5 Things Employees Want From Their Benefits Guide

From the explosion of benefits administration system vendors to the constantly growing list of health tech point solutions, we’ve seen a considerable amount of innovation in the benefits space over the last ten years.

Employee benefits guides, however, are one piece of the puzzle that has remained relatively unchanged. Even with PDF enhancers like FlippingBook, the benefits guide user experience is bleak, if employees even bother to look at them at all. And, can we blame them if they don’t?  

Here’s what we’re hearing from employees and HR teams about what they actually want to see in an employee benefits guide:

• All Benefits

  Modern benefits programs are far more than your standard medical, dental, vision, life & disability. Everything from backup childcare to PTO policies to Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) should be made available in the benefits guide. 

• Answers to Their Most Common Questions

  Overwhelmingly, the two most common questions during open enrollment are 1) Is my doctor in-network? And 2) Which of the available plan options suits my needs at the lowest possible cost?  To answer these questions, a digital benefits guide should be able to provide employees with an easy-to-use doctor search and personalized plan recommendations. 

• A Better New Hire Experience

  Employees who join mid-plan year often receive subpar benefits education relative to employees who were on board during open enrollment. In order to give them the same great user experience, your benefits guide should include a recording of your open enrollment presentation as well as a new hire checklist to make sure they don’t miss anything.

• 1:1 Benefits Consultations

  Gone are the days of waiting in line after in-person open enrollment presentations and hoping your colleagues don’t hear your sensitive health information. With an increasingly virtual world and an emphasis on privacy, offering virtual benefits consultations for employees at the time of their choosing is the experience they want and expect. Of course, your benefits guide can’t give the consultation, but a modern digital benefits guide can provide employees with the ability to see availability for a 1:1 consultation and book an appointment from within the digital benefits guide. 

• Embedded Education

  A digital benefits guide provides employees with simple, straightforward explanations of insurance terms to help them understand how the benefits apply to their individual circumstances. The key here is to provide them with relevant information to help them make informed decisions, not to overwhelm them with all possible data.

Do your benefit guides include these 5 key features? Reach out to sales@planyear.com to learn how you can quickly modernize the employee benefits experience with a Digital Benefit Guide by PlanYear. 

Get the PlanYear Digital Benefits Guide Solution Brief