Why benefits accessibility is about more than what you offer

Making benefits available to your dispersed workforce doesn’t always mean they are being used, which can mean some of your workers are left out in the cold.

Employers have invested heavily in employee benefits in recent years, but there is a fairly fundamental problem that can get overlooked: a benefit being available to someone doesn't necessarily mean it is accessible to them.

This is particularly true for frontline, deskless and dispersed workforces. If your benefits strategy relies on employees regularly checking company emails, sitting at a laptop or navigating multiple platforms, there is a good chance some of your workforce will be starting at a disadvantage.

Employers need to think about accessibility much earlier in the process. Rather than asking how we can get more people to engage with the benefits we've chosen, we should be asking whether we've designed the experience around the reality of how our people actually work.

Design around the working day

For an office-based employee, accessing workplace benefits can be relatively straightforward. They are likely to have regular access to email, a laptop and internal systems throughout their working day.

Now consider someone working on a production line, driving, providing care, working in a warehouse or moving between multiple sites. Their experience of work, and therefore their opportunities to engage with benefits, can be completely different.

Accessibility needs to account for those differences.

How will employees find out what is available?
When will they have an opportunity to look at it?
Can they access it easily from a personal device?
Do they need a company email address? Is the language clear?
And if they have a question, where do they go?

Technology should simplify the experience

Technology has undoubtedly made it easier to bring benefits together and give employees greater choice and flexibility.But more technology does not automatically mean better access.

Employees are already being asked to navigate a growing number of apps, platforms and logins in their working and personal lives. If accessing workplace benefits means remembering which provider offers what, where to log in and how each individual service works, we've simply moved the complexity online.

The role of technology should be to reduce that friction.

For employers, that means thinking less about the number of digital tools available and more about the experience they create collectively.

Available isn't the same as understood

Access isn't purely a technology issue either.

An employee can have a benefits platform sitting on their phone and still have very little understanding of what support is available to them.

This is where relevance matters. Benefits need to be communicated in a way that helps people understand when and why they might use them, rather than simply presenting employees with a long list of products and expecting them to work it out for themselves.

For frontline and dispersed workforces in particular, that may mean moving beyond the channels employers have traditionally relied upon.

There is still a place for human interaction

Digital tools can make benefits easier to access at scale, but there is still significant value in giving employees the opportunity to speak to someone.

Having someone physically present gives employees an opportunity to ask questions, understand what is relevant to them and discover support they may otherwise have overlooked.

This can be particularly important when benefits involve subjects such as health, finances or insurance. These aren't necessarily things people think about every day, and an app notification won't always create the understanding or confidence needed to act.

The point isn't that face-to-face engagement should replace technology. It's that employers shouldn't assume technology has replaced the need for human interaction.

Look at who isn't engaging

Perhaps the most useful question employers can ask isn't simply how many people are using their benefits, but who isn't?

Overall engagement figures can hide significant differences between workforce groups. Office-based employees may be engaging well while shift workers, remote employees or particular locations are being left behind.

Understanding those gaps gives employers an opportunity to look at the reasons behind them. Is it awareness, access, relevance, timing or technology? Or simply that the current approach doesn't fit naturally into that group's working day?

A strong benefits strategy isn't defined by how much sits within the package. It's defined by whether the people it was designed to support can actually use it.

For employers with diverse workforces, that means designing access around people rather than expecting people to adapt to the benefits system.