“The world is evolving. Our companies are evolving. How we do work evolves, and different people need different things to help support their journey to feel healthy, safe and secure,” said Kim Nero, EVP and CHRO of GATX Corporation.

During a panel discussion at From Day One’s Chicago conference, industry leaders shared how HR teams are innovating to control costs, meet diverse employee needs, and reassess benefits through new tools and feedback methods.

With five generations working side by side, today’s workforce requires a more tailored approach to employee benefits that reflects a wide range of needs and priorities. Many employers are opting to provide expansive benefits packages that allow employees to activate whatever benefit makes most sense for their current circumstances, be it retirement saving, family planning, or elder care support. But employers should be careful to make sure their offerings are fair and comparable, no matter an employee’s life or work circumstances.

“Our hourly associates have exactly the same benefits as our salaried employees,” said Michele Miller, SVP and CHRO, Ideal Industries, Inc., citing equal health and retirement benefits and PTO. “That's really important around the wellness that you need to be able to have your passion projects, support your family, take care of yourself,” she said. “No one’s family is more or less, and that’s been so powerful.” 

This is also crucial from a DEI standpoint. “It’s important for our employees to know and be able to trust that we have their best interests at heart, and for them to feel like they have secure, safe and healthy lifestyles while they’re with our companies,” Nero said. “And that requires a lot of open dialogue between employees and us. There’s education and awareness both ways.” 

Leaders should remember, says Jon Lowe, chief people officer at DailyPay, that “fair doesn’t mean equal.” “When we think about this narrow description of what benefits look like, we’re really only talking about half of half of the American population,” Lowe said. He advises thinking beyond the traditionalist view of insurance as “medical, disability, and vision” and expanding into mental health, skills training, and beyond to approach each employee holistically. 

Financial education and savings benefits should be part of that approach. “The resilient, adaptable employee is one who has the financial reserves to not be terrified about missing a paycheck. And that’s where you come in,” said moderator Karl Ahlrichs, HR leadership columnist and consultant.

Tracking Programmatic Success 

Of course, the ROI on these programs is important. Leaders should be open and direct with employees about whether the benefits are working and the importance of measuring their success. “If you’re paying for these programs, there’s a conversation you need to have with your employees, which is, ‘We’re all in this together. These costs, whatever they’re going to be, we’re sharing them, and we need to work together to figure out how, overall, we get those costs down.’ And there’s a tradeoff there, which is you make sure that your data is available, and you can tell that story back to your finance team,” said George Spurling, CEO of Budgie Health. 

One problem with ROI measurement is accurately assessing positive outcomes of preventative care. For example, how can one prove that having free access to Ozempic for weight loss, rather than a diabetes diagnosis, prevents an employee from getting expensive-to-treat weight-related illnesses down the line? Miller suggests letting science drive your health benefits strategy. 

It’s important to have ample benefits that accommodate all lifestyles and stages, so not every benefit will be used by every employee. That means standard metrics might incorrectly imply that a program isn’t being used enough if only some, not all, employees activate it. HR should make sure this is communicated effectively to CFOs and decision-makers. “Sometimes people push back on some of our programs, [saying] that we don’t have high utilization, but I say, ‘we have appropriate utilization’ because we’re not trying to fit a one-size-fits-all,” said Sherry Nelson, senior director, benefits and well-being at TransUnion. Her team uses surveys to gauge and demonstrate whether employees are getting what they need in the moment they’re in now. 

Communication as Employee Empowerment

With a diverse range of benefits comes the challenge of communicating all the many bits and pieces to employees effectively and consistently. “You may have really great benefits, but in the middle of the year when you have some sort of devastating back pain, you’re not going to remember that at the beginning of the year, on page 12, there was something about [physical therapy],” Spurling said. “How do you get all of this complexity and get it to the right person at the right time?” 

AI can help, searching the employee handbook and manuals for benefits programs and providing detailed information to employees on demand. “But it’s only as smart as the data it has, and if it doesn’t know what your claims experience is, if it doesn’t know what dependents you have, if it doesn’t know information about you as an individual, then it’s just like you’re having a conversation with a really smart person that knows nothing about you,” Spurling said. So, there still needs to be human oversight and availability. 

TransUnion makes mental health first aid part of its manager training to encourage leaders to get involved directly with employees who need help, and to have the knowledge to direct them to appropriate resources, Nelson says. Post-Covid, leaders and workers are more open and vulnerable with each other, leading to better dialogues about support, “There’s been some liberation to do that without judgment,” Nero said.  

Having so many benefits options to choose from can lead to decision paralysis on the part of both the employer and the employee. Lowe advises looking ahead to workplace and lifestyle trends, such as the rise of part-time “gig” workers and people working well past traditional “retirement age,” and planning accordingly. “Three-and-a-half years is the average tenure of the American worker, and it’s probably not going up,” Lowe said, citing portability as an attractive quality of a benefits package. “As we think about the composition of what our organizations look like, benefits will need to include creating value for that portion of the population.” 

Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

(Photos by Tim Hiatt for From Day One)