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Thursday, January 05, 2012

Employees Don’t Understand Their Benefits


HR decision makers say that only about 60% of their employees understand their benefits, according to a study. Surprisingly, 36% of large employers and 66% of midsized employers have no budget set aside for employee benefit communications. About half of HR decision-makers say their budget for benefit communications has remained the same in the past year and only a minority expect it to increase in one or two years.

Fifty-one percent of large employers and 72% of midsized companies don’t provide decision support tools to help employees understand their benefits, even though a majority of HR decision makers say that these tools are important. Decision support tools are typically software applications, available through a company website, that allow employees to compare healthcare plans.

The following are the most commonly used decision support tools: a flexible spending account calculator, a plan-comparison chart, a medical-cost calculator, and wellness-incentive modeling. One out of five large companies that do not provide decision support tools plan to do so in the next couple of years. Only 13% of midsized companies that do not provide decision support tools plan to do so in the next year or two. Sixty percent of HR decision makers say that mobile access to benefit information is important, yet only 46% of large companies and 39% of midsized companies provide it.

The following are the mobile application features that HR decision-makers are most interested in: healthcare provider information, benefit alerts, and single sign-on.

Eighty-six percent of large companies and 71% of midsized companies offer employee benefit information online. Eighty-six percent of large and midsized employers with a web-based portal think it is important for employees to have 24/7 access to benefit information, yet only 72% of large employers and 66% of midsized employers provide it.

HR decision-makers say that allowing employees to modify their own data allows them to maintain more accurate information, field fewer calls from employees, and lower their administrative burden. For more information, visit www.ADP.com.

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