Health benefit programs are central to DEI initiatives
While corporate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts may have started with hiring, culture and career advancement, the DEI lens has widened to include benefits. Mercer’s new Survey on Health and Benefit Strategies for 2024 found the great majority of employers are focused on health equity and ensuring that benefit programs help support larger DEI goals.
Over three-fourths of large employers (those with 500 or more employees) are currently taking some type of action to build a more equitable benefit program. Specifically, about a fourth are collecting information on race, gender identity, or other demographics to facilitate equity analyses. Two-fifths provide advanced search functions that allow members to identify health providers they will feel comfortable with — an important step in addressing health disparities for racial and ethnic groups. Providing multilingual benefit communications is key to ensuring all employees understand and can access benefit offerings.
About two-fifths of large employers say they offer equitable family-building benefits to support all kinds of families. Such benefits might include coverage for fertility treatment without requiring that a woman meets the clinical definition of infertile or helping to cover surrogacy expenses.
Also of note is that 23% of large employers now provide coverage for doulas, midwives, birthing centers or other alternatives. While all women can take advantage of this expanded coverage, these birthing alternatives are seen as a way to improve maternal outcomes for Black women, who have much higher maternal mortality rates than white women.
Healthcare affordability is essential to health equity
For employers concerned with health equity, addressing healthcare affordability is essential. An analysis of results from Mercer’s Health on Demand survey of more than 2,000 US workers shows that some segments of the workforce are significantly less confident that they can afford the healthcare they need.
People in low-income families face the greatest challenge: 34% of those whose household income (HHI) is below the median ($69,994 among survey respondents) are not confident they can afford necessary healthcare, compared to just 7% of those with HHI at the median or above. Not surprisingly, since women earn less than men on average, 29% of women, compared to 10% of men, are not confident they can afford healthcare. Finally, healthcare affordability is a concern for 28% of part-time employees, compared to 17% of full-time employees.
In a prior post, we discussed some of the ways that employers are working to make healthcare more affordable for all employees in a time of inflation and financial stress. Establishing affordability as central to DEI initiatives may provide yet another reason to focus on this critical issue.
The Mercer Survey on Health & Benefit Strategies for 2024 was designed to discover how employers will prepare for rising health care costs while continuing to adapt benefit strategies for 2024 to improve attraction and retention and better meet the needs of the whole workforce. The survey was conducted from February 14 through March 10, 2023. The results in this post are based on 512 organizations with 500 or more employees. In total 721 organizations participated, from all industries and sizes (fewer than 500 employees: 29%; 500-4,999 employees: 45%; 5,000 or more employees: 26%).