at Mercer, which did the survey.

“Now, we are seeing more and that was something that was brought on by millennials because wellness and wellbeing is one of their top core values in life.”

Innovation is important to employers and HR professionals in the wake of high inflation and a looming recession, says Alex Coonce, chief people officer at Sidecar Health in New York.

“You see health insurance rates going up, but coming out of the pandemic, insurance rates are climbing at an enormous rate and budgets are down and companies are saving money. Often the first place they experience cuts is in fringe benefits and perks in people investment and so people leaders are now tasked with a really hard job of thinking outside the box and getting creative to meet the demands of their teams and to be innovative with very limited budgets.”

It’s exciting to see employers moving in that direction, she says.

“[It’s about] this realization that employee wellbeing is holistic but goes beyond the basics, like health care, and people are starting to understand that it’s more than just the basics of mental health and financial security.”

Mercer’s Canada Innovative Benefits Survey 2023, heard from 373 employers and was conducted between Jan. 12 and Feb. 8.

Innovative mental health benefits

That trend of innovation is also extending into mental health benefits, as 64% of employers are offering anti-stigma training and education on self-care, while 48% are providing online assessments and resiliency training; a further 57% are delivering virtual therapy access to employees.

Organizations are also providing mental health training for managers, according to 49% of respondents.

“How do you help people be their best selves and bring their best selves to work? It’s so much more than just physical health — mental health is important. It was true before the pandemic but one of the positive effects of this pandemic is the stigma around it has been at least reduced and so people recognize it’s important,” says Coonce.

Mental health is an area in which many organizations need to do better, says an expert.

Generational differences with benefits

The survey results also illustrate differences in wants between the generations, she says.

“What’s interesting is Gen Z, they put much more emphasis on preventive measures; the millennials were all about wellbeing and support and gym memberships and all that stuff; but Gen Z bring that even further, they ask for tools for diagnosis, for identifying risk with advance genetic testing.”

“They want to know. They know now that science can help predict [future diseases] and there are tools that you can use and even tests like neurogenetic testing and pharmacogenetics, [so] they want to know in advance which drugs are good for me or wrong for me,” says Le Blanc.

Pharmacogenetic testing might become the next big thing in benefits, says a researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

Gaps in employee offerings

However, there appear to be gaps between employer offerings and employer preferences.

For example, one-third of employers provide health assessments and genetic testing, such as nutrigenomics as a screening tool, but it has a low adoption rate of less than 5%, found the Mercer survey.

Not all employers are innovating enough, says Le Blanc.

“It was interesting however to see that there remains a gap.

Great progress may have been made — we’ve seen a lot of investment in the area of physical wellness, and more importantly, mental wellness: great investments, great interest and organizations have really responded well — but there remain gaps.”

Another gap that was identified was around caregiver benefits, as many Canadians are caregivers yet less than 10% of survey respondents provide employees with child- or elder-care programs, she says.

“It’s interesting to see all the support around elder-care or childcare is something that, as well, we need to fill the gaps in the inclusive benefits,” she says.

Budget-conscious benefits

For those organizations who are challenged by limited benefits budgets, it’s important to think creatively, says Coonce.

“It’s thinking a little bit deeper about how you leverage your benefits budget to provide coaching opportunities, professional development, learning budgets.”

Innovative employers could also provide more educational opportunities to advance people’s careers, she says.

“We know that growth is a key driver of engagement and so it is getting out of that mindset from maybe five years ago, where budgets were overflowing, and people could do all sorts of goofy things. We need to think about how there’s all these different ways to keep folks engaged and excited, and one of the levers you have is benefits and so you do have to be innovative and do things differently.”