Employers face a tough balancing act—they strive to offer valuable benefits that meet goals for employees and the company, while controlling rising costs. Employers can manage those priorities by building a benefit platform that considers how specific offerings work together, according to a report released today by Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU).

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Christine Marcks, Prudential Retirement (Photo: Business Wire

Christine Marcks, Prudential Retirement (Photo: Business Wire

The new report, “Insights for Optimizing Your Employee Benefit Program,” provides valuable insights about linkages between different benefit offerings and overall outcomes.

“Employers need better ways to foster employee commitment and productivity through a well-designed benefit strategy,” said Andrew Sullivan, president of Prudential Group Insurance. “By using the right combination of retirement and protection benefits, employers can align benefit and business strategies.”

Harnessing data

Data analytics is a powerful tool to diagnose how benefit plan designs are driving employee behaviors that in turn can support or impede business outcomes.

“Employers have more data at their fingertips than ever before, which gives us the ability to zero in on which employees are accessing benefit programs and how those programs perform,” said Christine Marcks, president of Prudential Retirement. “The right plan designs and the right mix of benefits can help drive how employees prepare for retirement, manage health care costs, or protect themselves financially in case of a disability, while helping employers maintain efficiency and productivity for their businesses—all within a given budget.”

Considering the entire platform

Striking the right balance across benefits, such as retirement, disability, critical illness or accident insurance, supports financial wellness and worker productivity. “Understanding the levers for each type of benefit is the best way to develop a platform that supports productive behaviors and outcomes,” Marcks said.

As an example, disability plans with lower benefit amounts may not provide enough financial protection and could force employees to stop 401(k) contributions or take loans from retirement savings to pay for health care and living expenses. Meanwhile, disability plans offering higher benefit amounts could encourage employees to stay out of work longer than they should.

Prudential’s recent analysis of 40,000 disability claims showed that employees who could cover more than 90 percent of their monthly expenses stayed out of work for an average of 23 days, while those who could cover only half their expenses came back to work after about 13 days.

“Details matter,” Sullivan said. “The more employers understand how plan design affects employee behaviors, the better positioned they are to ensure their plans are aligned with objectives that serve employee and business needs.”

About Prudential Group Insurance

Prudential Group Insurance manufactures and distributes a full range of group life, long-term and short-term disability and corporate and trust-owned life insurance in the U.S. to institutional customers primarily for use in connection with employee and membership benefit plans. The business also sells critical illness, accident, accidental death & dismemberment and other ancillary coverages, and provides plan administrative services in connection with its insurance coverages. Group Insurance coverages strive to facilitate protection from risks that are difficult to predict, thus fostering overall financial wellness for employees and their families.

About Prudential Retirement

Prudential Retirement delivers retirement plan solutions for public, private, and nonprofit organizations. Services include defined contribution, defined benefit and non-qualified deferred compensation record keeping, administrative services, investment management, comprehensive employee education and communications, and trustee services, as well as a variety of products and strategies, including institutional investment and income products, pension risk transfer solutions and structured settlement services. With more than 85 years of retirement experience, Prudential Retirement helps meet the needs of 4.1 million participants and annuitants. Prudential Retirement has $374.9 billion in retirement account values as of June 30, 2016. Retirement products and services are provided by Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company (PRIAC), Hartford, Conn., or its affiliates.

Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU), a financial services leader, has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. For more information, please visit http://news.prudential.com.

Group coverage issued by The Prudential Insurance Company of America, 751 Broad Street, Newark, N.J., 07102. Prudential, the Prudential logo, and the Rock symbol are service marks of Prudential Financial, Inc. and its related entities, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide.

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