Your Guide to a Competitive, Cost-Efficient Employee Benefits Program

How recently, and how substantially, has your business updated its employee benefits offerings? Does your benefits program look much the way it did five years ago? How does it compare with what your competitors are offering? Is your program cost-effective, with measurable return on investment, or is it a bottomless drain on your organization’s profitability? 

Alera Group’s recently released 2025 Employee Benefits Market Outlook is a report designed to help you make informed decisions on designing a state-of-the-industry program that attracts and retains talented workers while guarding against the inefficiencies that drive up benefits spend — especially on healthcare and prescription drugs. 

With sections devoted to the core elements of a sound benefits program — Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance — as well as to current hot topics in benefits and human resources — including GLP-1 medications, women’s health, voluntary benefits and HR technology — the Market Outlook is an essential resource for business managers and human resource professionals. 

No More “Set It and Forget It” 

“Set it and forget it” may have been a sustainable approach to employee benefits once upon a time, but that time has long passed. If your strategy is simply to renew an existing benefits program, with no review or updates to meet evolving employee needs and market trends, you’re conceding the competition for talent to more forward-thinking businesses in your industry and region. 

Here are some of the factors Alera Group’s employee benefits leading experts and thought leaders examined in composing the Market Outlook. 

• Employee demographics: What an employee values most among employee benefits depends largely on age and situation in life. Generation Z adult starting a career, Baby Boomer nearing retirement, or someone in between — what an employer wants in a benefits package can vary greatly, and priorities change along with age and family status. 
• Market competition: Staying competitive requires knowing what other organizations are offering, assessing your own benefits program and adjusting accordingly. Alera Group’s Employee Benefits Market Outlook combines data analytics, insights from experts and secondary research to provide a detailed picture of what the current market looks like. 
• Cost: Where are your — and your employees’ — benefits dollars going, and to what effect? Just as important — what benefits do you provide that go largely unused? And what benefits could you offer at a reasonable expense that would result in both employee satisfaction and positive outcomes? Our report examines both benefits spend and benefits usage, along with the impact on insurance.  
• Employee engagement: Offering and re-offering the same benefits package sends a message that you’re not all that concerned with employee happiness and wellbeing, which is all but certain to affect employee morale and loyalty. 

Meeting You Where You Are 

In this largely social media-driven, short-attention-span world, it’s more important than ever to deliver information in a format the information consumer can access, process and understand without a big investment in time or an MBA in human resources.  

The 2025 Employee Benefits Market Outlook is eminently readable, with concise text supported by straightforward, visually appealing graphics. Moreover, it’s conveniently divided into topic sections, each with a subsection on market trends, impact on insurance and employer strategies. 

In addition, you can view a recording of the webinar we hosted to coincide with the report’s launch, available HERE. 

To obtain the Market Outlook itself, click HERE. It’s your first step toward designing a benefits program that’s appealing to current and prospective employees, and healthy for your business’s bottom line.