Having a solid awareness ofgenerational demographics prepares you to appropriately guideemployers to make the most informed decisions for their uniqueemployee populations. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Generational demographics are shifting quickly, and youremployer clients expect you to know how these changes will impactvoluntary benefit strategies. They want to know which products theyshould offer in order to meet the needs of their increasingly diverse workforce, and they wantto offer their employees personalized enrollment communicationsbased on age, gender or life stage. These desires require a solidawareness of generational demographics so that you canappropriately guide employers to make the most informed decisionsfor their unique employee populations.

Related: Workers across generations focusing on long-termbenefits

Bonnie Brazzell and Nick Rockwell,Eastbridge Consulting Group, Inc.

Take payroll deduction, for example. In our November 2019column, we discussed how, despite the growing number of options forpayment alternatives, employees overwhelmingly prefer payrolldeduction. What if you encounter an employer whose employee basehas a high percentage of Generation X and millennial employees? Youmay wonder if this preference holds true or if you should offeryour clients alternative payment methods, like credit card orACH.

Our latest employee demographic research suggests there issurprisingly little variation in preference across generations. Infact, Gen Xers have the strongest preference for payroll deduction,and while millennials are somewhat more open to credit cardpayments compared to the other segments, only 21 percent prefercredit card payments.

Similarly, in terms of enrollment preferences, you may assumethat younger generations would strongly prefer enrolling on theirown via the internet, as opposed to in person. However, around aquarter of all generations surveyed prefer enrollment with a salesrepresentative.

Furthermore, you may think that different generations finddifferent types of insurance products more important than others.And you'd be right! Our research finds that importance does notvary significantly by generation for dental, vision, long-term careor hospital indemnity/supplemental medical products. However,boomers give slightly higher importance to medical and prescriptiondrug coverage, while Gen Xers and millennials give slightly higherimportance ratings for life, disability/income replacement,accident, AD&D, critical illness and cancer.

Commanding a more data-driven view of employee wants and needsfrom a generational perspective can give you the edge in makinghelpful, informed recommendations to your employer clients.

Read more: 

• Building better benefit experiences for amulti-generational workforce
• 3 broker tips for communicating with amulti-generational workforce
• Infographic: What younger generations expect fromhealth care