Pets and Debts

Here’s the worst-kept secret in employee benefits: millennials don’t care much about traditional voluntary benefits. Auto, home, supplemental life coverage? No, no, and no thank you. 

Those are things their parents have (and often pay for on their behalf), so why bother? While auto, home, and supplemental life still have an important space in any voluntary benefits strategy, the reality is the workforce is changing—skewing younger and more tech savvy than ever before. As millennials overtake baby boomers among American workers, benefits must shift as well.

What does that shift look like? For starters, it’s moving from desktop monitor to mobile. To borrow a line from Field of Dreams, when it comes to millennial employees, “If you Snapchat it, they will come.” (Never mind that most millennials are too young to know what Field of Dreams is!) Bottom line, the metaphor still works: to engage millennials around benefits, you need to hit them in their pocket—not in their wallets, but on their phones.

Gallup research shows that 51% of millennials (ages 18-29) “couldn’t live without” their smartphone. So a winning benefits strategy—with core or voluntary programs—begins with mobile. Not an app, per se, certainly not just for the sake of saying you have one. But rather, a smartly designed, mobile-enabled way for them to access benefits information, documents and IDs/records. Millennials, and the Gen Z workers that are hot on their heels, grew up largely texting, snapping and swiping. Investing in mobile technology that’s built on user-centric principles will put you big steps ahead in engagement and allow you to reap true dividends going forward.

Second, younger workers want benefits for their pets almost as much as, if not more than, for themselves. Last year, a Harris poll found that American pet owners spend more than $15 billion on veterinary care. Of those, 65% are millennials, 19% of whom carry pet insurance. And at 54%, millennials also are more likely than any other generation to buy their pets birthday presents. If you scan social media, many of them also set up Instagram accounts for their pets. Helping take care of these furry family members is a key way to engage millennials, especially since many in the younger half of the generation are still on their parents’ health insurance plans. They’re willing to spend part of their discretionary income to protect their pets—all you need to do is give them access to a plan to do it. Only 9% of employers nationwide offer pet insurance; it’s an easy way to set your organization apart in the race for millennial talent.

Lastly, they desperately need help reducing college debt. It’s a top concern for more than one fifth of Gen Z employees, the newest entrants into the working world. The national reality is undeniable: young employees are entering the workforce under the crushing burden of student loan debt. The cost of financing their education is blocking out all other financial plans and decisions these employees can and should be making—choosing comprehensive medical care, saving for retirement, or buying cars and homes. Forward-thinking employers, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Fidelity, are offering unique benefit options like an employer match to go toward student loan repayments. While such matching funds are taxable under current law, pending legislation may be considered by Congress in 2017 that would allow such contributions to be non-taxable.

According to a survey from American Student Assistance, 76% of respondents said their choice to take a job could be swayed or decided based on an employer’s willingness to help repay student debt. Combine that with the $1.3 trillion in collective U.S. student debt, and you have the makings of the next frontier in employee benefits—for millennial workers and beyond.

Shanahan is president, CEO and founder of Businessolver. jshanahan@businessolver.com