Dive Brief:
- Monday is Leap Day, that quirky extra day in February that occurs every four years. To honor the occasion, Compdata looked at how employer-offered benefits have changed over the last four years. Analyzing data from Benefits USA 2011/2012 and Benefits USA 2015/2016, Compdata offers four notable shifts in benefits since our last leap year.
- For example, employees are more impatient. In 2011-12, employers reported an average wait time of 91.7 days before employees were eligible for vacation. In 2015-16, employers reported a reduction in wait time for vacation eligibility, now an average of 84.4 days.
- On the healthcare front, in 2015-16, 37.5% of employers reported offering a high-deduction health plan, up 13.8 percentage points from 2011-12, making HDHP's the second most-offered medical plan. It is also the medical plan with the largest shift over the past four years.
Dive Insight:
PPOs remain the most-offered medical plan at 83.5% in 2015-16, but the element of the plan with the most notable change from 2011-12 is deductible level. For employee-only coverage, 27% of employers report a deductible level of $1000-plus, an increase of 66.7% from 2011-12. For employee plus family coverage, 33.4% of employers report a deductible level of $2000-plus, an increase of 53.9% from 2011-12.
Finally, more employers today are offering wellness options with some significant increases, including 62.8% more employers of them offering biometric screening in 2015-16 than did in 2011-12.
Amy Kaminski, vice president at Compdata Surveys & Consulting, said most HR professionals are well-versed in looking at data year-to-year. But, she adds, looking at long-term trends can sometimes offer a better pulse on whether or not an organization is ahead of the competition when offering employment packages.
