Benefits are important. Over 50% of employees have left a job due to finding better benefits elsewhere. To stay competitive, your business needs to provide rock-star benefits packages.
But that's only half the battle.
Forty percent of employees fear that their employer doesn't provide enough guidance or information about benefits. Similarly, 42% of employees say they want more information regarding their available benefit options.
Simply providing amazing benefits isn't enough. You have to help employees understand those benefits, navigate the benefits space, and access critical benefits information when and where they need it most. Fortunately, that doesn't have to happen in person. Sixty percent of employees prefer to receive benefits information electronically. To provide this service, your business should invest in benefits administration software.
As with all software, benefits administration software is an investment. It should reduce internal HR burdens and provide spectacular value to your employees that keep them happy, healthy, and engaged. However, if you want to reap all of that value, you need to choose the right benefits administration software.
Here are 5 must-have benefits administration software features.
5 Must-Haves for Benefits Administration Software
1. Mobile-friendliness
Did you know that 75% of employees say that access to HR mobile apps makes them more productive at work?
Sounds great, right?
Here's the problem: less than 25% of employees have access to benefits on their mobile devices. Giving employees benefits administration software that's mobile-friendly is less about ease-of-use and more about ability-to-use. Your employees want to access critical HR needs on their mobile devices.
Remember, benefits administration software exists to facilitate speedier administration while providing more value for your employees. Mobile-friendliness helps ensure that everyone has equal access to their benefits when and where they need them most.
2. Security
A hacker attacks every 39 seconds. Safeguarding your systems against the constant wave of threat actors is critical. Cybersecurity isn't an ad-hoc, value-added component of HR software; it's an absolute necessity. Benefits software holsters a fair chunk of employee private data. If you don't choose a solution with built-in security, you may end up with a cost-heavy, morale-draining breach that saps all the value right out of your HR software investment.
3. Consolidated Software
You need benefits administration software, but you don't need it to be a siloed solution that adds more stress to your tech pile. Make sure that you invest in an HR administration suite that integrates naturally with other critical HR tools like onboarding and enrollment. Your goal is to create one cohesive HR tech ecosystem.
4. Easy-to-Compare Plans and Packages
The benefits landscape is filled with confusing terms, competing packages, and constantly changing terms and conditions. For the majority of employees, trying to navigate the benefits landscape is challenging, frustrating, and downright headache-inducing. Fortunately, it pays to keep employees aware of their benefits. Seventy-seven percent of employees that understand their benefits say they will stay with their company for the foreseeable future.
Your benefits administration software should make choosing plans and understanding the finer details of benefits easy for your employees. Easy-to-compare plans and packages help your employees stay happy, healthy, and fully informed. You want your employees to choose the right benefits. Your HR administration software should ensure that picking those benefits is a simple process.
5. Simplified UI/UX
If you want your employees to fully immerse themselves in self-service benefits administration, your entire journey relies on usability. People like to use things that are easy. Ideally, you want to invest in a solution with a simplified, easy-to-understand user interface (UI).
Beautiful interfaces are nice, but your primary goal is to ensure that employees can easily (and accurately) reach their destinations and find the information they're looking for. This is where most apps fail. The average employee spends 2.5 hours per day simply looking for information. Invest in software that helps them eliminate that information-finding time sap.
Don't Settle for Less
These must-have features aren't optional. You want all of these features if you're going to invest in your benefits administration software. A simplified UI helps your employees easily navigate the solution, easy-to-compare packages help them quickly find the right information, mobile-friendliness ensures that they can access the platform on their terms, integration features keep all of your critical HR needs contained in the same ecosystem, and security is the overarching glue that keeps everything held together. When one of these features is missing, your benefits administration software may do more harm than good.
