Three of the fivemost-favored picked perks — paid family leave, flexible or remotework options and sabbatical leave — are benefits related toschedule flexibility and absence management.(Photo:Thinkstock)

For typical U.S. workers, the most popular non-insurance,non-retirement employee benefit may be just about anything that canadd more hours to the day, or more days to the year.

Unum Group has published data supporting that conclusion in asummary of results from a new survey of 1,227 working adults in theUnited States.

The Chattanooga, Tennessee-based company gave surveyparticipants a list of 15 perks that get a lot of media attention and asked the surveyparticipants to choose their five favorite perks.

Related: 8 ways to make your benefits stand out from thepack

Three of the five most frequently picked perks — paid familyleave, flexible or remote work options and sabbatical leave — arebenefits related to schedule flexibility and absencemanagement.

Paid family leave came first. It was picked by 58 percentof the participants. About 55 percent of the participantschose flexible and remote worked options as a benefit, and38 percent chose access to sabbatical leave.

The top-ranked perk that was not directly related to time wasprofessional development benefits: 39 percent of theparticipants chose that benefit.

Student loan repayment benefits ranked sixth. Only35 percent of the survey participants chose that as abenefit.

Here are the selection percentages for some of the otherbenefits included:

On-site healthy snacks: 28 percent

Financial planning resources:27 percent

Pet insurance: 15 percent

Health coaching: 14 percent

Unum reports that, even when its analysts broke out the resultsby age group, and looked only at results for millennials, paidfamily leave outranked student loan repayment benefits.

About 64% of the millennials in the sample chose paid familyleave benefits; 55 percent chose student loan repaymentbenefits.

Why these numbers could matter to agents

Unum is best known as an issuer of group disability plans.

Low interest rates have hurt insurers' ability to earn goodrates on their bonds and offer long-term disability insurance ataffordable prices.

Unum has been trying to increase sales of products and servicesthat are related to disability insurance but less sensitive to theeffects of low interest rates, such as time-tracking andleave-management services. In March, Unum acquired LeaveLogic, acompany that offers cloud-based leave management administrationservices.

In some cases, when states adopt paid family leave mandates,companies like Unum may also be able to sell commercial insuranceplans that help employers cover the costs of offering paidleave.

Agents in the group market may find that offering leavemanagement services can be a way to increase cross-selling.

Agents in the individual market may find that clients facinghealth problems or difficult family caregiving responsibilitieshave leave benefits they don't know about.