How these AI tools are supporting benefit leaders

These AI tools are helping benefit leaders do their jobs faster and more efficiently

August 26, 2025 12:00 PM

Artificial intelligence can be a great ally for benefit leaders looking to better support their workforce — they just need the right tools.

More than 70% of HR and benefit teams are already using or planning to use artificial intelligence in their functions, according to a survey by HR management platform Elevate. But it can be a daunting endeavor to begin the implementation process, which is why it's important for leaders to be thoughtful, intentional and educated when it comes to their AI tool curation.

"We're entering an era where AI fluency is not optional — it's a competitive advantage," says Kian Katanforoosh, adjunct professor of deep learning at Stanford and CEO of skill assessment and upskilling platform Workera. "Organizations that don't embrace this will fall behind, both in business outcomes and talent retention."

Despite its growing presence and demand, 40% of HR leaders are still avoiding generative AI, according to a recent report from AI education platform FlexOS. Thirty-five percent of leaders have even identified adapting to AI and automation as their biggest challenge. But tech tools are quickly proving themselves to be useful, specifically when it comes to getting employees to engage with and make use of their benefits.

For example, a quarter of employees are still confused about the details of their benefit packages, according to a recent survey from financial services company Voya Financial. And although much of the information regarding which benefits they have and how to access them is technically available to employees through different resources, it's often disjointed and hard to find. AI can be the tool that helps close the knowledge gap.

"When a benefits person is supporting hundreds of employees, and everybody wants an answer right away and they've already got so many tasks to undertake — it's overwhelming," says Wayne Wall, CEO of HR communication platform Flimp. "Having a reliable tool that can answer employees' questions [...] really just takes the burden off of them and frees up a lot of their time."

From helping employees navigate student loans, to guiding benefit leaders through their compensation decisions, a few industry experts explain the many advantages of integrating more AI into the workplace.

AI can keep compensation simple for everyone

Determining salaries is one of the most critical pieces to attracting and retaining talent, and technology could keep the process simple for leaders and fair for employees.

Over 70% of U.S. companies use AI in some capacity, including compensation decision making, according to business networking platform Connex Partners. While benefit managers may feel uncomfortable relying on automation for something as complex and sensitive as deciding salaries, it has the potential to drastically improve the process for them, as well as current and prospective employees.

AI is not only equipping benefit leaders with the necessary data analytics to support their compensation decisions, according to Hillenmeyer, it's also enabling them to communicate those decisions fairly and accurately to those they will affect.

"Compensation professionals and HR leaders have been using data to figure out how to pay people fairly and accurately since compensation was invented," says Sara Hillenmeyer, the senior director of data science at Payscale. "AI can allow us to better understand all of the factors and features of payroll and make it easier to make good decisions with that data."

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AI can help benefit leaders with the compensation process

AI can be a reliable resource for employees

Benefit managers are using AI to help with everything from automating tasks, simplifying recruiting processes and streamlining benefits enrollment. Benefit agents from Flimp are further supporting leaders by taking on employees' pressing questions.

Flimp's AI chat bot enables organizations to embed their company's website and benefit guides, including PDFs, internal policies and other company documents. Based on this information, the bot can answer any questions related to benefit offerings, health plans, policies and other important information. The chatbot also comes with a core set of baseline benefit information applicable to most organizations like common terms and definitions.

For example, an employee can ask the chatbot to outline each health plan available to them through their benefits and the AI will list them, as well as include the most important and relevant information such as co-pays, deductibles, the type of plan and the total cost.

"As long as there's a strong top-down AI policy keeping people safe, employers should be open to this kind of innovation," Wall says. "These tools really help employees focus on what matters to them and motivates them to self-educate around their benefits, which is important."

Read more: Sick of answering the same benefits questions from employees? Let AI do the work

AI can help employees pay off student loans

The student loan debt in the United States has reached nearly $1.8 trillion, according to the U.S. Department of Education, with an average debt of $38,375 per borrower. In an effort to support employees on their repayment journey, financial wellness platform Candidly launched Cait, their conversational AI tool, to provide a more personalized financial assistance benefit.

Cait is a completely conversational assistance agent, which means it uses the details employees share to analyze income-driven repayment options, suggest specific public service loan forgiveness programs it deems most achievable, as well as give advice on consolidation opportunities and tax-free employer-sponsored benefits.

"Leaders fundamentally have to make a choice if they want to be proactive and lean into helping their employees through digital experience, or be reactive," Taylor says. "The days of sitting on the sidelines and waiting are over — we need to move from employee perks to protections."

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This AI chatbot is helping employees pay off their student loans

AI can improve workplace wellness and reduce burnout

Sometimes a robust paid-time off policy isn't the best way to support what employees actually need, and a new AI tool is helping employees use their leave however they want, even if it means cashing it out.

In an effort to address the $300 million in lost wages due to unused PTO, fintech platform Sorbet added an AI-powered feature that works alongside organizations' existing time management system. The AI tracks and analyzes employees' PTO data including how often they're taking their allotted time off, salary and tenure expectations to predict how much time an employee will have accrued over the course of their career with their company.

"We know that Americans are suffering from a great deal of financial stress right now," says Veetahl Eilat-Raichel, the co-founder and CEO of Sorbet. "We have the ability to take an otherwise underutilized benefit that's already costing organizations a ton of money and repurpose it into something that will actually provide value to people."

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How this platform uses direct mail to boost benefits engagement