It’s Friday afternoon, and you suddenly remember that you weresupposed to make plans for date night. You pull up Yelp to find arestaurant, use Google to locate a movie theater nearby, and maybebrowse Metacritic to read reviews and select a film that you andyour date will enjoy. In just a few minutes, the tickets arepurchased, the reservation is confirmed, and you can feel confidentthat you’ve made good decisions.

Now let’s consider another scenario. You’re at the park whenyour child comes running up to you with a bee sting that isswelling badly and appears to be getting worse. You again pull outyour phone and hit Google to find the nearest hospital or walk-inclinic. Are any of these providers covered by your plan? Are theygood at treating allergic reactions? You have no way to check, soyou go to the nearest one and hope for the best.

On the surface, these two scenarios – planning an evening outand responding to an urgent medical situation – may seem unrelated,but they represent two common consumer experiences. The differencebetween them underscores one of the most important challengesfacing American businesses today: Empowering individuals to makebetter decisions about their health care.

Businesses are spending too much on health care, and they’vebeen struggling for years to find a solution. According to a 2015report by Forrester Consulting, 89 percent of businesses surveyedbelieve that rising health care costs are acrisis. While companies can implement any number of new benefitprograms to encourage employees to become healthier and spend less money, it isultimately up to the employees to decide whether or not to usethem.

The problem isn’t that employees are making the wrong decisionsor deliberately choosing to spend more money; it’s that they aren’treally making educated, informed decisions in the first place.

The first instinct many employers had to try and address thisproblem was to shift a greater share of the costs to employeesthrough higher deductibles. The assumption was that, being asked topay more out of their own pockets, employees would be incentivizedto quickly become informed consumers and make more value-drivenhealth care choices. Today, nearly one quarter of employees in theUnited States are enrolled in high deductible health plans, buteven with more skin in the game, employee engagement hasremained stubbornly low.

The everyday examples above may illustrate part of the reasonwhy this problem has persisted – and also point to the solution.The typical American employer today offers health-related servicesfrom over a dozen different vendors – including health plans,clinics, wellness programs, telemedicine, and more– each with their own separate user interface and benefitsystems. Keeping track of these benefits, how to access them, andhow they relate to each other can be confusing. A recent study fromAflac found that 73 percent of employees didn’t fully understandeverything that was covered by their companies’ major medicalpolicies. As a result, when employees find themselves needing tomake a health care decision, they are frequentlyoverwhelmed.

So what’s the “secret sauce” to solving this problem? From ourwork with some of America’s largest and most innovative employers,we’ve developed four key elements to successfully driving employeeengagement in health care benefits.

Curation. As companies offer more benefits andoptions, employees need to be guided to the ones that will be themost relevant to their needs. In the same way that Netflix offersmovie recommendations based upon your past interests, curationrequires real-time, data-driven insight into an individual’s needsand programs in order to offer up the right information at theright time — and through the best channel.

Personalization. If you’re only providinggeneric information and a passive website for employees to accesstheir health care benefits, the odds are that they simply won’tengage. Most people don’t think about health care until a needarises, and by that time, it’s too late. Instead, the key is to usedata-driven, personalized messages to draw in the user proactivelyand help employees easily identify the best health care decisionfor them.

One-stop-shopping. One of the reasons peoplelike Amazon is that they can order pretty muchanything — from books and movies to paper towel andcoffee makers — all from a single portal. Employees needa single, integrated location where they can go to easilyunderstand and access all of their health benefits and programs,from medical to pharmacy to third party vendors.

Deliver real value to the employee. Ifemployees are being asked to engage and shoulder more of the costof care, it’s critical that employers select programs and a healthbenefits platform that delivers tangible, near-term value to thoseemployees. It can’t just be about overall health or tracking steps.Being able to shop for a medical service or doctor in order findthe highest quality care and save money, as easily as people browsefor airline tickets and hotel rooms, is a great example ofproviding clear value to the employee. So is the ability todirectly connect with other benefits as easily as a singleclick.

Addressing the challenge of low employee engagement is essentialto reducing health care costs, but it goes deeper than that. USAToday studied government records and came to the conclusion thatmore than 20 percent of all invasive surgeries may be unnecessary,meaning that employees may face high risks and long recoveries forno good reason. Similarly, preventive care can be essential toidentifying and avoiding serious health conditions. Substanceabuse, undiagnosed mental-health issues, and chronic diseases canall take a heavy toll on employees and workplaces — andmost importantly, they’re all treatable if employees can get theright care.

The technology exists to solve these problems today. Employersare already deploying solutions that overcome the complexity andconfusion of managing health benefits. This, in turn, leads toincreased employee engagement. Ultimately, this delivers what weall want: Empowered employees making better healthcare decisions,which leads to better outcomes at lower costs for enterprises andtheir employees.