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The role tech plays in delivering quality employee benefits
Your team deserves a quality employee benefits experience
In this year’s edition of The State of Employee Benefits, we’ve seen no dearth in intent.
Through our analysis of 4500+ employee benefits, and our surveys with 100+ people leaders, we’ve observed that companies want to invest in their employees’ health and well-being.
The data backs it up. Since 2023, companies have only raised the bar – be it global companies, India’s unicorns, established companies, or even founders purchasing group health insurance for the first time.
Intent is great, but it is just the beginning.
While it is the foundation upon which great employee benefits are built, intent alone is not enough.
To truly deliver value to your employees and your organisation, you need to focus on the experience.
When we surveyed 100+ people leaders, we realized that an improved employee experience was on top of their list of priorities.
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In a hairy space like insurance, experience matters above all.
You could offer the best benefits, but if your employees are stuck raising a claim, or don’t know how to book an appointment with a doctor, or aren’t aware that you offer them a gym membership… the intent doesn’t matter.
Even the best benefits go underappreciated, underutilized, and unsung, if the accompanying experience is poor.
The three tenets of a ‘Plum’ experience
At Plum, we believe in being a friendly benefits partner, and not just a service provider.
I wanted to share the three tenets to help companies and employees realise the value of great employee benefits.
Everything needs to work together seamlessly.
Too often, benefits programs are siloed and fragmented, with different vendors, platforms, and processes for each aspect of the employee experience.
This leads to confusion, frustration, and a lack of engagement from your employees.
As a result,
- Awareness and adoption is low – more than 52% of employees aren’t aware of the health benefits available to them.
- Employee health is a low-trust space – more than 50% of employees would trust their family doctor over employer-sponsored primary healthcare.
- Employers cannot measure impact – due to the lack of a single source of truth, 40% of employers have insufficient data to make informed decisions.
This is where our first job starts – Plumbing :)
When we build strong pipes, the network starts working for you. Welcome to the great unification of employee health, where your HRIS platform, your insurer, your EAP vendors – they all speak to each other through a platform that just works.
The HR admin gets a single source of truth for all things employee health and benefits, deeper insights into employee activity and engagement, and better data to measure impact and prioritize benefits.
The employee gets a seamless end-to-end digital experience, a single unified platform for their healthcare needs, and a better means to track their health.
Remember the iPhone moment when Steve Jobs brought the phone, camera, music player, and every other app together? Well, I believe we’re on the cusp of a similar moment for employee health, and tech being the enabler.
Second tenet – It all needs to work together, for everyone
For employees
In today's diverse workforce, a one-size-fits-all approach to benefits simply doesn't cut it.
Employees have different needs, preferences, and life stages. Your employees have close to a 100 apps on their phones; they are used to Zomato & Swiggy for food, Amazon & Flipkart for e-commerce, Groww & Smallcase – for stocks. They expect employee benefits just as smooth.
Your team wants
- flexible benefits and health wallets to personalise
- simple, intuitive onboarding where they can enroll and learn about their benefits
- fully digital claims experience to submit and track their claims within a few minutes
All of it, delivered through an incredibly easy-to-navigate app that’s available across platforms
And your HR team
A great benefits experience isn't just about providing choice and flexibility for employees – it's also about empowering HR teams to manage benefits with ease.
We ran a poll amongst some of our HR community members about the least enjoyable task – people unanimously said Ops :)
So we’ve been working hard towards bringing it all together on one super-effective dashboard
- Integrations with HRIS and insurers,
- addition or deletion of employees and dependents,
- generating proforma invoices, recording payments and managing CD account
- claims tracking and analytics
Some of our customers observed that this saved 9 full working days of effort for them.
The final, perhaps most important tenet – it works for everyone, at all times.
At the heart of this tenet is that health and insurance are multi-faceted and interconnected. Companies should take a holistic approach, offering a range of solutions that span the full spectrum of care.
From
preventive measures like health checkups to
primary care services l ike teleconsult and pharmacy discount cards, to
hospitalisations, where insurance coverage takes care.
The employee healthcare experience should ensure that they have access to the support they need to stay healthy and productive.
On an aside, we’ve been investing heavily in AI-led to help employees get round-the-clock support and guidance.
Last year, we launched PolicyGPT – an easy way for employees to chat with their policies; policyGPT has helped more than 10k employees until now with questions about their coverage
And you’ll soon see our latest effort – ClaimsLens, where we leverage AI to assist employees in filing claims. We auto-fill the tedious claim forms and can identify errors in claim documents in real time, saving days of frustration for employees.
The value of quality benefits and great experiences
Value is observed when your team uses the benefits you’ve paid for.
At Plum, we focus a lot on driving awareness and adoption for our benefits through communication. We’ve seen a remarkable increase in people using facilities like consultations and benefits.
- 50% of our users also had consultations with our doctors throughout the year, and they have a great experience availing them.
- Our claims NPS is at an incredible score of 70 (for the record, the market average is under 50)
- The average Plum user saved a whopping Rs 10000 last year, on benefits like diagnostics, medicines, and curated discounts from our partners
When you look at all this value realised, it puts into perspective you’re in a much better position to optimise your policy next year.
That said, measuring the impact of employee benefits goes beyond numbers and metrics.
It's about the individual stories and experiences of your employees.
What's more meaningful - that 4% of your employees used maternity benefits, or knowing you covered IVF for one person?
Is it more impactful to see 35% got quick GP consults, or hear how one parent got critical paediatric support at 2 am?
At Plum, we come across stories like this all the time. Stories of employees who were able to access life-changing care because of the benefits their employer-provided. Stories that may not show up in a spreadsheet, but that represent the true impact of a great benefits program.
In a world focused on productivity and measurement, it's easy to lose sight of the human element. But these individual experiences are what truly matter.
And we will continue building for these experiences.
