Voluntary benefits

Voluntary benefits are more important than ever. Now a mainstream part of a comprehensive benefits package, the value helps deliver direct savings to employees, mitigate financial risk, and provide choice and flexibility for your entire employee population.
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Simple, scalable and strategic voluntary benefits
Mercer Voluntary Benefits is ideally suited to partner and grow with your company as you continue to enhance your investment in your employees. For more than 85 years, we have refined the art of program administration, identified the critical features of success, achieved exceptional program participation and supported clients with superior service. Our market leading specialty expertise makes it easy to design and deliver a successful voluntary program that aligns with your benefits strategy and delivers value to your employees.
You should expect more from your voluntary benefits broker. Our unique solution bundles brokerage and consulting expertise with in-house administration capabilities — maximizing the value to your company and employees. Our existing infrastructure, robust experience, strong insurer relationships and commitment to quality come together to deliver a full-service administration solution above that of a traditional broker. With customized product designs, access to best-in-class insurers and engaging communications, our experience and talent will support you long-term with the tools critical for success.
Why choose Mercer for voluntary benefits?
450

Voluntary benefits dedicated colleagues

$1B

premium managed with 70+ carrier partners

1.5K

clients ranging in size from 100 lives to more than 300,000 lives

21

industries

8.7M

employees

Plan to get more from your voluntary benefits

With continued low unemployment, ongoing workforce generational shift and competition for top talent at an all-time high in many industries, employers are seeking new and innovative ways to ensure their benefits program delivers the enhanced value and choice their workforce requires to meet diverse and changing needs – in short, to ensure the company is viewed as a desirable, long-term employment destination. Voluntary benefits continue to be a valuable component of the talent attraction/retention equation. Employers have taken notice of the advantage of voluntary benefits, with more than 90% of employers now offering at least one in their benefits program, according to Mercer’s National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans. 

However, just offering voluntary benefits isn’t always enough to achieve the desired results. To optimize the value of voluntary benefits within your overall benefits program, consider these three important strategies:

  1. Align solutions to workforce demographics
    With today’s multi-generational workforce, one size definitely does not fit all. Fortunately, voluntary benefits can easily be customized to fit the unique fingerprint of the employee base. By considering demographic attributes such as age, income, gender and state of residence, an employer can deliver the needed choice and flexibility that meets employees where they are and supports them as they move through various phases in their life. 
  2. Enhance benefit communication and decision support
    Employees have distinct preferences in terms of receiving education and support in making the right benefit choices. The challenge for employers is how to deliver the right message, to the right employee, at the right time. By focusing on nuanced differences across the multi-generational workforce, employers can deploy a much more effective blend of communications to reach all employees and help them become more aware of their available benefits. 
  3. Simplify the employee experience
    Employees typically only spend 14 minutes on average each year enrolling in benefits, so streamlining the benefits enrollment experience is critical to helping employees make solid benefit elections. One of the most popular ways to accomplish this is to integrate voluntary benefits on the same platform as core benefits. When this type of simplified enrollment experience is in place, we see a dramatic uptick in uptake, as employees can choose among a complete and robust set of solutions to meet their needs. And the simplified experience shouldn’t stop with enrollment, but continue on to encompass service support, billing, and even claims.
Partnering together to find the right tools and solutions
Voluntary benefits available through Mercer
  • Health Risk Protection
    Softens the financial impact of health-related events
  • Financial Protection
    addresses common financial risks
  • Overall wellbeing
    delivers savings and/or financial assistance
Related solutions
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Learn more about how Mercer can help create your customized voluntary benefit solution for your business.