Benefits, financial wellness, retirement plans connecting to 'overarching employee experience'
As the world and employers grapple with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, employee benefits will need to evolve and become much more tied into the overall employee experience, according to experts.
“We will start to see the emergence of employee experience officers starting at employers, and connecting benefits, financial wellness and retirement plans to an overarching employee experience,” says Matt Lievers, president of employee benefits at insurance brokerage HUB International in Toronto.
“COVID is certainly an inflection point but what we’re seeing is that both employees and employers are understanding that benefits plan can be more than just critical care or acute care, and it can really be more of a well-rounded solution that supports employees of all walks of life, whether or not they’re healthy and trying to improve or augment their lifestyle.”
This shift in thinking will persist into the new year, says Joey Raheb, senior vice-president and national leader of growth and client engagement, health solutions, at Aon in London, Ont.
“Ten, 15 years ago, people thought of employee benefits as ‘I have life insurance with my employer, I have disability insurance, I have a health plan and a dental plan and I have benefits.’ That was the definition of benefits and that definition is changing and that’s being influenced by a number of different factors.”
For HR professionals, “the lesson, especially in the last few years is benefits are no longer a static item,” says Raheb, and being flexible is key.
“It used to be that you designed to plan and you could manage it with the regular renewals and the day-to-day for the next 10 or 15 years where you would do some tweaks; that’s no longer the case. As the war on talent increases, the workforce landscape changes, the timeline between when you define a plan has become shorter. As HR professionals, the idea here is keep looking, keep testing your key performance indicators, and making sure the plan is meeting those metrics.”
More than two-thirds (68 per cent) of Canadians would rather take a job with a good benefits plan over one that pays more but does not have a benefits plan, according to a recent survey.
Read more: Benefit Plans Face Higher Inflation in 2023: Here’s What Employers Can Do about It
Diversity linked to benefits
While plan costs will remain a leading factor in how benefits are provided, there are outside pressures on how plans are being designed, according to Raheb.
“[That could mean] a diversity, equity and inclusion lens where you’re looking at benefits meeting the needs of my diverse population: ‘Are they inclusive of the different types of employees we have? And does everybody have equal access to benefits from how my organization defined that?’”
As organizations increase the diversity of the makeup of the workforce, benefit plans will have to catch up, says Lievers.
“We have to be mindful of the different cohorts that we’re serving through a benefit plan and how they experience the different benefits but also have access to different benefits plans and make sure that the policies that we’re creating and offering are inclusive in nature, respecting different demographics, people from different walks of life, that may have different experiences.”
If employers handle this aspect of plan design properly, they can expect a better bottom line, says Lievers.
“Employers are really starting to take a healthy glance at how do they create a well-rounded culture within their business, and that includes the importance of diversity and folks having equity and access to a benefits plan,” he says. “Employers are really sensing that if they do well at this activity, it can actually help to drive a culture that supports employee experience but also can drive better business outcomes.”
With the so-called great resignation continuing to affect some employers, the benefit offering “becomes increasingly complicated and so interconnected, like a spider web, that employers need to think about all these different aspects, and think about: ‘What is our strategy? What are we trying to achieve? What are our objectives?’” says Raheb. “’And how do I create alignment between that business objective to my HR strategy, my reward strategy, my benefit strategy and philosophy?’”
Are employers meeting the benefits needs of employees? Not always, according to a report from the Conference Board of Canada and TELUS Health.
Driving value through benefits
When it comes to new benefits being requested by employees, it’s not so much what they want, but what they value, according to Raheb.
“For somebody who’s younger, healthier, maybe not as concerned about drug costs, they may want to take that money and use it towards wellness-related expenses like a gym membership or fitness fees and as long as it’s being used towards something that’s driving health-positive behaviours, employers are happy with directing funds that way. Others see value in more traditional aspects because they have underlying health conditions or they have a family that uses dental care benefit, or whatever the situation is. What I’m hearing, and the questions I’m answering mostly, is ‘How do we make sure that we’re driving value in our benefits program for our employees?’”
These differing needs are also driving another emerging force in benefit trends: personalization.
“We see the emergence of three, potentially even four, different generations operating in a workplace at the same time and understanding that, depending on the cohort of an employee set that we’re looking at, people will have different needs for benefits plans, that are highly personal. A benefits plan will really dictate whether or not employees are fully engaged and view this as a true benefit to their workplace rather than a nice-to-have,” says Lievers.
Employers are offering customized types of benefits to help stabilize the workforce, according to Raheb.
“If they’re seeing value in the plan, then there’s that connection to what I’m getting here at company ABC is going to be better than what company XYZ is offering me and the job offer, so it’s around attraction, retention, and making sure that rewards are individual to the person, that they can drive value for themselves.”
Mental health importance
With the decreased stigmatization around mental health, brought on partly by the pandemic and employees working from home, virtual care is becoming a must-have item in the benefit scheme.
“The most predominant form being iCBT… essentially being able to have a virtual consultation with a clinician who’s focused on cognitive behavioural therapy and support through that psychotherapy. We’ve seen this play out not only at the early stages of mental health support, which we might think of as proactive in nature, supporting folks through mindfulness activities, but also through case management,” says Lievers.
More than a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, 62 per cent of Canadian workers say emotional, mental and physical fatigue is the top issue that is affecting them negatively. However, 37 per cent feel unsafe to talk about mental health at work, according to a separate report from Sun Life.
