MetLife Employee Benefit Trends
Redesigning the Employee Experience: Preparing the Workforce for a Transformed World
MetLife's 19th Annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study 2021
With the pandemic’s lasting effects on the workforce, employers should rethink their responsibilities to their employees—and create a holistic work culture that addresses changing priorities in safety, mental health, and more.
This report aims to help employers mobilize and problem-solve. We’ll help make sense of the pandemic’s trends and implications with eyes toward building a more resilient and readied workforce.
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What to Expect from This Report
Exploring multiple datasets and insights that span the last year and a half, this report helps make sense of the pandemic’s trends and implications so that employers can mobilize and problem-solve for a holistically well workforce, now and in the future.
3 Chapters on
Five Trends Changing the Workplace
How Can Employers Promote Resilience?
The Increased Value of Employee Benefits
Five Trends Changing the Workplace
Business leaders who do so will be most prepared to foster resilience among employees, which can help their workforce overcome adversities, boost their well-being, and feel more confident about the future.
As seen in MetLife’s 2021 Employee Benefits Trends Study, here are five important trends to know—and how businesses can take action moving forward.
Employees want a holistic wellbeing protected by employers
Employees want their employers to help protect them from physical, financial, and other risks.
Due to COVID-19, employees are placing increasing value on feeling safe, protected, and prepared across all areas of well-being—and they need employers to restore that sense of security through benefits and other support.
That doesn’t just mean being physically safe from the virus. Employees also want financial and other protections from today’s unknowns, which will require employers to rethink what “protection” means to their workforce, employees, and workers’ families.
More than half of employees worry about their well-being
More than half of employees are worried about their well-being—and that’s driving productivity down.
Holistic well-being is a reflection of mental, financial, social, and physical health—and more than half of workers say they’re worried about at least one of those categories. Often, financial stress tops the list. But because these aspects are interconnected, initiatives that address the full spectrum of employee wellness are most likely to succeed.
Interactive tool: Diving Deeper into the Divides in Well-Being
Not all workers feel equally well or unwell. People of color and younger generations, who may be more likely to work outside of the home, face disproportionate stress.
Use our tool to see how covid-19 has affected the elements of well-being among different types of employees. Filter by industry, company size and employee demographics in the interactive tool below:
To experience the data visualization fully, click here.
Video: Employers need to help employees manage stress
Employees are simultaneously confronting pressures of heavier workloads, kids at home, elder care, and a volatile political environment—all atop the ongoing stress of COVID-19. In turn, burnout and depression are going up.
See why it’s important to manage your employees stress:
Managing Stress
Employers need to help their employees manage stress so they don't burn out.
Employers need to adapt to the flexible workplace
As work gets more flexible, employers will need creative solutions to foster collaboration and manage workloads.
Though half of employees say they’re happier with their current working situation than they were pre-pandemic, the collision between work and home life has added new pressures: About 2 in 5 employees say knowledge-sharing has become more difficult, and roughly half say they’re working outside of their normal work hours more often.
These challenges bring opportunities for employers to promote employee collaboration in whatever format best suits it—virtual or otherwise.
Other opportunities include supporting balanced work schedules that work around employees’ professional and personal needs, and training managers to be more aware of bandwidth concerns.
Benefit approaches must change to meet employee needs
As business leaders rethink their benefits to support employee well-being, they’re becoming more intentional about goal-setting, engagement, feedback, and benefit communications.
Employers hope these positive changes put them on the path toward a more resilient culture—something 80% of them say workplace benefits can play an important role in supporting. Top actions worth considering include improving benefits communication, giving employees more customization power over their benefits, and offering added-value services like EAPs.
Employees need help navigating stress of current events
As they reckon with social justice concerns, employees need their employers to help them navigate the stressors of current events.
Social justice and political turmoil reverberated throughout the workforce in 2020, disproportionally affecting women of color and younger generations. As employees reckon with these tensions and realities, they’ll need the support of employers who understand workers’ needs to process and emotionally manage them.
Diversity and inclusion programs—something nearly 1 in 3 employees consider a “must-have”—can help build an infrastructure that supports workers as they navigate these concerns. Employers should also consider inclusion training, as 30% of employees say their managers just aren’t equipped to have these conversations.
Download the full report to access all insights from MetLife’s 2021 Employee Benefits Trends Study.
Want the full study?
Download now to access all insighs from MetLife's 2021 Employee Benefit Trends Study.
How Can Employers Promote Resilience?
Employee resilience is the steadying force that helps workers confront change, unknowns, and stress in their new work environment. It’s also the strongest driver of several traits tied to business outcomes, like productivity and engagement.
The most resilient employees are
more productive
more engaged
less stressed than the national average
While more than 8 in 10 employers believe that employee resilience is critical for business recovery, most don’t understand that the pandemic actually weakened employee resilience—instead of reinforcing it. Employee feelings of resilience dropped by 4% since July 2020.
So how can employers build back resilience among employees for a more productive and engaged workforce? As seen in MetLife’s 2021 Employee Benefits Trends Study, these three actions can help:
Give employees the flexibility they need
Employees who have flexibility are
more productive
more likely to be resilient
Be honest, attentive, and regularly accessible
Employees are resilient when
They are satisfied with the frequency and clarity of communications from their employer
Build a benefits package that addresses modern stressors.
Employees who say their employer offers a benefits package that meets their needs are 42 percent more likely to be resilient. But benefits need to go beyond the basics: programs that address a wide range of employee needs are a must-have to help employees have the protection they need.
For their part, business leaders are on board: Nearly 7 in 10 employers plan to invest more resources in expanding benefits to meet the changing realities of COVID-19. And yet, some gaps persist, particularly in financial wellness: While most employees rank financial benefits in their top five of most desired, only 37% of employers are investing more in them.
Video: Employers need benefits that support financial wellnesss
More than half of employees are concerned about their financial health, more than any other aspect of well-being.
Watch how financial wellness programs can make all the difference:
Why Financial Wellness?
Financial wellness programs help employees stay on top of all of life's money matters - alleviating stress and improving wellbeing.
Want the full study?
Download now to access all insighs from MetLife's 2021 Employee Benefit Trends Study.
The Increased Value of Employee Benefits
A holistic, employee-first view of benefits recognizes and supports the interconnectedness of benefits to support financial, physical, mental, and social health—while giving employees what they want: more choices. But how do you create such a strategy?
Video: Shift perceptions of benefits
A key to the success of this holistic approach is to shift perceptions of benefits from a product-by-product model to one that treats benefits as a suite of products that work together across employees’ changing life stages and personal needs.
See how benefits can make an impact on your business:
An Evolving Benefits Approach
No one size fits all meets today's diverse challenges. Learn why an employee-first approach to benefits helps build productivity.
Benefit Frameworks Can Improve Understanding
Grouping benefits by their functional role and the kind of support they provide makes it easier for both employees and employers to see how benefits can solve different life changes and meet potential financial challenges. Benefits are critical to employee's safety, protection and well-being. Demand has changed with the pandemic-era workforce.
Interactive tool: Explore what employees consider must-have benefits to focus your benefits strategy
Filter by industry, company size and employee demographics in the interactive tool below:
To experience the data visualization fully, click here.
A Five-Step Communication Plan for Benefits Education
Employees have varying levels of understanding when it comes to benefits—and benefits communications should reflect these differences. But those communications should be ongoing: While open enrollment is still the most critical time to consider and select benefits, there is great value in year-round outreach.
Driving communications through multiple touchpoints and time periods helps promote understanding, engagement, and utilization. The below action plan can be used as a model to guide benefit communications so that employees understand their package and what benefits are right for them and their families.
Mid-Year
Pre-Enrollment
Open Enrollment
Post-Enrollment
Ongoing
See how a people-first approach to benefits and communications can bolster workforce productivity in MetLife’s 2021 Employee Benefits Trends Study.
Employees feel more successful when
Their employer’s benefits communications are easy to understand
Want the full study?
Download now to access all insighs from MetLife's 2021 Employee Benefit Trends Study.