HUB International

Fran Scott is Practice Leader for Health and Performance at HUB International, where she helps clients navigate the intersection of lifestyle medicine, industry best practice and strategy to advance wellbeing initiatives from infancy to full maturity. She also supports the evolution of HUB’s health and performance practice as a cohesive, evidence-based and catalytic force. A veteran of the health and wellness space, Scott has spent 20 years influencing individuals, organizations and cultures through work centered on health, performance and sustainable wellbeing.

After completing her collegiate basketball career at the University of Virginia, Scott earned a master’s degree in health and physical education and spent the first half of her career in corporate fitness before moving into employee wellness. Prior to joining HUB, she led several award-winning programs for Fortune 500 companies. She believes wellbeing programs can significantly enrich an employer’s value to employees and communities, with lasting engagement built first on relationships, compassion and culture. Her own health and performance journey follows a Blue Zones-inspired lifestyle centered on walking, cycling, plant-based eating, wine, community and a supportive tribe.

Closing the Gap between Benefits and Employee Use

How utilized are your employee benefits? Chances are that utilization falls short and that should be a big concern given the heavy investment in benefits made by most employers. 

Between 30 percent and 40 percent of an employee’s base salary typically goes toward benefits, or $13.58 per hour worked for private employers. Yet there’s a lot of wasted money in that. Various studies indicate that 77 percent of employees don’t fully utilize their benefits; 13 percent of them forget they’re even available.

The cost of the utilization gap goes beyond wasted premiums. Longer term, it can result in larger medical claims when preventative maintenance or wellness programs lack participation. Poor health impacts absenteeism and productivity. And higher turnover, with its own costs, can result when employees fail to see the value of their benefits.

“What is important is developing a deeper understanding of employees and their particular needs. That is key to guiding a benefits strategy that is better tailored to individual circumstances.”

It’s possible to close the utilization gap—eliminating waste and over the longer term, improving employee engagement in the process. A good place to start is by digging deep into employee demographics, going beyond standard generational divides to understand the personas that comprise the workforce. It’s an exercise that HUB found is undertaken by 45% of employers as a way to guide benefits decisions.

By uncovering a better understanding of employees and the forces influencing their lives, organizations will be better able to deliver benefits that matter, are better utilized and ultimately, improve employee engagement.

What’s driving the utilization gap

Employers are increasingly adding solutions to their benefits packages in response to specific needs among their employees. That’s a good thing. But it’s not necessarily accompanied by clear guidance on how programs and individual issues align.

Take traditional Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) for mental health services. Over half of all U.S. workers have access to them, yet utilization rates hover between five percent and seven percent. There are multiple reasons for this, from stigma around mental health to lack of awareness—most employees can’t explain what an EAP is or how to access support.

Another factor is trust: Fewer than half of employees trust their employer. That creates skepticism that the benefits are genuinely there to support them and not just a money-saving ploy. It results in an underutilized benefit.

Ways to Narrow the Gap

What is important is developing a deeper understanding of employees and their particular needs. That is key to guiding a benefits strategy that is better tailored to individual circumstances. It is also important for shaping a more responsive informational program that clearly tells workers what is available and how to access those benefits.

The basis of this strategy lies in workforce persona analysis, a research methodology designed to better understand a target audience, in this case, the employee population, along with its needs and goals. It identifies individual priorities, compliance requirements across geographies, communication preferences among employee segments and social determinants that can affect benefit utilization.

This is important for understanding specific circumstances and needs. Younger employees, for example, may need benefits that support fertility treatments or childcare, while older female counterparts may be dealing with health issues related to perimenopause or menopause. Lower-income workers are often especially vulnerable to the effects of social determinants such as access to reliable transportation, stable housing and sufficient food.

In addition to delivering benefits that respond to these individual needs, employers need to fine-tune how they communicate what is available and how employees can access it. That means marketing to employees much as they would market to customers, with effective messaging delivered through the channels employees prefer.

That might include emails, flyers or videos tied to Mental Health Week, with clear information on how to access mental health benefits. For workers whose priorities center on safety, it might involve in-person or virtual workshops that connect wellbeing with safety protocols.

It is also critical to have a leadership team that authentically champions the benefits, communicates their value and actively promotes the resources available to employees at every stage of their relationship with the organization, as well as to spouses, partners and independents, too.

Tips to Improve Efficiency and Close the Gap

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

• Leverage employee data to home in on what matters to workers at their particular life stage.

• Outcomes are more important than benefits features. So show how they can help improve lives, not just what’s available.

• Tie your communications strategy to timely health topics and events that are most relevant to your workforce.

• Offer benefits that actually solve problems.

Here’s a question should be a primary motivator. Do employees believe we genuinely care about them?

That’s the path to better trust and engagement, not just with employee benefits but with the organization and its culture as a whole.