Tailor Benefits Using Employee Feedback

Filed under: Benefits

When employees feel that their opinions are valued, they are more likely to be engaged in their work. Using worker feedback to enhance benefits not only increases utilization, but can also lead to higher levels of productivity. When employees are satisfied with their benefits and feel heard and appreciated, they are less likely to leave their employer.

The following are three steps to tailoring benefits using employee feedback.

1.     Help Employees Understand Current Offerings

First, help workers understand the benefits currently offered. According to a 2025 MetLife study, more than half (57 percent) of today’s workers say they do not fully understand their benefits. One reason is likely due to so many options. To determine which plan(s) would work best for them, workers must learn how each one works. Consider the scope of this task for healthcare, retirement, and insurance options:

• Healthcare: HMO, PPO, POS, EPO, HDHP, HSA, HRA, FSA
• Retirement: 401(k), Roth 401(k), Defined Benefit Pension Plan, ESOP, stock options, emergency savings account; investment options (e.g., stocks, bonds, cash instruments, mutual funds, EFTs, annuity)
• Insurance: Life, short-term disability, long-term disability, accident, long term care, dental, vision, critical illness, cancer, hospital indemnity, catastrophic, legal, pet

Particularly among younger adults with less experience choosing benefits, the necessity to learn this alphabet soup of offerings is an onerous expectation. One solution is to ask employees what they think about the scope of education offered during open enrollment. It may be helpful to tailor learning opportunities based on employee feedback.

2.     Assess Workforce Needs

Second, to improve the benefits themselves based on feedback, companies should use canvassing techniques to learn what offerings would be most useful to their specific employee base. Industries, sectors, and/or regions feature diverse worker pools, many of which may be dominated by staff of a particular age, gender or ethnicity. When the majority of workers fall within a similar demographic, they tend to share many of the same needs.

For example, say most of the worker pool of ABC technology company is comprised of young adults with at least some college education earning a modest income. Many of today’s workers in this demographic do not yet have the assets or inclination to buy a house or start a family. They may be more interested in paying off student debt and buying a reliable car rather than fertility benefits. It is important to tap into these commonalities to offer greater depth rather than a wider expanse of cookie-cutter benefits.

Fortunately, there are more ways to survey workers today, and that data can be accumulated and assessed much quicker thanks to filtering and artificial intelligence summaries. Today’s level of database mining merged with electronic automation makes it easier to solicit preferences via multiple formats, such as:

• Email surveys (linked to a questionnaire)
• Text surveys
• Paper surveys
• Focus groups – constructive feedback sessions enable employees to feel ‘heard’ and provide influencing opportunities as well as bonding experiences with leaders and decision-makers.
• AI chatbots – new technology facilitates conversational-style interviews between workers and an AI bot that can provide information, customize answers, and compile reports based on accumulated data.

Encouraging workers to take their time responding to surveys also sends the message that the employer is not just going through the motions but is truly interested in individual viewpoints. Moreover, longer form surveys give workers the ability to consider the relevance and usefulness of granular benefits, from free access to an EAP lawyer to GLP-1 drug coverage. While multiple choice questionnaires may be easier to synthesize, don’t shy away from open-ended questions. Fortunately, today’s artificial intelligence tools can help detect patterns, assimilate answers and suggestions, and record meaningful verbatim responses.

In addition to asking open-ended questions about the types of benefits workers would like to see, ask which ones they are never likely to use. Inquire about the types of problems workers face in their everyday lives that impede their work performance. Employees may not know of a potential solution in terms of benefits, but they are familiar with the issues that complicate their work-life balance. Given the frankness of today’s ‘Tik-Tok’ generation, young adults may provide more comprehensive feedback than their more restrained elders.

Pay special attention to verbatim comments to identify trends among past successes and failures. The goal is to offer benefits that get the most ‘bang for their buck’ in both utilization and satisfaction. The better employers get to know their workers, the better they can tailor relevant benefits.

3.     Communication: Focus on Needs, Match With Benefits

The next step is to effectively communicate how specific benefits solve problems. Provide hypothetical profiles to show how benefits can be utilized by workers, particularly young adults with less real-life experience.

For example, caregiving benefits may be perceived as strictly for childcare. This means a young adult may not realize that those benefits and resources could be used for senior daycare for an aging grandmother they live with, or that extended PTO can be taken to help a parent with a serious illness.

Bear in mind that Generation Z workers grew up in an environment of quick, informational sound bites. Their minds, through no fault of their own, are trained differently than previous generations, so the communication of benefits should adapt to their version of normal. Demographic segmenting using AI tools can help by matching benefits to needs. According to MetLife’s research, more than half of workers would prefer more personalized benefits, so consider using employee demographic data to help stratify benefit recommendations.

While open enrollment materials may offer a brief explanation of certain terms (e.g., HMO, PPO, HSA, FSA), it also can be helpful to develop an automated tool that uses a questionnaire to develop benefit recommendations. For example, younger, healthier workers with no attachment to a particular physician may be directed to healthcare plans that feature low-cost access to urgent care centers and pharmacy minute-clinics for routine ailments. Older workers or those managing chronic conditions may be better served through a health plan that features value-based care, value choice providers, or an accountable care organization.

Also recognize that we live in an age of influencers. Even older generations are prone to reading product or service reviews before buying something on Amazon or choosing a medical provider. Use information from fellow employee surveys to help guide workers on benefit selections. For example:

• Show the most popular plans selected

                  -   “52% of your co-workers chose this health plan last year”

                  -   “44% of your co-workers have selected this plan for at least three years running”

• Use verbatim worker reviews (anonymous or with permission) to share peer-based recommendations in written or video format

                  -   “I like not having to get a referral for a specialist”

                  -   “This plan has no copay for local urgent care centers”

The combination of today’s technology and multiple communication channels can help deliver a higher level of customization. Employers should provide standardized benefit packages in both print and electronic forms, as well as additional resources designed to meet individual preferences.

Despite their propensity for online interactions, many young adults value the efficiency of a face-to-face conversation. It enables them to ask confidential questions with follow-up queries and is often considered faster and more productive than chatting with a bot.  Assign HR personnel who closely match specific demographics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity) to respond to individual questions via corresponding video, text, emails, or phone calls. These tailored communication tactics help workers engage with personnel who inherently understand their needs.

Also consider making detailed benefits information available through recruiting portals. Recognize that job candidates often seek out this type of information before even deciding to apply for a job. Moreover, the ability to deep dive into benefits detail (without having to make private inquiries, such as “do you provide IVF coverage?”) can be the make-or-break decision over which job offer to accept.

Employee surveying is not a one-off strategy. The combination of curating personal observations and analyzing utilization trends can help employers better understand the unique benefit needs of their workforce.

 

 

---

The Loop Archives