Employee Benefits Communication: Driving Enrollment & Adoption

Key takeaways

• Low benefits engagement is a communication and incentive-design problem, not an awareness gap. Employees default to the status quo when options are unclear or unrewarded.
• High-performing programs communicate year-round, meet employees where they are, and make the best choice the easy choice through defaults and financial incentives.
• Tracking engagement rate separately from enrollment rate provides employers with the insights needed to improve their programs over time.

Most employers pour money into benefits packages their employees barely touch. In an Empower survey, 53% of workers said cost was the main factor in deciding which benefits to elect during open enrollment, and 41% said they would have chosen differently if they had understood their options better. That gap is the core of employee benefits communication.

The problem is rarely that people do not care. It is that programs get explained once a year and structured in ways that promote stagnation. The employers who close the gap between what they offer and what employees understand about that offering are not spending more to do it. Rather, they are structuring benefits so the best choice is also the easiest one. By doing so, the payoff can be several times the engagement of a typical rollout.

Why benefits communication fails and what it costs employers

Most benefits decisions get made with incomplete information and a deadline. Employees skim a portal, keep last year’s elections, and move on. MetLife’s Employee Benefit Trends Study found that 45% of employees do not fully understand their benefits package. When people do not understand what they have, they cannot use it, and every line item an employer funds returns less than it should.

The open enrollment window problem

Treating benefits communication as a once-a-year event is the most common structural mistake. A portal opens for two or three weeks, a wave of emails goes out, and the conversation goes quiet until the next cycle. Passive enrollment makes this worse: when prior elections roll over automatically, employees have little reason to reconsider their choices, and disengagement grows year over year. Adoption depends on prompts that arrive when a benefit is actually relevant, which is rarely during the enrollment window itself.

What low engagement actually costs

When engagement is low, employers are funding benefits that are barely used. Employee assistance programs are a clear example: 61% of workers had access to an EAP in 2024, yet utilization ranged from 7% – 19% depending on employer size. High-value programs like centers of excellence and care navigation follow the same pattern, so the return on each one goes unrealized.

Underused benefits also erode employee satisfaction, as employees cannot value what they never engage with. That is the real expense of low benefits engagement. The biggest drivers of healthcare cost growth come down to which providers members actually use, and disengagement is exactly what leaves those choices unguided. And that gap is what Garner is built to close, steering care to the best-performing doctors already in the network so the biggest cost driver becomes a lever for savings rather than waste.

What high-performing benefits communication programs do differently

Programs that beat the engagement average share a handful of habits, none of which require a bigger communications budget. Instead, they depend on structuring the program so the right action is obvious and worth taking.

Year-round communication, not just open enrollment

The programs that engage employees treat communication as continuous. Instead of a single enrollment push, they run a steady cadence tied to when benefits become useful: a new-parent nudge about relevant coverage, a reminder about a high-value program before a common procedure, a quarterly note on an underused benefit. The message lands more effectively when it can drive an action, not when the calendar says it is enrollment season.

Meeting employees where they are: channel and timing strategy

Employees do not all read the same email. Reaching them means using the channels they already check. For a modern workforce, that can span text and mobile notifications, manager conversations, the benefits platform, and email, each matched to the moment. Empower’s research found that 44% of Gen Z workers did not know where to find benefit information, a gap that closes when the information comes to them instead of hoping they find it themselves in a portal.

Making the right choice the easy choice

Information alone rarely changes behavior, but defaults, framing, and financial incentives usually do. When the lower-cost, higher-quality option is also the default, participation climbs without anyone reading a benefits guide. Financial incentives push this even further. For example, at Garner, first-dollar coverage for high-performing provider visits gives employees a concrete reason to act rather than a brochure asking them to. That’s why Garner has a best-in-class engagement rate of 46%.

Measuring what actually matters

Enrollment rate and engagement rate measure different things, and confusing them hides the real problem. A benefit can show a 90% enrollment rate and near-zero use, which looks like success on a signup report and failure everywhere else. Engagement rate — how many people actually use a benefit after electing it — is where claims spend and outcomes are actually decided. After all, claims only change when members act on a benefit, like seeing a higher-quality doctor instead of defaulting to the nearest one. Enrollment rate, on the other hand, is tied to virtually nothing. Employers that measure engagement separately can see which programs earn their keep and redirect communication toward the ones that do not.

Open enrollment communication: a tactical playbook

Open enrollment is the highest-stakes communication window of the year, and the best programs treat it as three phases rather than one event.

Before open enrollment: building awareness early

Awareness cannot start when the portal opens. The strongest programs seed core messages weeks ahead, so employees arrive already knowing what changed and what to weigh. The decision itself feels heavy: in Empower’s research, 37% of workers said they felt overwhelmed selecting benefits. Early, plain-language explanations can shrink that load before the enrollment clock starts.

During open enrollment: reducing friction at the decision point

The goal during the window is to reduce friction at the moment of decision. Decision-support tools, side-by-side plan comparisons, and a single clear recommendation for common situations help employees act instead of stall. Every extra click or unexplained term is a reason to default to last year’s choice, which leads to disengagement.

After open enrollment: sustaining engagement year-round

Enrollment is the start of engagement, not the end of it. The programs that sustain adoption keep communicating once coverage is live, prompting people to use benefits when they become relevant: a reminder to book a preventive visit, a nudge to use a high-value program at the point of need. Year-round contact is what turns a one-time election into ongoing benefits use.

How Garner drives 4x benefits engagement

Garner’s incentive model drives roughly 4x the engagement of other benefits solutions. That’s primarily due to a combination of three things: provider quality data built on 550+ proprietary clinical metrics, first-dollar financial incentives that save members an average of 80% on out-of-pocket costs per visit to a top-performing doctor, and an app experience that surfaces the right doctor at the moment someone needs care.

The mechanism is simple: when the highest-quality option is also the easiest and least expensive one, people use it. That adoption is what connects to the result employers care about: 12% lower plan costs on average. Garner runs alongside an existing plan and network, so employers capture that engagement without a carrier change. Book a demo today to learn how Garner can drive your benefits utilization and savings.

FAQs

What is an effective benefits communication strategy?

An effective strategy communicates year-round rather than only at open enrollment, meets employees on the channels they already use, and pairs clear information with defaults and incentives that make the best choice the easy one. The test is not whether people enrolled, but whether they understand and use what they signed up for.

How do you improve benefits enrollment rates?

Start awareness weeks before the enrollment window, simplify the decision with side-by-side comparisons and plain-language guidance, and remove friction at the point of choice. Because a large share of employees keep prior elections by default, giving them a clear reason and an easy path to review options is what moves enrollment beyond passive rollover.

What are the best channels for benefits communication?

The best channel is the one a given employee already checks. This usually means a mix rather than a single tool, so email, text, mobile notifications, manager conversations, and the benefits platform itself are all in play. Younger employees in particular struggle to locate benefits information, so meeting people where they are matters more than any one channel.

How does Garner support employee benefits engagement?

Garner combines provider quality data, first-dollar financial incentives, and an app that surfaces top-performing doctors when members need care. That combination is what drives usage well above what typical benefits solutions see, by making the highest-quality, lowest-cost option the easiest to choose.