How Analytics Will Help You Elevate the Employee Benefits Experience
You probably have more insights at your fingertips than you know what to do with. Here’s how we help our clients harness their insights
Among the many hats HR teams are wearing nowadays, divining insights and strategy from your deep lake of data is likely part of your daily responsibilities.
When we asked HR professionals like you what their top organizational goals are for their benefits program, driving employee engagement is always at top, right up there with cost management.
Driving meaningful and consistent employee benefits engagement can be just as complex as the benefits themselves. But with the right data and insights, you can achieve meaningful results for both your stakeholders and your employees.
In fact, 80% of employees said they feel confident in their benefits decisions when the experience is personalized for them—despite these same employees saying they’re totally confused about benefits. What’s moving the needle there?
Data. And lots of it.
Let’s take a look at the data you likely have access to and how benefits technology is helping organizations like yours drive real results to prove out ROI, engage employees, and supercharge their benefits programs.
Why analytics matter in HR
Analytics are what transform that stack of spreadsheets, charts, and tables into actionable insights for your organization, helping you make informed decisions for and about your workforce.
Here are just a few of the benefits of making time for diving into the numbers:
- Improved Decision Making: Analytics provide data-driven insights that help you make evidence-based decisions, from hiring and promotions to benefits and compensation.
- Informed Responses: When you understand your employees’ needs and preferences, you can tailor communications, programs, and initiatives to improve the overall experience for everyone.
- Predictive Insights: Get a handle on what to expect in the coming weeks, months, and even years with forecasting tailored to your workforce.
- Strategic Planning: HR analytics support long-term strategic planning by aligning workforce capabilities with organizational goals.
How data can help you boost employee engagement with their benefits
Benefits data can—and should—play a big role in helping you make sense of how employees are engaging in their benefits beyond annual enrollment. But with so much data at your fingertips—enrollment, utilization, feedback surveys, and much more—we’re guessing one of your biggest challenges is bringing that data into one place to look at how it’s all interconnected.
Our annual Benefits Insights report has studied the benefits experience for over five years, looking at the key insights, moments, and strategies that make or break your benefits programming. Key among them? What employee engagement looks like across your diverse workforce.
These insights look deeper than surface-level enrollment trends, studying things like:
- What tools help drive employees to the benefits platform
- What benefits are getting the most engagement and by whom
- What benefits engagement and confusion looks like across different demographics, such as age, gender, and even industry
The data you should be looking at in your benefits program
We know that personalization moves the needle a lot when it comes to engaging employees in their benefits. But knowing what personalization should look like for your benefits—and, better yet, what to action on—are the key insights we’re helping our clients take advantage of.
Our recent State of Workplace Empathy data revealed that benefits confusion is preventing many employees from using the benefits they desperately want. And while some of that gap may be due to misaligned priorities between employees and employers, even more concerning are the benefits going unused that employees say they want the most.
Here are some insights you should be looking at in your benefits program to understand where your biggest opportunities lie to help connect your employees with their benefits:
- Employee benefits feedback surveys
- Enrollment data
- Engagement with non-electable benefits
- Engagement or utilization of supplemental benefits
- Platform login/engagement data
- Call / email volume and themes
Benefits data and analytics are more than just gathering feedback—the right data can help you make meaningful shifts in your benefits programs to drive real ROI—from more engaged employees to retaining top talent.
