Why Employee Benefits Are Underutilized and How to Help

When you encourage employees to use their benefits, what does this mean to them? Filing a health insurance claim? Using a discount at a local gym? While many employees are familiar with traditional workplace benefits, you may also offer a variety of supplemental benefits that are often misunderstood by employees and are therefore underutilized.

About 40% of enrolled employees feel they do not understand their benefits well, as reported by LIMRA (Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association). Supplemental insurance products like disability, critical illness, accident and hospital indemnity are particularly misunderstood among employees enrolled in the coverage.¹

A low understanding of these benefits can be the reason why they are underused. If employees better understand their benefits, they may be more likely to seek care, submit claims when they receive eligible services, and get the cash they need. From an employer perspective, the effect can help participation rates and even employee satisfaction levels.

Help Employees Remember to Utilize Supplemental Benefits

You could send out a boilerplate company-wide email reminder each month, but these messages will quickly become overlooked and forgotten. Varied messaging at different intervals and various communication channels may be more likely to catch employees' attention. Be sure to include relevant links to claims forms, FAQs and customer service contacts to help employees navigate their coverage.

With many workforce populations operating remotely, this is a great opportunity to utilize virtual channels like email, intranet, Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams. Here are some content ideas:

• Use infographics to lay out the visual journey of how coverage works.
• Provide real-life examples to demonstrate how easy the process is from quote to claim.
• Offer a hypothetical financial illustration to show how much money employees can save.
• Have someone deliver an engaging verbal reminder at a company-wide town hall meeting.
• Send out benefit surveys to increase engagement and give employees a voice. This can help you better understand what your workforce needs and expects from their benefits.

Let Allstate Benefits Keep Employees in the Know

Even for enrolled employees, supplemental insurance can be confusing. That's why Allstate Benefits has curated a customizable library of materials and messaging to help you continuously reach your employees and help them better understand and utilize their benefits.

• A Microsite is a one-page online hub with important forms, helpful links, product brochures and videos, and more. We can provide a secure URL for you to share with your workforce. Customization options may be available for employers with 500+ eligible lives.
• Our Collateral includes professionally created brochures, postcards, flyers and other materials. Collateral is designed to help employees understand our products, including what is covered and how coverage works (with examples). You can truly make it yours by having your company's logo inserted into the collateral. Spanish translation may be available for accounts with 1,000+ eligible lives.
• Videos provide high-level overviews of our products to help employees better understand their coverage. General videos are available to all customers in English and Spanish; customization options may be available for employers with 15,000+ eligible lives.
• Our HTML emails include professionally designed graphics to communicate enrollment details and product information, helping to inform employees and keep their benefits top of mind.

From open enrollment materials to product education to self-service claims tutorials, Allstate Benefits has all your marketing needs covered. Helping your employees utilize their supplemental benefits is all part of the Good Hands® promise.

Contact an agent today to learn more about these communication options or click here for a quote.

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