Commentary: “New isn’t necessarily better.” This is what Michelle Luevano, benefits coordinator with Berwyn North School District 98, told me when I interviewed her about her organization’s use of benefits technology for EBN’s second annual
Having just been through a new technology system implementation, she expressed frustration that the process hasn’t gone as smoothly as she would have liked. The reason you get new systems, she says, is to “make your life easier.”
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Luevano’s experience highlights just how high benefit decision-makers’ and employees’ expectations of technology have become. But even beyond slick user interfaces and the ability to access benefits information on a mobile device, employees are looking for “software that speaks to them and understands them as users and personalizes their own experience,” says Chris Pinc, the director of product management for consulting firm Towers Watson’s data surveys and technology business. “It almost can understand what they want and what they want to do before they even log in.”
Beyond personalization, Pinc shared three other technology trends he sees affecting the benefits industry:
• A move away from annual enrollment cycles. While acknowledging annual enrollment will likely always be with us in some shape or form, technology can facilitate more year-round engagement with benefits. “Maybe you no longer take the train for your commute and you want to change the amount of money you are putting aside for your commute,” he says. “It is really critical for benefits that [employers] continuously push the envelope [in terms] of the types of benefits that people can adjust on a more frequent basis.”
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• Hunger for data. Employers are “continually saying to us ‘we have all of this amazing data, we want to understand the bigger picture and how we pull it all together,’” he says. “Is there any kind of correlation between, for example, the frequency with which employees perform some tasks and their overall engagement levels?”
• Self-service. While not a new concept, there is broader understanding that “employees have more and more skin in the game and there is value in empowering employees to better understand and shape their work experience,” says Pinc. “When it comes to benefits, for example, we see a lot of interest in our health care exchanges because they really empower the individual employee to shape their own experience in a more proactive way.”
Benefits professionals, what do you think? What technology trends are you seeing in your workplaces? How do you see technology shaping the way benefits are delivered today and in years to come? Share your thoughts in the comments.
