7 Questions Benefits Advisors Should Ask (and Answer!) About Their Clients’ Employee Benefits Strategies
The Benefitfocus 2024 State of Employee BenefitsTM Report revealed trends that can help you benchmark your clients’ benefits programs, assess their strategies and identify opportunities to better meet the benefits needs of their workforce. We’ve made it easier for you to leverage the insights with this series of questions you can consider with your clients. The answers may help get you thinking about actions they can take to improve their approach to benefits administration.
1. What is the health plan type enrollment breakdown for their employee populations?
2024 State of Employee Benefits insight: In plan year 2024, 64 percent of employees selected a traditional health plan and 36 percent enrolled in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP).
If health plan enrollment trends aren’t meeting your client’s expectations and goals, it might be helpful to review their strategy through the lenses of benefits offerings, communications and enrollment platform. Find out about benefit administration solutions for your clients that help optimize their benefit strategy.
2. Are they finding generational (or other demographic) differences in their enrollment data?
2024 State of Employee Benefits insight: Nearly half (45 percent) of Generation Z employees selected an HDHP plan, compared with Traditionalists (7 percent), Baby Boomers (27 percent), Generation X (30 percent) and Millennials (43 percent).
Understanding generational differences can help your clients better meet their workforces’ various needs and preferences for benefits programs and communications. Unpack more trends along with ideas for using generational insights to improve benefits programs.
3. Do they offer a range of voluntary benefits to meet a wide range of needs?
2024 State of Employee Benefits insight: Employees across all generations are taking advantage of accident, critical illness*, hospital indemnity, ID theft, legal and pet benefits.
Supplemental benefits can expand the attractiveness of a benefits package and help organizations and employees optimize overall benefits spend and minimize financial risk. Find out how your clients can integrate voluntary benefits into the employee enrollment experience.
4. Are they paying proportionally more in premium costs to help offset their employees’ costs?
2024 State of Employee Benefits insight: For plan year 2024, employer share of premium was 78 percent, an increase of 5.4 percent from plan year 2022.
There may be more you can do to help your clients manage premium and claims costs for their organization and individual employees. Discover 5 ways your benefits administration partner can help cut wasteful spending.
5. Are they guiding employees to health care providers who have metrics backing up their quality?
2024 State of Employee Benefits insight: Top performing doctors have been found to eliminate 70 percent of low-quality and wasteful care.1
Using a modern care navigation solution that leverages metrics can help enable your clients to lower total claims costs. Learn how your clients can use leading data science to guide employees to top-performing doctors.
6. Do they use their population's claims data to help understand utilization, make strategic benefits decisions and measure ROI?
2024 State of Employee Benefits insight: 64 percent of workers agree that they would be willing to share their health claim history with their workplace wellness program provider in order to receive more personalized service.2
Unlocking the power of your clients’ unique workforce populations’ health care data has the potential to help them control costs and improve health outcomes. Help your clients act on opportunities to reduce wasteful spending and get more from their benefits investment.
7. Do they provide employees with intuitive guidance during the enrollment process?
2024 State of Employee Benefits insight: Employee participation in health care savings and spending accounts (HSAs and FSAs) declined 20 percent among employees with a health plan offer between plan years 2022 and 2024.
Making it easy for your clients’ employees to understand the interdependence across health, retirement and savings can help them make smarter and more confident benefits decisions. Explore the truth about why employees need better benefits decision support.
Want to learn more?
Download the 2024 State of Employee Benefits Report and Opportunities for Benefits Advisors for more data and insights.
Book a demo to find out how Benefitfocus can help radically simplify benefits for your clients.
*Critical illness may be referred to as Specified Disease in certain states.
1Statistics come from a combination of data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, CMS and Garner Health analysis of medical claims nationally during 2015-2021 plan years.
2Voya Financial Consumer Insights & Research survey conducted January 17, 2024 – January 18, 2024 among 1,080 adults working full-time or part-time, aged 18+ in the U.S., featuring 203 Caregivers.
The State of Employee Benefits 2024 was compiled from enrollment transactions aggregated across 316 large employers (1,000+ full-time employees) within the Benefitfocus customer base, representing more than 1.8 million employees in total. The data, accessed in March, 2024, was evaluated on an anonymous basis. Enrollment records include both active and passive enrollments made by a variety of industry roles (employee, carrier representative, broker, benefits administrator, etc.) from the fall of 2021 through fall of 2023 for plan year effective dates of January 1. These measurements are not meant to be a nationally representative sample, but to represent the aggregate activity for large employers on the Benefitfocus platform.
Benefitfocus has provided this as an educational resource. This is for informational purposes only and not intended to provide advice or address the situation of any individual or entity. The topics addressed may have legal, financial, and health implications, and we recommend you speak with a legal, financial, or health advisor before acting on any of the information presented.
Benefitfocus is not an actuarial firm, and Benefitfocus is not acting as an actuary or determining any actuarial basis for employer benefit offerings. Benefitfocus does not underwrite insurance and does not give legal advice regarding the adequacy of coverage limits or types. The State of Employee Benefits Report is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney, tax, actuarial or other professional advisors.
Benefitfocus is a Voya Financial® company.
