Most employees believe that they end up wasting money as they make their benefit choices due to errors, research suggests.
Only about 16 percent of workers are confident that they avoid costly mistakes during the process of enrolling in employee benefit plans, the 2012 Open Enrollment Survey of the Aflac WorkForces Report indicates. About one-quarter of respondents said they might have previously chosen the wrong level of insurance coverage, selecting a non-optimal plan from their available options.
Almost 90 percent of employees make the same benefit choices each year without truly examining their choices and evaluating which is more suitable. In doing so, they may fail to take into account both changes in their own circumstances and alterations in the benefits offered by their employer. More than 60 percent may not even notice that their policy has undergone changes since selecting it the previous year.
Employers were typically more confident in their benefit-related communications with workers than workers' responses seemed to indicate. Organizations may need to re-evaluate not only the means through which they inform employees about their benefit options, but also the methods they use to assess their own success and effectiveness.
