Employee benefits websites have become very popular with HR departments across almost all industries in recent years. As more employee benefits systems move to the cloud or online, flexibility in benefits administration is key.
Part of the challenge of any HR director or manager is to find the right employee benefits plan for everyone. This is challenging because not all health plans are ideal for all employees all the time. According to the recent Employee Benefit Trends Report by Empyrean, 83% of employers surveyed have changed their benefits strategy within the last three years. This shows that employers’ flexibility is an important need from an HR standpoint.
Things Change, and Employee Benefits Websites Need to Change, Too
Without getting too existential, we all know that change is inevitable, in the universe and in HR. Employees might choose a health plan and have their circumstances change. They need information on the complicated aspects of their benefits packages and how they shift from year to year. A key element in maintaining flexibility is maintaining control over the healthcare system itself. These days, every benefits vendor’s system allows some degree of flexibility, but depending on the vendor and the platform it provides, shifting employee benefits websites to match changing business goals and employee needs can be easy or extremely difficult.
Flexibility Is Part of What Makes Employee Benefits Websites Great
One of the many factors that make employee benefits websites useful and favored by employees is flexibility. Sometimes the key to keeping up with shifting company goals and circumstances is investing in new frameworks that leave the dated programming of legacy systems behind. Legacy systems are often built on old, creaky (not literally) programming that takes extensive effort to maintain and repair. When changes need to made, it can take IT teams far too long to respond to industrial or company shifts. Accessibility is a key ingredient of any employee benefits system. In order for employees to get the information they need to make the right decision, they of course need access and an easy way to implement their decisions. Changing their decisions and finding new options along the way is also crucial. That’s why flexibility in benefits plans, especially healthcare, is a key ingredient to employee satisfaction and enrollment in benefits plans.
Benefits = High Engagement
If you think of your benefits package for your employees is a large part of your overall company culture, shifting to help employees as their needs change is a key ingredient. Working with vendors and staying up-to-date with upgrades and software tweaks has to be folded into the HR strategy for providing employees with the best possible benefits packages. Mergers, acquisitions, market shifts, and company strategy change can be difficult to manage from an HR standpoint, but if your employee benefits system comes ready to handle those inevitable changes, you’ll be prepared when you need to be ready for your employees.
