Expert view: From fragmented to future-ready employer-funded health benefits
For reward professionals, the challenge of providing employer-funded health benefits is changing. While offering a competitive package will always be important, employers also need to ensure that access to care is fair, affordable and economically sustainable for businesses.
Economic pressures, workforce expectations, evolving health requirements and difficulties accessing care at the point of need are exposing gaps in current provision. At the same time, benefits budgets are under greater scrutiny. The result is growing pressure to do more with the same, or even less.
The health divide: Access and affordability of employer-funded health benefits (2025) report, in partnership with Mercer Marsh Benefits, explores how forward-thinking organisations are responding. The most urgent priority is often clarity: understanding what is already in place.
Many employers still operate with fragmented provision spread across multiple providers, departments or business units. A full inventory is the first step toward identifying duplication, inefficiencies and missed opportunities.
The future of health benefits isn’t about offering the same to everyone but ensuring that all employees, regardless of role or location, can easily access timely, effective support. This might mean embedding services into existing platforms, offering virtual care, or leveraging underused features in current insurance or occupational health arrangements.
To achieve this, employers need to start by understanding the different contexts in which their people work. A frontline worker in a distribution centre has different access needs than a remote software developer or a hybrid head-office employee. Mapping these employee experiences can highlight where health and wellbeing support is missing or inaccessible and where existing resources can be better used.
Employees are often juggling demanding roles and personal responsibilities, so benefits need to be easy to find, simple to use and relevant to individual needs. That means shifting from broad awareness campaigns to more targeted, personalised messaging.
What unites organisations leading in this space is a mindset shift – from viewing health benefits as a static offering to managing them as a strategic system that can be audited, streamlined and shaped to deliver better outcomes for people and businesses in an affordable and sustainable way.
Reward leaders have a pivotal role to play in reshaping how health benefits are delivered and experienced. This isn’t a challenge to defer to next year’s renewal cycle – the pressures around access, equity and cost are already here. The opportunity to lead is now.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, Mercer
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