This year’s Top 5 Benefits Administration Goals from Benefitfocus offers more than our take on how benefits industry trends may impact your annual plans. We’re including resources you can use to help you develop and execute your employee benefits strategy – and to inspire you to learn more about what matters to today’s benefits professionals.
For context, it may help to think about employee benefits administration goals as responses to the market drivers that are impacting organizations as a whole. These include the economy, job market, rising health care costs and the evolving regulatory environment. You’ll see these considerations reflected in the 2025 benefits administration goals lineup, below.
1. Make it Easier for Employees to Address the Links Between Health, Savings and Financial Stress.
According to the EBRI/Greenwald Research 2024 Workplace Wellness Survey, three-quarters of workers say their current level of debt is a problem; medical debt, in particular, is most often related to a health emergency (38 percent), prescription drugs (38 percent), or chronic illness (28 percent).
When employees make decisions about their health and financial benefits separately, they may be poorly protected when it comes to their health and financial security – and that carries the potential to increase their financial stress. You can help boost your employees’ preparedness and understanding by providing access to a decision support tool that is integrated into their benefits enrollment flow. With data-driven guidance across health and financial wellbeing, employees can optimize their benefits enrollment and savings decisions.
Helpful resource: Learn how Benefitfocus’s personalized Decision Support can help your employees connect health and financial wellbeing.
2. Leverage Health care Claims Data Analytics to Help Drive Strategic, Cost-Conscious Benefits Decisions.
The Business Group on Health’s 2025 Employer Health Care Strategy Survey reports that health care costs are expected to grow at the highest rate in a decade – and pharmacy costs are largely responsible for overall increases and consume a growing share of the health care budget. What’s more, the report also found that managing and reassessing vendor partnerships are at the center of employers’ plans to address costs and improve performance.
In the best-case scenario, an effective health care claims data analytics solution can help benefit leaders manage costs, improve benefit programs, boost utilization and provide an elevated benefits experience for employees, all of which can contribute to a happier, healthier workforce. A supportive partner can help you understand medical and pharmacy trends in your population and guide you to take steps to improve your benefits program design, employee benefits communications and even your partner ecosystem.
Helpful resource: In Unlocking the Power of Health Care Claims Data to Enhance Benefits, you’ll explore when and how to take advantage of all the health care claims data your systems collect.
3. Promote Voluntary and Supplemental Benefits to Help Minimize Potential Costs.
Employers may reprioritize voluntary and supplemental benefits in the year ahead, thanks to their potential impact on long-term financial wellness. Employees enrolled in critical illness*, accident and/or hospital indemnity insurance coverage, for example, may be better prepared to handle health-related or other covered events. In fact, Voya research found that 85 percent of employees agree they take advantage of voluntary benefits offered at work and 83 percent feel more financially confident as a result of being enrolled in them1.
Aside from providing financial protection as a resource for out-pocket expenses, these products can be positioned as part of a customizable benefits menu that helps employees address specific health or lifestyle needs. What’s more, taking these products available to employees can demonstrate your organizational commitment to providing a competitive benefits package.
Helpful resource: The Benefitfocus 2024 State of Employee Benefits Report contains an entire section about these benefits and how they can add value to your workforce’s total wellbeing.
*”Critical Illness” may be referred to as “Specified Disease” in some states.
4. Guide Employees to Their Next Best Care Decisions.
Among Business Group on Health’s Trends to Watch in 2025 is that "employers and vendors must better enable employees to find the right support at the right time.” In recent years, employers have expanded benefit offerings to better meet employees’ unique needs across all areas of wellbeing. This has created somewhat of a double-edged sword: while this proliferation of benefits has helped people customize their care, it has also contributed to the potential for them to feel overwhelmed with options.
Employees have decisions to make related to which providers to see and which, if any, offer solutions to use. That’s why the primary focus of care navigation is helping employees understand when, where and how to use their benefits effectively. Using modern care navigation solutions can help employees select care providers and take advantage of point solutions, making the benefits experience better optimized.
Helpful resources: Learn how Benefitfocus’s Care Navigation and Health Care Point Solutions solutions can help.
5. Support and Engage Employees with Their Benefits During the "Great Stay."
As Forbes reports, fewer employees voluntarily left their jobs in 2024 compared to previous years, in a phenomenon dubbed the Great Stay. Due to uncertainty about the economy, geopolitical turmoil and other factors, workers appear to be “hunkering down” in their jobs and may be generally more risk averse to switching jobs.
This is an opportunity for employers to show their commitment to talent by leveraging employee benefits programs – and helping employees see and experience their value through engaging benefits communications. While the majority of benefits communication takes place during annual open enrollment, according to LIMRA’s 2024 Benefits and Employee Attitude Tracker, employees would prefer more frequent communication: 73 percent want to receive benefits information either a few times or frequently throughout the year.
And when it comes to employee perceptions of their employer, some studies show successful communication can lead to real results. For instance, half of employees say that they would feel more cared for if their employer improved benefits communications, and a better understanding of their benefits would make them more loyal to their employer.
Helpful resource: Discover inspiring ideas in How to Make Employee Communications a Key Part of Your Benefits Strategy.
Bonus Goal: Partner with Benefitfocus!
At Benefitfocus, a Voya Financial Company, we radically simplify benefits administration. We extend your team with our people, technology and data insights while delivering a connected employee experience that inspires better decisions across health and financial wellbeing. Our full-service, people-centered approach puts your success first by helping to drive value and improve employee outcomes.
Explore our Employer Benefit Solutions, Broker Solutions and Technology Partner Solutions to learn more!
1Based on the results of a Voya Financial Consumer Insights & Research survey conducted September 27th - October 7th, 2024 among 345 adults aged 18+ Americans, working either Full-time or Part-time, who have primary or shared household responsibility for making financial and health/medical plan decisions, are benefit eligible for employer-sponsored retirement and health plans and currently enrolled.
CN4140392_0127
