More than a third of employers are leaving employees to take the initiative when accessing workplace benefits, potentially limiting the value of benefits programmes for both staff and businesses.
Research from group risk industry body GRiD found that 38% of employers rely on employees to initiate benefits take-up themselves.
Among these organisations, 49% said they did not want employees to feel pressured into using benefits, while 31% admitted they preferred lower take-up because it helped manage costs. A further 17% said they lacked the resources required to encourage employees to use benefits continually.
Separate research among UK workers supports the findings. Some 36% said they were left to initiate benefits take-up themselves, while only 29% reported being actively encouraged by their employer. Nearly a third (31%) were unsure whether their organisation encouraged benefit use at all.
Awareness and understanding remain barriers
The research also highlights significant gaps in employees’ knowledge of their benefits packages.
Just 18% of employees whose organisations provide benefits said they were fully aware of everything available to them, which could include pensions, private healthcare, employee assistance programmes, cash plans, life assurance, long-term sick pay and critical illness cover.
Only 18% also said they fully understood all the benefits available to them, while 40% understood only some.
Katharine Moxham, spokesperson for GRiD, said leaving employees responsible for take-up could limit awareness and engagement.
“If employers don’t want their staff to overlook the benefits they offer them, we would encourage them to proactively champion their employee benefits programmes,” she said.
GRiD also cautioned HR teams against assuming lower utilisation necessarily means lower costs. Benefits supporting health and wellbeing can potentially help reduce absence and improve productivity, while some support provided through group risk products is available without additional costs when employees use it.
The industry body argues that allowing health problems to escalate because employees have not accessed available support could ultimately result in longer absences and greater costs.
The findings underline the importance of treating benefits communication as an ongoing part of the employee experience rather than simply an enrolment exercise. With benefits contributing to remuneration, wellbeing and retention, investment in them risks being undermined if employees neither know what is available nor understand how to access it.
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