LANSING – The pandemic has had a profound effect on all areas of employment, including benefits. Mental health coverage has emerged as one of the most popular covered benefits in 2022 with 91 percent of employers now offering coverage according to a recent SHRM Employee Benefits Survey.

According to the survey, employers ranked healthcare as the most important type of benefit that an organization can offer its workers followed by retirement and leave benefits, which ranked jointly at number two. Retirement benefits were at 55 percent in 2020/21, back up to 82 percent in 2022.

The pandemic’s impact on the world of work appears to have resulted in lasting changes of the views around specific benefits offerings.

  • Flexible work benefits were at 49 percent in 2019, 83 percent during the pandemic when many workers were required to work remotely, and have now settled at 70 percent in 2022.
  • 65 percent of employers thought that professional career development benefits were important now compared to 37 percent in 2020/2021 and 51 percent prior to the pandemic.
  • Family care benefits were viewed by 70 percent of employers as being important to offer, down from 76 percent during the pandemic when they became increasingly important, but up from 52 percent prior to the pandemic.

“Employer-offered benefits provide organizations with a key opportunity to improve the employee experience and directly make a difference in their employees’ lives,” said SHRM Chief Knowledge Officer Alex Alonso, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP. “The COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting impacts on economic and public health have expedited the evolving nature of organizations, many of which now have access to wider talent pools through the possibility of remote work. Workers now have more options for where and when they will work, and these two factors together create a challenging talent landscape for organizations everywhere. These benefits can play an instrumental role in this competition for talent and, in some cases, may determine success or failure.”

Additional highlights from SHRM’s 2022 Employee Benefits Report include:

Healthcare benefits:

  • 93 percent of organizations indicated that they offer telemedicine or telehealth as a benefit to their workers, up 20 percentage points since 2019.
  • 1 in 5 employers offer mental health days above and beyond regular sick leave.
  • Nearly all organizations (98 percent) offer some type of health coverage, with three-quarters (72%) of organizations saying they offer a fully insured health plan and 26 percent saying they offer a self-insured plan.
  • Medical flexible spending accounts (FSAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs) continued to be the most popular type of health-related spending accounts, with 63 percent and 57 percent of employers offering them, respectively.
  • Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of organizations that offer an HSA said they make employer contributions to these plans, which is the lowest prevalence since 2018, when 64 percent said they offered this benefit

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