How A Benefits Analytics Tool Can Help You Measure Employee Financial Wellness

Employee health isn’t just measured in medical claims or biometrics anymore. Increasingly, self-insured employers are looking beyond traditional data feeds to see a fuller picture of member well-being. Earlier this month at Benefits Spark, this trend was raised during a panel discussion with experts from Marsh & McLennan Agency, Willis Towers Watson, and UC SHIP. The group wasn’t surprised to learn that over 70% of Artemis Health clients are integrating data feeds beyond medical, Rx, and eligibility. 56% of Artemis clients integrate two or more non-traditional data feeds. 

One growing trend among innovative employers is to measure the financial well-being of their employees. Employers want to encourage appropriate retirement savings and ensure members are prepared for the future. Many of them are measuring participation and engagement with retirement programs, and data analytics solutions allow them to gain insights into member financial health. 

Artemis Health integrates 401k data, disability data, and many other types of feeds to help employers and their advisors measure what’s working (and what isn’t) for members. Here’s an example of a custom dashboard (we call them “Stories”) from the Artemis Platform that focuses on financial well-being. 

First, we calculate some basic info on the employees and their participation in the 401k program. This is all sample data, but you can see these employees are increasingly participating in the 401k plan, up 9.9% from the previous analysis period. 

Next, we look more specifically at members by age bins. 

You can see that each age group has approximately 20% participation, with eligible members 40 and older trending slightly up. Additionally, the data shows that there are a lot of non-contributing members out there, which is an opportunity for growth and education.

Next, we calculated the percentage of male and female members participating in the 401k plan, and you can see that male members are more likely to contribute to their 401ks than women. While there are many reasons this might be the case, it also provides an opportunity for the benefits team to address financial wellness in a targeted way. 

We also wanted to see if 401k contributing members were also more likely to engage with wellness programs in general, not just financial wellness activities. You can see for nearly every age group that it is indeed the case. Contributors tend to be more likely to engage with wellness programs. This is true overall and across most all age groups, with the exception of the 60-69 group. Younger employees appear to engage at higher levels with their wellness benefits. 

But engagement doesn’t necessarily equal better health/wellness outcomes. So what can we find out about these members’ health? Risk scores are a good overall measure of well-being, so we decided to look more closely at how the risk scores of members contributing to 401ks compared to others. 

What we found is pretty astounding. You can see that for all age groups of 401k contributors, they are experiencing lower risk scores than those not engaged in wellness programs. This suggests that healthier employees are more proactively involved in their benefits programs across the wellness spectrum, from health to financial well-being. 

As more and more employers look to improve financial wellness and engage employees in saving for retirement, rainy days, and financial emergencies, benefits data can be a helpful tool. It can direct the efforts of benefits teams to the members who need the most help, whether it’s younger employees who aren’t yet thinking about retirement, women in the workforce who aren’t saving at the same rate as men, or members engaged with other wellness initiatives who aren’t yet participating in a 401k plan. 

Are you ready to take action with your benefits data? Watch our 2-minute demo to get started with Artemis Health.