If you want to know what benefits your employees need and how your company can better support them, just ask. An employee benefits survey can be a good way to gain insights as a company fine tunes its benefits strategy. But, to gather the information you need, it’s important to ask the right questions.
What is an employee benefits satisfaction survey?
An employee benefits survey (or an employee benefits satisfaction survey) is sent to employees to determine how satisfied they are with their benefits and what else they would like from their benefits. It is typically a short questionnaire with both close-ended and open-ended questions.
Why should you conduct an employee benefits survey?
Employee benefits are an integral part of employee compensation. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), benefits account for 29.6 percent of total compensation for non-government workers.
Most workers expect employee benefits, which means a good benefits package could be a critical factor when job seekers are comparing employment offers or when current employees are deciding whether they want to switch jobs.
Because of this, a strong benefits package can be a powerful recruitment and retention tool. However, unlike simple wages and salary, there’s a lot of variation between different benefit options. If employers pour money into benefits that go unused and unappreciated, their benefits package won’t provide them with an edge over competitors in their recruitment and retention strategies.
An employee benefits survey can provide useful insights into how employees feel about various aspects of their benefits, such as:
- Are employees generally happy with their benefits?
- Do employees understand their benefits?
- Which benefits do employees value the most?
When should you conduct a survey about your benefits packages?
Employers may conduct employee benefits surveys on an annual or biannual basis. When a survey should be conducted will vary depending on what the survey’s goals are:
- Conduct the survey ahead of open enrollment if you want to use survey insights to refine the benefits package for the coming year. It’s important to conduct the survey early enough to inform your benefits strategy. Provide employees with the survey around one month before you meet with your employee benefits broker.
- Conduct the survey after open enrollment if you want to gain insights into the enrollment process. If you wait too long, employees may not remember the process well, so it is important to provide the survey soon after open enrollment ends.
Tips for a Successful Benefits Satisfaction Survey
- Ask about a range of benefits. Although health insurance benefits are often the star of an employee benefits package, other benefits may also be important to workers. Include other types of employee benefit categories, such as retirement, wellness and education benefits.
- Keep it short. Make it possible to complete the employee benefits survey in 10 minutes or less.
- Make it anonymous. Employees may be worried about voicing criticisms or divulging health care needs. To gain honest and helpful information, you need to ask questions about any concerns employees may have. Making the survey anonymous and clearly explaining that answers are confidential and will not be used against employees can help elicit more truthful answers from participants.
- Include at least one open-ended question. It is common to include yes/no, agree/disagree or ranking questions. These questions are great because they’re fast to answer and easy to compare and analyze. However, employees may have other insights they want to share. Open-ended questions give them the opportunity to express their opinions about the employee experience and benefit options.
- Make it easy to fill out. An online survey may be easier for employees to complete than a paper survey. Additionally, the results may be easier to analyze if the data is already digitized.
- Follow up as needed. If many of your employees indicate that they are dissatisfied with their benefits but do not provide details to explain why, it will be important to gather more information. This doesn’t necessarily mean conducting another survey, although that is one option. Instead, you could create a committee to determine why employees are unhappy with their benefits and find out what you could do to improve their benefits package.
- Take action. Once you have the survey results, take steps to implement desired changes. Use the survey results to determine what changes would improve your employee benefit offerings and create a plan to implement those changes. Although you may be unable to give employees everything they want due to costs or company policies, getting creative may mean you’re able to adjust your benefits package to better meet their needs. Your employee benefits broker can help you create a strategic plan.
Employee Benefits Survey Sample Questions
It’s important to tailor your employee benefits survey to fit your company culture and the benefits you currently offer. You should also add customized questions to drill down into specific concerns you have about your employee benefits package and how workers view it. Because of this, every benefit survey will look different, but the following sample questions can provide a good starting point.
- How satisfied are you with the health plan options we currently offer?
- Extremely unsatisfied
- Unsatisfied
- Neither satisfied nor unsatisfied
- Satisfied
- Extremely satisfied
- How satisfied are you with the employee benefits we currently offer?
- Extremely unsatisfied
- Unsatisfied
- Neither satisfied nor unsatisfied
- Satisfied
- Extremely satisfied
- The employee benefits enrollment process is easy.
- Strongly disagree
- Disagree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Agree
- Strongly agree
- Have you used your telehealth benefits in the past month?
- Yes
- No
- The health insurance plan adequately covers my health care needs.
- Strongly disagree
- Disagree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Agree
- Strongly agree
- I understand my employee benefits and how to use them.
- Strongly disagree
- Disagree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Agree
- Strongly agree
- Which benefits are most important to you? Rank from 1 (least important) to 6 (most important).
- Health insurance plan
- Retirement plan
- Life insurance
- Disability insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- What would make the employee benefits package better suited to your needs? For example, are there additional benefits you would like to see or changes you would like made to the current benefit offerings?
What should employers do to improve health insurance and other benefits?
An employee benefit survey can be a good way to gain the insights you need to improve your benefits package, but it’s not your only option. Along with a survey, consider implementing the following:
- Employee benefits benchmarking. It’s helpful to know what other employers are offering. Remember, these other employers are competing for the same talent, so if they’re offering better benefits, they may be more likely to win top talent. Benchmarking can also help you keep up with trends in employee benefits.
- Participation rates. If participation in your benefits program is low, try to determine why. For example, is it because the benefits don’t align with the needs of your workers, or because workers don’t understand their benefits?
- Year-round reminders. If employees only hear about employee benefits once a year during open enrollment, they may forget about some of the benefits available to them, including telehealth benefits, employee assistance programs and mental health benefits. Provide reminders and encourage employees to use their benefits throughout the year.
Once you’ve conducted an employee benefits survey, you’ll need to consider which benefit changes would boost employee benefits satisfaction. Higginbotham can help with personalized, year-round employee benefits support. Talk to one of our employee benefits brokers to learn more.
