UK employers are spending more than ever on staff benefits, yet a run of independent research this year points to the same weak link: almost none of them can show whether that spend is actually working. For employee benefits brokers, that gap is not a background data point. It is the condition that makes a measurement-led advisory conversation the most differentiated one a broker can have at renewal.
Everywhen's own client survey found that just 32% of employers use a benefits platform to analyse how staff take up their benefits, and only 28% use one to communicate what is on offer - the lowest score of any measure in the study. Set alongside other research published this year, those figures look less like one provider's sales pitch and more like an industry-wide pattern.
Aon's research found that 54% of insurers had adjusted their benefits programmes over the past 12 months, with 70% planning further changes, and yet Louisa Blain, Aon's insurance sector lead for human capital, said the money is not necessarily reaching staff. "It's clear the insurance industry is investing meaningfully and competitively in employee benefits, but the message is not always landing," she said.
A separate benchmarking survey of more than 600 UK employers found much the same thing from a different direction. Most employers are still relying on static, infrequent communication - an annual reminder rather than anything ongoing - and fewer than 30% use internal messaging or one-to-one conversations to walk staff through their options. Part of the difficulty, the same survey found, is complexity: 61.7% of employers now manage between three and seven different benefits providers simultaneously, which makes consistent reporting or a unified communications plan hard to sustain even for those who want to.
The gap is becoming harder to ignore because the cost of getting it wrong has gone up. Howden projects global medical inflation reaching 7% on a net-of-CPI basis this year, pushing total health plan cost inflation into double digits, with over 93% of employers expecting medical expenses to climb further. Employer National Insurance contributions have also risen, with the secondary Class 1 rate now at 15% and the earnings threshold lowered, adding a further cost to every employee on the payroll. Against that backdrop, insurers are increasingly steering employers toward prevention-led plan designs - early-intervention programmes and digital health tools - as a way of managing claims rather than just absorbing them.
None of that works if employers cannot show which parts of their benefits spend are actually being used, and which are not.
Everywhen's figures illustrate why the employee-facing and employer-facing sides of the equation look so different. Some 36% of employers said a platform makes it easier for staff to see all their benefits in one place, the same proportion said it makes benefits easier to use, 34% said it allows access at any time, and 30% said it helps staff choose which benefits suit them. Those numbers sit well above the 32% analytics usage figure. The tools employees interact with are valued; the tools that would let employers measure and explain that value are not being used.
Richard Doig, client director at Everywhen, said the analytical capability that most employers are leaving unused is already built into the platforms they have. "Benefit platforms can bring much greater, quantitative insight into the needs and behaviours of employees. This can help businesses to make informed choices and develop strategic plans on which benefits to offer, so they gain the greatest possible returns on the investment," he said. He added that organisations should regularly review whether they are making full use of the functionality available to them, including reporting, employee communications and engagement tools.
The research collectively points to a specific advisory opening. An employer who cannot answer whether their benefits are being used, which providers are delivering value, and whether their communications are reaching the right people is also an employer who cannot evaluate whether their current carrier arrangements or contribution structures are performing. That inability is the condition in which a broker's analytical support - running claims utilisation data, reviewing platform reporting, benchmarking participation rates against sector peers - produces the most concrete and differentiated value.
The infrastructure to close the measurement gap already exists. Insurers are generating utilisation and outcomes data. Benefits platforms have reporting tools built in. What the Everywhen, Aon, and benchmarking survey data together confirm is that the gap between what is available and what is being used is wide, and that the employers most likely to close it are the ones whose brokers make that the renewal conversation rather than waiting for the employer to ask.
