If benefits matter as much as salary,¹ why don’t more employees take advantage of them? More often than not, it’s not the benefits that need to change; it’s the experience of finding, understanding, and using them. And that’s often the missing component for engagement. It’s also one that modern communications, crafted with human empathy, user experience savvy, and AI-driven technology, can help solve.

Today’s best engagement strategies blend human empathy and smart design with data and AI, removing friction so that employees can quickly get answers and take action.

If benefits matter as much as salary, why don’t more employees take advantage of them?
The issue usually isn’t the benefits; it’s the experience of finding, understanding, and using them.

Benefits have never mattered more; yet they’ve never felt more complicated. In today’s labor market, benefits are more than nice‑to‑have; they’re a real part of how people judge their employer. Still, many organizations see the same pattern year after year: solid offerings that are met with uneven engagement.

That disconnect usually isn’t about effort or intent. Most benefits teams are doing a lot right. The challenge is making benefits feel clear, relevant, and genuinely helpful in the moments when people need them. That means shifting away from one‑size‑fits‑all communications toward more human, targeted engagement, using empathy, design, data, and, yes, AI where it improves the experience.

Benefits Are as Important as Pay but Harder to Navigate

Research continues to back up what benefits leaders already know: total compensation—not just salary—plays a big role in attracting and keeping talent. Benefits, flexibility, and growth opportunities all factor into how people evaluate and value their employer. The catch? Valuing benefits in the abstract doesn’t automatically translate into understanding them.²

In real life, employees’ experience with benefits is often fragmented and overwhelming. Information about benefits is communicated too early, too late, or buried in language that requires a decoder ring. When that happens, people disengage—not because they don’t care, but because it’s simply too hard to sort through or it’s not relevant/timely.

This shows up most clearly with benefits tied to real‑life stressors, like financial wellness, mental health, caregiving, and leaves of absence. These aren’t abstract issues. They surface during some of the most emotional moments in people’s lives. Engagement, at those times, isn’t just about awareness; it’s about clearing the path to action—making benefits easier to access and use—and helping people make one good decision at a time.

Meeting People Where They Are

You hear this phrase a lot for a reason: Meeting people where they are really matters. In benefits, that means recognizing that most employees aren’t planning months ahead. They search for help when they need it—when a family member gets sick, a new child arrives, or something unexpected happens.

Caregiving and leave benefits are great examples of benefits designed to support specific real-life needs—when people want to know, what’s available and what do I do next? Effective engagement focuses on:

• Short, scenario‑based guidance instead of long explanations, for example, plan comparisons tailored to what matters most to an individual during open enrollment, like coverage for chiropractic care or the cost of a child’s asthma medication
• Plain language that sounds human, not legal
• Adaptive support grounded in real‑life scenarios, for instance, “My parent, child, or partner is sick, and I need time off. What options do I have?” with guidance tailored to that moment

You don’t have to redesign your benefits to improve engagement, but you do have to rethink the experience of finding, understanding, and using them.

Using AI to Reduce Friction (and Power Engagement)

Used well, AI can remove friction by helping employees get quick answers, find the right resources, and avoid unnecessary handoffs. Used poorly, it can add confusion and erode trust.

Some of AI’s most promising use cases are more practical than flashy, such as scanning web pages and documents to deliver a plain-language answer to an employee’s question.

The real value isn’t the technology; it’s the experience it enables: faster resolution, fewer dead ends, and more time for human support.

Fresh Engagement Techniques Beyond AI

AI is just one tool in a broader engagement toolkit, and it works best when it supports proven fundamentals like education, relevance, and design.

1. Timely Education

Timing matters. Education works best when it shows up alongside real decisions, not months before or long after the moment has passed. For example:

• Financial wellness sessions during peak spending periods (such as year‑end, back‑to‑school season, or open enrollment) tend to draw stronger participation, because employees are already thinking about cash flow, budgeting, and trade‑offs.
• Retirement conversations tied to career milestones, like turning 50, hitting a service anniversary, or approaching a planned retirement window, are far more effective than generic retirement-readiness campaigns sent to everyone at once.
• One‑on‑one support triggered by life events, such as a leave request, a new dependent, or a return‑to‑work moment, can outperform always‑on resources, because it answers the question employees are asking in that moment.

Timely education works because it meets people when they’re already choosing, need support, or deciding what to do next.

AI can help you create scenario-based content variations (by life event or persona) more quickly, so messages can be personalized with less manual intervention.

2. Smarter, Data‑Informed Outreach

Data used well highlights where employees get stuck, so outreach can focus on real friction, not assumptions. AI can quicky reveal patterns, such as repeated searches or common questions, allowing teams to target communications when they’re most likely to matter.

For example:

• Repeated searches about the same benefit can indicate friction. Employees know the benefit exists but can’t tell if it applies to them or what to do next. Organizing content to quickly answer questions, such as who it’s for, when it applies, and how to use it, can remove that friction and help employees move quickly from curiosity to action.
• Low utilization in high-value benefits can mean that employees struggle to see relevance. Rather than relying on broad awareness campaigns, some organizations pair targeted reminders with context that helps employees recognize when a benefit applies to their own situations. For example, mental health resources tend to resonate more when messaging reflects real‑world stressors, such as peak workload periods, seasonal pressures like taxes or back‑to‑school, or broader moments like Global Mental Health Awareness Day, making the benefit feel timely and personally relevant.

3. Human‑Centered Design

When benefits are easier to navigate, engagement follows. Centrally-located information, clear naming, intuitive paths, and fewer steps help people move from confusion to action. Some teams use AI to draft plain‑language versions of complex benefit content, then refine it with human review.

A Practical Call to Action

Improving benefits engagement doesn’t mean chasing trends. It requires focusing on what makes benefits easier to use in real life.

Ask:

1. Where do employees consistently get stuck?
2. Which moments generate the most confusion or stress?
3. Where could AI or other technology reduce friction and enable action?

When benefits feel clear, timely, and human, engagement follows.

Rita Brennan, Vice President, Communications, Segal Benz
[email protected]
LinkedIn

¹WorldatWork. For Many Employees, Benefits Matter as Much as (or More Than) Salary. Workspan Daily, October 27, 2025.
https://worldatwork.org/publications/workspan-daily/for-many-employees-benefits-matter-as-much-as-or-more-than-salary

²Sources include Robert Half’s 2026 Salary Guide, SHRM Employee Benefits Surveys (2024–2025), and MetLife’s 2025 Employee Benefit Trends Study.