Employees will never be benefits experts, and they shouldn’t have to be. But with rising healthcare costs, it’s more important than ever to help employees cut through benefits jargon and confusion and enroll in the right benefits. Because having the right benefits in place supports a lot more than just in-network claims costs—it can mean the difference between being financially prepared or not.
Annual enrollment is one of the busiest times of the year for HR, from answering endless benefit questions to triple checking file feeds before they go to the carrier for next year’s plan changes. So having the right benefits administration tech in place to guide your employees when they feel lost or confused not only frees up time for your team, but also helps employees feel more confident in their elections.
In fact, according to data from Businessolver’s Benefits Insights Report, when employees utilize decision support, 79% are “confident” or “extremely confident” in their enrollment decisions with 84% rating their enrollment experience as “great” or “excellent”—showing benefits literacy does not have to be a barrier to selecting right-fit benefits.
Benefits may still be a source of confusion for the majority of employees, but the answer isn’t turning them into benefits experts. What matters is having tools and resources in place to make it easy for employees to confidently choose what works for them.
Only 14% of people with employer-sponsored health coverage can correctly define these essential benefits terms:
The purpose of decision support isn’t to take time explaining what these specific terms mean to employees; it’s using plain language to find out how the individual’s needs fit the benefits available to them. Plan comparisons in particular are a great way to show employees what’s changed or how different plans stack up. It asks the questions that your employees don’t know to ask themselves, educating them to make a decision that suits their unique lifestyle and situation.
The trouble is, most benefits decision support tools only look at employee’s physical needs, not the financial and emotional aspect as well. For instance, you may have employees who could technically handle a costly hospital visit, but how would that large out-of-pocket cost make them feel?
Responses from Businessolver’s Benefits Insights Report show that 45% of employees would feel panicked about a large, unexpected expense like an ER bill, with 37% of members saying they would go into debt or aren’t sure how they would pay for an unexpected expense.
Which is why Businessolver’s decision support asks employees not only questions about what they can financially afford, but how the burden of certain costs would impact their emotional well-being. Proving that with the right tech support, employees can take measures to ensure coverage that fits their physical and emotional needs, as well as their budget.
Decision support goes beyond just helping employees enroll; it’s a critical piece to solving HR admins’ busy day-to-day as well. Because let’s be honest, whether you’re a mid-sized or large enterprise-level organization, no benefit team can take ALL the wave of questions that come rolling in during Annual Enrollment season.
By encouraging employees to leverage decision support, HR teams can free up valuable time that would be focused on other initiatives.
For instance, take Businessolver’s client, Athletico, who saw a 77% adoption rate of decision support—with 97% of their total population enrolling themselves in benefits. Image how many hours that could save your HR team!
With decision support in place to be that guiding hand, employees are self-enrolling in elections that truly fit their unique needs. And with AI-powered support like Sofia, it’s as if a member of your HR team was actually sitting down next to them at their desk answering questions as they come up.
Another trend we’re seeing is that employees are activating 3x more on available voluntary benefits when best-match decision support is in play—showing the technology’s increasing effectiveness at connecting employees with best-match voluntary and ancillary benefits.
Decision support drives effectiveness for HR teams, cuts through the confusion for employees…but it also has the ability to drastically improve benefits costs. During our most recent annual enrollment, members who used our personalized decision support were 119% more likely to enroll in an HDHP when they had decision support available to them at enrollment, and employees were 129% more likely to elect an HDHP with an HSA when using decision support.
In short, decision support technology at enrollment is critical to driving right-fit plan steerage that results in substantial long-term savings for employees and employers. But like AI, its effectiveness is not created equally. Ask your current benefits administration provider some questions regarding the success of their decision support tool:
The data shows the effectiveness of best-match decision support during enrollment continues to rise as more employees and employers adopt this technology. But while personalization saves employers millions of dollars and drives employees toward better decisions for their holistic wellbeing, it’s ultimately a table stakes technology—meaning it’s now an expected first step in most employer’s benefits experience strategies. Even so, while 69% of Businessolver’s client base have adopted decision support, there’s still room for industry-wide improvement.
Register for a 20-minute live demo to get an inside look at how smooth and seamless enrollment could be for your organization with the help of Businessolver’s Decision Support.
