Benefit and enrollment strategies for the future of work

Employee benefits have taken a huge leap in importance, according to two new studies from the insurance-industry research group LIMRA. Listen as LIMRA’s Kelly Landry and Unum Group’s Cindy Nevers discuss five mega trends expected to change the industry – and enrollment tips for employers to implement now. The full reports are available to LIMRA members, and previewed in this special episode for HR Trends listeners. 

• The studies: The first annual BEAT (Benefits and Employee Attitude) Tracker study surveyed employees to determine how benefits intersect with employee attitudes toward work. Harnessing Growth and Seizing Opportunity: The Future of Workforce Benefits presents megatrends to watch in the next several years, distilled from the insights of key industry stakeholders. [04:36]
• See the free LIMRA infographic [A1] on what employees think about work. [07:21]
• Money isn’t everything, especially for millennials: Only about 30% of millennials said salary was the top reason to choose an employer. The rest prioritized factors like work/life balance, flexibility and benefits. [10:38]
• Benefits education and communication are vitally important: All stakeholders agree that helping employees understand their benefits is of mounting importance, especially for supplemental benefits.
•  Rethink the emphasis on total self-service for benefits, especially for younger workers who have less experience buying and using insurance coverage [12:00]
• More is more: There is a strong correlation between employee satisfaction and the number of benefitsoffered. With five generations in the workforce, employers need to offer a large number of benefits employees can choose from based on their individual circumstances. See the free LIMRA infographic on what employees think about benefits. [20:38]
• Rethink your benefits spend: Because employees value quantity and choice, it may not always make senseto commit the vast majority of benefits spending to offering the most generous health insurance plan. Supplementing a less generous plan with voluntary benefits like accident and critical illness can offer similar protection for employees while allowing them to tailor benefits to fit their age, lifestyle, income and other circumstances. [23:38]
• Brokers aren’t going anywhere, but their role will likely change: As it gets easier to obtain digital quotes for benefits, employers will call upon brokers more for advice, guidance and strategy consultation [26:07]
•  Enlisting leadership in the communication effort will make employees feel more valued. [32:00]

Featured speakers 

Kimberly Landry
Associate Research Director, LIMRA

Kimberly Landry is an Associate Research Director for Workplace Benefits Research at LIMRA. She conducts quantitative and qualitative research on hot topics within the employee benefits industry, with a specific focus on employer and employee perspectives. 

 Cindy Nevers
National Sales Leader Voluntary Benefits, Unum Group 

In her more than 30 years with Unum Group, Cindy Nevers has held a wide range of leadership roles for both Unum and Colonial Life brands. She has led oversight for Group Client Services, Global Services/Project Implementation & Journey transformation, Field Operations and Field Compensation, and Client Management. Cindy led national broker strategy at Colonial Life and most recently became the National Sales Leader for Voluntary Benefits at Unum.  

Transcript

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(gentle music)- Today on "HR Trends."- In our survey, we had this whole list of questions about employees' attitudes to their current employer, what their experiences had been with their current employer. It was a laundry list. So one of the factors that was most strongly associated with wanting to stay, as you said, is this sense that the employer really cares about them. And again, like some of the other top retention factors were opportunities for career advancement or feeling like management listens to its employees. But caring is a really difficult one because it's hard to quantify. How do you measure that? As an employer, how do you convey to your employees that you care about them? And there are probably a lot of potential ways to do that, but we think that one of the best ones is offering a generous benefits package, especially if those benefits are really designed and tailored in a way that can truly be helping employees address the challenges that they might be facing in their lives outside of work.- It's a whole new ball game. We still think about benefits and communication as a one-time thing, where your life is not a one-time thing. You are experiencing life events and incidents that you could actually have a claim for, and you don't even know you have that claim.(gentle music)(air swooshing)- Welcome to "HR Trends." Our conversation today is about enrollment season and benefits megatrends. This is such an important time to have this conversation. There is so much economic uncertainty, rising medical costs, mental health concerns, and massive disruptions and movement in the labor market. So has there ever been a more important time to communicate and educate your employees about their benefits? We have two amazing experts to walk us through this and some important new data. We have with us Kimberly Landry, associate research director at LIMRA. For those in the audience who are not familiar with LIMRA, this is an insurance trade association, a not-for-profit, non-lobbying organization that provides research and insights for the insurance industry as a whole. Kimberly conducts research on important topics within the employee benefits industry, focusing on the employer and employee perspectives. She's also responsible for LIMRA's worksite and supplemental health research programs. Kim, we are so thrilled you're with us today.- Thank you, Clare. Happy to be here.- We also have Cindy Nevers, a national sales leader of voluntary benefits at Unum Group. Cindy has been with Unum Group for more than 30 years, holding various leadership roles for both Unum and Colonial Life. Cindy, thank you also for joining us for this important conversation.- Great to be here, thank you.- So, Kim, let's start with you. And we're all enormous fans of LIMRA. You've got some of the best content out there, and most recently, LIMRA's released two really interesting reports which I wanted to ask you about today. So there was the 2022 BEAT Study, Benefits and Employee Attitude Tracker, and there was also a report by LIMRA and EY,

Harnessing Growth and Seizing Opportunity: 3:30

The Future of Workplace, sorry, Workforce Benefits, which lists five megatrends over the coming five years. Can you begin by just explaining these two studies and what they set out to do?- Absolutely, so the Harnessing Growth study, which, as you said, we conducted jointly with EY, that was designed to be a very forward-looking piece of research that explored the future of the benefits industry and where do we think it's going. So we did this by gathering a lot of research and input from multiple perspectives of different industry stakeholders. This project included surveys of employers and employees as well as qualitative interviews with brokers and benefit technology firms. So we wanted to explore the major forces shaping the future of the industry, and as you mentioned, we identified five megatrends that we think are shaping where the industry is going, as well as five predictions of what the benefits market will look like five years from now. Now, the BEAT Study, on the other hand, is actually a really deep dive into the employee perspective. So the goal of this study was to explore a variety of employee attitudes and opinions about benefits and about employment issues in general, which has really worked out great. It's provided a lot of very timely insights for us regarding the current challenges going on in the labor market and the Great Resignation, and what's driving employees to change jobs or stay where they are, what's driving their loyalty to their employers. So, for that survey, we surveyed over 3,000 US employees, including both people that had benefits at work and those that did not, and we're also very excited about this project because it's going to be an ongoing annual survey. This was our very first iteration, but we're going to be repeating it every year so we can track a lot of these attitudes over time and see how they change.- It's so, as you said, so timely, isn't it, to get a survey of this scale that is going into the minds, the attitudes of employees, and saying, you know, what is most important? And I wonder if we can unpack some of the trends acrost those both reports. We're seeing these similar trends are appearing, and so, starting maybe with that consumer experience of the employee and what do today's workers want? So, and frankly, your study taught me how to use the word employee and worker, right? Because it's becoming such(Kimberly laughs) a diversified employment sphere, right? Where you don't have necessarily full-time or part-time employees. So-- Exactly.- but beginning with, say, those full-time, part-time employees, you asked them, what is making you stay, and what is making you leave? And you have this extraordinary infographic we're gonna include in our show notes, where, on the one hand, what's making employees stay, and you have these two key drivers, like the highest drivers that are making employees stay, number one, employees are 7.5 times more likely to stay if they have opportunities for career advancement. I think we're all like, okay, yep, to be expected. But then there's number two, 7.5, sorry, 7.4 times more likely to stay if their employer cares about them, which seems huge (chuckles) opportunity to be driving retention through displaying care. And then, on the other hand, what's making them more likely to leave, and you have this one reason that's like, seems quite above the others, which is 7.8 times more likely to leave if their employer is not committed to supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion. Could we begin by you maybe just explaining those two data points?- Yeah, absolutely, so, yeah, in our survey, we had this whole list of questions about employees' attitudes to their current employer, what their experiences had been with their current employer. It was a laundry list. And so, we were able to really look at how all of those different things correlated with their intentions to leave their company as soon as possible, to be committed to stay in their jobs for a long time, or you know, a lot of them were somewhere in between. Oh, you know, I'm not actively looking, but I'm kind of, yeah, open to new opportunities and stuff. So one of the factors that was most strongly associated with wanting to stay, as you said, is the sense that the employer really cares about them. And again, like some of the other top retention factors were opportunities for career advancement or feeling like management listens to its employees. But caring is a really difficult one because it's hard to quantify. How do you measure that? As an employer, how do you convey to your employees that you care about them? And there are probably a lot of potential ways to do that, but we think that one of the best ones is offering a generous benefits package, especially if those benefits are really designed and tailored in a way that can truly be helping employees address the challenges that they might be facing in their lives outside of work. Obviously, things like good health insurance and retirement savings are gonna be important, but employers really need to look beyond those, we think, at other ways that they can support their employees using benefits, and that can encompass things like paid family leave programs, mental health and wellness benefits, financial wellness, emergency savings plans, caregiving benefits, flexibility, remote work, and a whole variety of other things. Different employees are gonna be in different places in their lives and facing different circumstances, so offering a customized menu of benefits that employees can pick and choose from is often the best approach.- I love that. And we're gonna get into more on that, and, Cindy, I'd love to bring you on that too. Before we go there, though, it's so interesting in Harnessing Growth, which is the other report, that you also talk about millennials who are, of course, you know, a majority of the workforce right now, or, as you called them, the experience generation, are looking for employers that genuinely care about their well-being and benefits, and you're saying that really those are some of the best ways employers can demonstrate that care.- Absolutely, one of the other things we looked at in this survey is we asked employees, okay, whether you're planning to go or not, you know, hypothetically, if you were looking for a new job, what are the top factors you would look for in a potential employer? And you know, no surprises, salary or income potential is number one. We wouldn't really expect that to be different, but we were surprised that only about 30-something percent of employees said salary was their top choice. 63% chose something other than salary as a number one factor they would consider, and it was like a variety of other things. You know, there wasn't a single big number two, but it was things like benefits, work-life balance, flexibility. So employees and millennials, in particular, and the youngest generations, but we find this is really creeping upstream too. You know, people are looking at jobs as more than just a source of income. They're looking at them as how does this fit into my life and the type of lifestyle I wanna have, so there's a lot more going into those employment decisions now than just how much are you gonna pay me.- And it's fascinating, and just a quick moment to our audience, go listen to our previous episode, which is about inflation and employee well-being, and we actually had some great experts speaking to that of, yeah, maybe you can't increase salary right now, inflationary environment, but all these other ways then you can be showing that care. I did wanna ask you about benefits education and communication, though. So you might have the best benefits package in the world, but if you're not communicating it, and if the employees are not understanding the value they have, they are not gonna be feeling that care. So, Kim, what is the data saying here? I noticed it's a megatrend number four in the Harnessing Growth report. You're actually saying that it's becoming a burning kind of issue, this.- Exactly, it is. And as you said, you know, benefits communication has always been challenging. It's not a new problem, but it is a growing problem, and it's one that we found all of the different stakeholders in the industry, so carriers, brokers, technology firms, the employers, the employees. Literally, everyone agrees that we need to improve this. I'll just share a few quick stats from our research. Only 44% of employees feel that their employer is communicating about benefits well. The percent of employees who feel like they understand their benefits ranges from about 43 to about 64% depending on which benefit we're looking at. It's highest for dental insurance, and it's lowest for like, critical illness, and we know that, if anything, employees tend to overestimate how well they understand these products, so, you know, that's not a very pretty picture there, and employees often aren't even aware of which benefits are being offered to them. For example, in the BEAT Study, we asked employees which benefits are available to them at work, and you know, we wanted to be able to drill down on the benefits that they had available and ask follow-up questions, but about one in five employees couldn't even answer whether various supplemental health products were even offered to them at all or not, and more than half were expressing some amount of uncertainty over whether or not these products were available. So that's not a very good place to be starting from, if you say, you know, do you value your critical illness insurance? Well, what's that? Do I have that? (chuckles) And there are a few reasons this problem has been getting worse. First of all, just the sheer number and variety of benefits being offered has been expanding, more supplemental offerings, voluntary offerings, non-insurance benefits, and that can just get kind of overwhelming for employees, especially if you're trying to explain them all at once. Employees are being asked to pay more out of pocket for their benefits, so they really need to understand more to make enrollment decisions, as opposed to maybe in the past, if these things were being fully paid by the employer, they had the protection whether they understood it or not. And really, in recent years, more and more benefit communication and enrollment has been switching to digital channels, fewer in-person meetings are happening around enrollment time, and that's been a good development in a lot of ways. It's certainly increasing convenience and efficiency from the HR administrator perspective. It is streamlining things, and there's less manual work, but it's really, really hard to educate employees about their benefits in a self-service platform environment, especially after they've spent 10 or 20 minutes dealing with their major medical insurance and trying to make a decision about that. Employees frequently just aren't all that interested in learning about the other benefits, and there's a tendency to just click through those screens without really reading any of the information. One other point I wanna make is just that when employees don't understand their benefits, it creates a lot of downstream problems. I mean, first of all, they're less likely to enroll in the first place if they don't understand. That's gonna impact participation, and maybe the overall success and stability of the plan. Also, as we said, employers are in such a fierce war for talent right now and benefits are being offered as an attraction or retention tool. But, as we said, you know, this is a way to demonstrate that you care about your employees, but if employees are not even aware of what's being offered, then they're not gonna see that and appreciate that and that's gonna undermine the whole goal of offering benefits for that reason. And finally, if employees don't understand what their benefits cover and what they don't cover, there's a good chance some of them are gonna file inappropriate claims, which are going to be denied correctly. You know, if it's for, you know, a incident that is not covered by the policy, but that's gonna lead to a really poor customer experience, you know, for the employee, and you know, get escalated perhaps even to the employer or the broker, and they might also fail to file valid claims when they should, and you know, not be getting the value that they should be out of these products. We really want them to understand what these are and what they're for so they can use them correctly.- So much there. Cindy, I would love to bring you in here as just a veteran here in the industry. Thoughts on what Kim just shared?- Yeah, these studies were so helpful because I think as we've all sort of lived through the pandemic and everything's been different, how we show up at work, where we show up at work, how we process what's important to us today versus three years ago are very, very different. I would say it has accelerated the industry. So how carriers, brokers, technology partners come together to build, develop, and enroll the employees and how you even talk about those benefit programs has completely changed. I would say before the pandemic, everyone was talking self-serve. We've got all these millennials, they just wanna go on their phone, pick their medical, and be done with it, to where we sit today, which, what I'm hearing every single day in the market is utilization,'cause they wanna know the effort the employer put into building a benefits package for their employees for retention and for attracting talent, that their employees are actually leveraging those benefits and can experience the value that those benefits bring. The generational piece of these studies is mind-blowing because what it starts to really drive home is there is no longer one answer for how you think about communicating, enrolling, and ensuring your employees understand and can utilize the benefits that they are choosing to have for themselves and their families. So we are definitely in, I think, a pivotal point in the industry where if your mind as a broker or even a technology partner, BenAdmin, is pre-COVID, man, you are so far behind because as we think about API technology, trying to make it easier for the employer, and then on the back end, making sure that the employer understands that their employees are leveraging the benefits, it's a whole new ball game, and I don't think we've figured it out yet'cause we still think about benefits and communication as a one-time thing, where your life is not a one-time thing. You are experiencing life events and incidents that you could actually have a claim for, and you don't even know you have that claim. Enter in, you know, this integrated claims processing and auto-adjudication, trying to figure out how do you solve for that with technology for the employee, so if they miss it, we don't as a carrier. So it's been crazy to watch the industry over the past three years. These studies, to me, are a springboard into, wow, how do you as an employer figure out how to make sure your employees understand the vast value they're bringing to them, and then how do you convince them to maybe talk to an expert in the process so they can choose what's right for them, and that's where the past and the future haven't quite come together because I think we think it's either self-serve or it's like an active enrollment, and it really isn't ever one thing anymore.- Such a great perspective, and it's an exciting time, I think, for us all to be doing this, and the need is so great, and, you know, the families need those financial protections, right, more than ever. But just building off your point you were bringing up there, going to the BEAT Study again, so there's this sharp need for education, as you said, Kim, this burning need for education, and that part of the need for the education is because there's more benefits coming into play now because of this diverse workforce that, Cindy, you just referenced, and eight, five, sorry, five generations in the workforce, huge diversity of needs. So, in the BEAT Study, we see this striking jump in the employees that report higher satisfaction the more benefits they are offered. So there's this amazing moment, again, on an infographic, where you're seeing these kind of not-so-happy faces, and then (laughs) the second you get to seven to nine benefits or 10 to 12 benefits, the faces get very happy, and then the employee satisfaction, like, goes five times higher, like, six times higher, like that. And then, in the Harnessing Growth report, we're also seeing a second megatrend,"Expanded benefits are a key to meeting post-COVID-19 needs and winning the war for talent." Kim, could you speak to that?- Absolutely, so this kind of comes back to our previous discussion of how different employees have different benefit needs, and that depends on their age, their stage of life, their lifestyle, their socioeconomic status, and so on and so on. So to compete in this environment, employers need to be offering a wide range of benefit options that can be selected and customized to each individual employee's needs, and this is direction that we think the market seems to be going in. In the Harnessing Growth study, we found that almost half of employers say they expect to be offering more benefits five years from now than they are today. So the really cool thing we found in the BEAT Study, as you referenced, is the very strong correlation between the overall number of insurance benefits an employer offers and how satisfied those employees are with their overall benefits package. And, yeah, like, when an employer only offers one to three insurance benefits, only 28% of employees are highly satisfied, but it goes up in step with the number of benefits, and when you get to like, 10 to 12 benefits, 69% are highly satisfied. So when you think about this, you know, when employers are choosing to offer small benefits packages, it's often because they don't seem to think other benefits matter after they have those core offerings. You know, they're like, okay, medical, dental, retirement, you know, and you know, there's a sense that that's all that employees really care about. But what this data really demonstrates is that adding those additional and the voluntary supplemental offerings really does continue to add value and build on that satisfaction even after those core benefits are available. We also asked employees about whether their benefits are making them feel more or less inclined to stay with their current employer, and 63% said their benefits package makes them at least slightly more inclined to stay, while 20% say they're actually less inclined to stay because of their benefits, and that is very clearly coming from employees who either don't have any benefits offered or have very inadequate benefits that are not meeting their needs. But once again, the overall number of benefits that are available to them is playing a huge role, and it's very predictive of how they respond to that question.- Cindy, I would love for you to also weigh in on that.- Yeah, this study has really been, I think, thought-provoking because if you live in the supplemental health product arena, we think about this all the time, right? Those benefits complement the other benefits, the medical, the dental. So it's interesting to me that we've been sort of fighting for space in the voluntary benefits, the supplemental health benefits for years, and now as you look at sort of the inflation and recession, you know, people are thinking much more carefully about where they're spending their dollars, so the information that you need during an enrollment as you're choosing your medical is really important. You can actually supplement a higher deductible medical plan with your voluntary benefits or your supplemental benefits and actually spend less money. But people get worried about medical, so they try to get the most expensive plan, but maybe for who they are and their lifestyle, they may not need that. So this study really emphasizes the importance of you need a lot of benefits because the generational study is so fascinating, where each individual will place more value on a set of products, really depending on where they stack up in that generational study. So it's exciting, I think, for me being in the supplemental health space because it's, I think, where we are right now in our economy, how people are thinking about their wallet share and what they have to spend, they're gonna have to understand their options, and I think that's why you see 69% want more options. It's not that they wanna buy them all, it's that they need to be able to balance it against their personal needs.- It's so true, and again, I'm thinking of benefits education, the need to, A, offer all that, and then to be able to, in a way that can engage employees, say, this is why it's important to you, you know, and your loved ones. Of course, brokers, I wanted to also hit on that. Another big trend we're seeing, so megatrend number three from the Harnessing Growth report,"Brokers are valued, but their role is evolving rapidly towards strategic services." There's a wonderful line, language you use actually, Kim, in the report, "Brokers act as strategists and curators as distribution digitizers." Fascinating angle, can you talk a bit about that and how the broker role is shifting?- Yeah, I'd be happy to. So when we were designing this research, we wanted it to be very focused on the future, and so we started by gathering input and potential questions from some of our member companies and other industry stakeholders, and one question that came up a couple of times was some version of are brokers going to be disintermediated or are brokers gonna go away, kind of was what people were, like, you know, not quite saying but trying to say to us. And so we're like, well, that's a pretty big question that we should look at, and we did look at it from a bunch of different perspectives in our research, and the answer was really a resounding no. Brokers are not going anywhere. We found that 85% of employers are very satisfied with their broker. 93% say their broker provides valuable support and advice beyond just presenting what their options are, and almost half expect to rely on their broker more in the future rather than less. Only 10% of employers thought they might rely on their broker less going forward. However, at the same time, almost half of employers said that they would at least be a little bit open to considering obtaining benefits without the help of a broker five years from now. So this seems contradictory, but it's actually not. The takeaway that we're seeing here is that the role of the broker is not gonna disappear, but it's going to change as it becomes easier to obtain benefits through digital channels or through direct channels. Any broker who sees their role as merely gathering quotes and providing enrollment services is probably gonna struggle in the future. But successful brokers, on the other hand, are going to redefine their roles to focus much more heavily on providing strategic advice and consulting to guide employers' benefits strategies. As benefit options and the overall distribution ecosystem is becoming more and more complex, employers are actually gonna need guidance more than ever, and brokers are seen as a very highly trusted source for good advice. So really, what we expect is to see brokers focusing more on high-value tasks in the future and while things like quoting and enrollment become more automated.- Cindy, I'd love to bring you in here, too,'cause you spent so many years working with our, you know, broker communities. What are your thoughts?- Yeah, 10 years ago I don't think anybody thought we would all be in the technology business, but that's exactly where we all sit today. I'll give you a great example. We were at an industry conference and meeting with broker after broker after broker, and it's so interesting because what we as a carrier are trying to figure out is how to transcend the spreadsheet, right? It's comp, it's price, maybe they get into product a little bit. But now, you really think about, when a broker approaches a client, I think the first question they have to ask is, what's your technology? What's your BenAdmin? Is it working well for you? They really need to problem-solve technology first, then they move into the consultative benefit building discussion, which should lead to the right answers. Whether that helps them pick a different technology partner, whether that helps them pick a carrier that is tech-focused, is looking at the future, looking at integrations in a way that is not file feeds, right? It's API technology. I really believe, and John Stibal, I've heard him say this more than once, he says, "You know, the RFP process is asking yesterday's questions for tomorrow's answers," and I just found that to be really, you know, thought-provoking as we really try to unpack what are we doing? You know, we're really behind on how we figure out who the partners will be for a client versus really centralizing this support around how do you educate your clients throughout the year? How do you pick a technology that allows you to exchange information in a seamless way? And then, again, on that back end, how do you ensure that the products that you built for an employer are working for their employees post-enrollment, like post-the sale. So it's been fascinating to watch. I never thought I would have technology discussions, have to understand what is API technology, but that's where we all sit today, and we still work with brokers who don't wanna talk about it. And I think what's gonna happen is brokers are gonna become more valuable because an HR department can't be the expert in all of these things, and they're going to expect their broker to be the person that figures that out for them. They don't wanna have technology discussions either. They just want it to be easy, like it needs to save me time, it needs to solve my problems. So we all are in a new world of technology, and how we integrate with each other and create value is where the broker, I think, has to evolve pretty quickly.- So true, we do live in such interesting times. And, Kim, I know in the report, you mentioned a couple of those points. You know, the fact that everyone is now a technology business, right? And also, that it is this whole cycle of how it needs to be easy and accessible, right? And both for the employers and also for the employees, the consumers. And I wondered if we can finish, just for concluding thoughts as we go, we're in this enrollment season that, as I was saying at the beginning, it's so important time to do this well. (chuckles) Any advice you would give to our audience, and, Kim, let's begin with you.- Yeah, I'd say during this enrollment season, the focus really needs to be on communication and education. You know, like we said, this is really, really hard because employees just really aren't interested in learning about this a lot of the time. But our research shows that getting the communication piece right can really make a huge difference, so employers should be thinking about dripping communications out in smaller pieces before enrollment officially starts, especially just to explain what the non-medical offerings are. Things like disability or the supplemental health plans, employees often don't even know what these products are at a very basic level. They could not define what this is for, and they don't wanna take the time to learn after they've been struggling with their medical decisions in the enrollment platform. If you can educate them first, you wanna put them in a place where they can make a quick decision while they're going through the enrollment experience but have it be a well-informed decision. Also, no matter what communication or enrollment method you're using, find some way to give employees an opportunity to ask questions or talk to somebody. We found in our research that 63% of employees prefer some type of benefits communication that lets them interact with a person, whether that's in-person meetings or virtual meetings or a phone number to call, but something where if they're confused, they can get an answer, and they can, like, talk to somebody about this. And, you know, perhaps counterintuitively, the youngest workers, the Gen Zs that everyone thinks they don't wanna use the phone, they just wanna click through and have it on an app, the youngest workers are the most likely to want to talk to someone because they have less knowledge about benefits. They haven't really done this that many times before, and they're more confused by what these things are than anyone else. If possible, any way to provide decision support tools or resources to help provide personalized guidance to them or personalized recommendations is a great move to make. And finally, continue communicating about benefits after enrollment is over. Half of employees say that their employers only communicate during open enrollment about benefits, but 69% would prefer to receive benefits information at least a few times or frequently throughout the year. And we found that employees who do receive more frequent benefits communication are happier with their employer's communication efforts, they understand their benefits better, and they're more satisfied with their benefits overall. So like, that's the goal. That's what we're trying to accomplish here, and like, continuing that communication is a good way to do that.- Brilliant, Cindy, your thoughts?- Yeah, it's so interesting being on the carrier side because so much work and effort goes into all of those decisions to decide what you're going to offer. Your BenAdmin, you might be changing BenAdmins. You might be changing your technology partner. You're probably changing your carrier. That is heavy lifting on the employer and the broker up until open enrollment. Then, you have to communicate and offer exactly what Kim said. You have to be able to offer, pick up the phone, schedule a meeting, talk to someone real-time, chat with someone because you will have questions, you absolutely will have questions about something. And then, I'll just have to reiterate everything Kim said because it has to be an iterative process. You cannot do all of that work to create a great benefits package for your employees, have your open enrollment where you might have all of the, you could do a video, you could do chat, you could do phone call, you could have a in-person meeting, but then to not figure out how to have some type of ongoing highlighting of that benefits package. I don't think we're there yet. I mean, that's where I think the future has to go. You just forget what you buy in September or October for next year when you might need to actually leverage the benefit. It's just really, really interesting the problems this creates for the employer. And then just leadership in general. Going all the way back to that first stat that we talked about where people need to feel valued and listened to, and they really wanna work for someone who cares about them. If you don't have some type of leadership program where you actually have, talk through our benefits package to your employees. When they have a life event, remind them of, hey, you probably have a benefit here. Let's get you on a call with HR. Let me help you navigate this. I think leadership could play a really instrumental role in this iterative process for making people feel valued by, hey, let's talk about your benefits, or not exactly like that, but you know what I mean. Like, everybody has something happening in their life. You know, your kid falls on the playground and breaks a leg or an ankle or a finger or whatever, and you're like, okay, did I buy accident? I don't even remember if I bought accident. (laughs) And just be able to, even if they didn't buy it this past time, it's a great opportunity to say, oh, the accident product that we offer is awesome, and I've used it with my kids five times, and it's a great value-add to my family because I bought it. I just think it's easy for me as a carrier to talk about benefits with our people because it's what we do. But I don't know if, in general, leaders, HR teams, and leaders in companies really think about the value that could add to people feeling heard and feeling like, wow, they're really thinking about my life outside of work. And I can't illustrate enough or maybe point to those stats in the study that talk about, and they go hand in hand. So if you're not feeling valued, and you're not feeling heard, (laughs) you're probably leaving. So the way to do that post-enrollment, I think, is through good leadership programs, and these studies really arm everyone to really understand that, so I just appreciate the work, Kim. It's fantastic, and I know that Unum certainly loves the work that you do, and we leverage this day in and day out with our teams.- That's great to hear, thank you. (chuckles)- Exactly, and I tell you what, I wanna go enroll people,(laughs) but I am not in HR. But that was so inspiring to hear you both'cause it's so true. And now is the time to put it in the context of what people are dealing with, right, in their bank accounts and that these things are there to actually help. So to communicate, communicate. I love that point, also, don't let this finish at the end of open enrollment. Keep on going into January, New Year's resolutions, get those benefits communicated. They have them. So thank you both so much. Gonna bring you both back again, I'm sure. Thanks so much for joining us.- Thank you.- Thank you.(gentle music)- Unum is a registered trademark and marketing brand of Unum Group and its insuring subsidiaries.