Leveraging tech to transform the benefits enrollment experience

For most American workers, benefits enrollment is often a confusing and complicated experience. Research shows that 63% of workers do not fully understand their benefits options. And on average, most employees spend less than 30 seconds choosing their benefits.

This lack of understanding and quick-to-choose mindset may leave employees either over- or under-protected and can have a significant effect on a family's financial future that can cross over into their professional lives, too. But it does not have to be this way. 

Technology has been rapidly transforming the workplace benefits landscape. Digital tools, data analytics and artificial intelligence are enabling better decision making, improving enrollment experiences, enhancing benefits education, and better connecting HR, benefits administration and payroll systems. At Prudential, we use AI and other emerging technologies to enhance our digital underwriting, claims and payment processing capabilities, which have led to efficiency improvements while processing insurance claims. For example, better connectivity to more powerful technology platforms have helped us issue 83% of group life insurance policies with same-day approvals without the need for a medical exam and have saved our customers on average 50% less time on the phone.

Success starts with data-driven capabilities

At Prudential, our investments in new tools and capabilities that blend advanced technology, data science and human touch, are allowing our clients to make more informed workplace benefit decisions. Analyzing an employer's existing plan and workforce demographics, participation and enrollment habits, helps us glean real-time data on workforce well-being, plan options, and organizational productivity. All of this helps employers identify gaps in their benefits programs and gain insights into how well prepared their employees are to protect against risks that could affect their financial futures, such as income loss due to illness or injury. 

What's more, data analysis helps us design and deliver plans and tools that drive results. For example, employers can evaluate and improve their employee benefit offerings via a personalized score that measures how financially prepared employees will be if they experience life changing events such as premature death, income loss due to illness or injury, and out-of-pocket expenses due to a critical illness, accident, or hospitalization. Using this tool, it's possible to identify the financial gaps and provide insights into coverage solutions based on age, gender and salary that lower the coverage gap.  

Simplifying the benefits experience to deliver greater efficiency, accuracy, and transparency for employers 

PruExchange is a real-time data exchange system that leverages API capabilities and multiple platform partnerships to make the technology work more simply and easily for customers. This in turn helps to streamline the onboarding experience, make plan administration easier, increase awareness and education, and improve employee enrollment. Plan implementation process is now two- to three-weeks shorter because of these tech capabilities, according to historical data from ADP Workforce Now, 2021 Book of Business results.

A recent case study with a home building products manufacturer yielded results that outperformed the client's expectations and saw its workforce get on a more holistic wellness journey through their workplace benefits. An easy, multi-lingual, and multi-channel enrollment process and strategy—powered by integrated benefits platform relationships — drove awareness and education that helped employees confidently make overall benefits decisions. In fact, 50% of the client's employees opted into supplemental health insurance — such as Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity — during that open enrollment season, according to internal Prudential case studies.

Marrying digital tools with in-person education to help employees achieve their goals and maximize their benefits. 

Offering institutions and organizations a suite of tailored, year-round enrollment and engagement solutions — digital, print, social or in-person benefits fairs—drives better results.  

For employers, a combination of digital education and human outreach about benefits raises awareness and drives participation in a suite of new supplemental benefits products. In partnership with a benefits platform and Prudential, clients can enhance their employee website with enrollment-specific content that includes detailed information and cost-benefit analysis for supplemental benefits. As a result, clients can benefit from a more clear and simplified experience that helps exceed enrollment goals. In fact, we have seen growth up to 76% of overall employees signing up for supplemental benefits, according to internal Prudential case studies.

Innovative capabilities and solutions — matched with digital tools and technology — combine to improve customer experience for employees and employers within the workplace benefits landscape. Using the right insights provided through technology and blended with human touch, stakeholders make stronger, more strategic decisions to meet people in moments that matter.