Nearly half of US employees say they want supplemental health insurance through their employer, but only 15% know their employer offers voluntary supplemental benefits at all. That gap, surfaced in a new Morning Consult survey commissioned by New York Life Group Benefit Solutions, points to a coverage awareness problem that open enrollment season alone cannot fix.
The poll, conducted September 3 to 8, 2026 by Morning Consult on behalf of New York Life, which sells voluntary benefits products, among 1,040 employed adults with employer- or union-sponsored health insurance, arrives as enrollment windows open across the country. Its most striking finding isn’t about engagement frequency. It’s about what employees want and can’t find.
Forty-nine percent of workers identified supplemental health insurance as one of the benefits they’d most like to receive, second only to an employer retirement savings match. Yet just 15% were aware their employer offered voluntary supplemental benefits. Fifty-nine percent said they want more education about their workplace benefits, while 62% want greater flexibility in how they access guidance.
The survey also found that only 15% of employees think about their benefits year-round, and half think about them only during open enrollment. Sixty-five percent say they haven’t explored voluntary benefit options outside that window at all.
The tension is that employees are engaged. Seventy-one percent say they closely evaluate whether voluntary benefits provide good value for money. They’re just doing it once a year, in a compressed window, without the information they need to act on what they actually want.
Gen Z workers show the same scrutiny at higher intensity. Eighty-three percent closely evaluate voluntary benefit value, compared with 61% of Boomers. They are also less anchored to the enrollment calendar. Only 30% of Gen Z employees identify open enrollment as the primary time they think about benefits, compared with 50% of all employees. A fifth say they engage with coverage during a major life change, more than double the 8% rate across all respondents. The data suggests this generation is looking for coverage guidance that connects to life events, rather than just calendar dates.
The awareness gap around supplemental products is consistent with what separate research has found. A study of 1,130 benefits-eligible workers by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and Lincoln Financial, published earlier this month, found that employers offer supplemental health coverage far more often than employees realize. When workers were shown plain-language descriptions of accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity insurance, interest in enrolling rose substantially. When workers were shown plain-language descriptions of what those products cover, interest in enrolling rose substantially.
The retention dimension adds another layer. Half of workers in the New York Life survey said stronger benefit options would make them more likely to stay with their current employer longer. One-third said they’d be more likely to recommend their employer to others.
As Kara Hoogensen, senior vice president of workplace benefits and protection at Principal Financial Group in Des Moines, Iowa, has noted, shrinking HR teams are pushing employers to lean on benefits advisors for education, communication strategy, and plan design well beyond the renewal window.
Meghan Shea, vice president and head of distribution at New York Life Group Benefit Solutions, makes a similar case for rethinking the timing of benefits communication altogether. “Open enrollment remains a critical touchpoint, but it should not be the only one,” she said. “Employers can support employees by helping them understand how coverage fits within their broader financial needs, following the employee’s calendar, not just the benefits calendar.”
