5 Signals Your Employees Don’t Understand Their Benefits

Even the most thoughtfully designed benefits program will fall short if employees don’t know how to use it. Or worse, if they don’t understand how it applies to their lives. For HR and benefits leaders, the signs of this knowledge gap aren’t always obvious. Left unaddressed, however, employee confusion about benefits can lead to lower engagement, underutilization of resources, and preventable health or financial issues.

Fortunately, your benefits administration platform can be a powerful diagnostic tool. By monitoring behavior, feedback, and usage patterns, you can uncover early indicators of misunderstanding and take action before they impact your workforce.

Here are five signals to watch for, along with how your platform can help you spot and solve them.

1. Employees Don’t Act on Relevant Benefits

What it looks like: You’ve introduced a new program — maybe mental health teletherapy or a student loan repayment match — but enrollment stays flat, even among employees who could clearly benefit.

What it means: Employees may not understand how the benefit works, how it applies to them, or how to enroll.

How to diagnose it: In Empyrean’s platform, enrollment analytics, and demographic segmentation make it easy to compare participation rates against likely need. For example, you can view adoption rates by age, job role, or location to identify segments that should be engaging but aren’t. If enrollment is low among eligible populations, that’s a clear sign that the benefit message isn’t getting through.

Next step: Use targeted communications and AI-powered prompts to deliver simple, personalized explanations of the benefit — in the channels those employees use most.

2. HR Teams Receive Repeat Questions About the Same Benefits

What it looks like: Your HR or benefits team fields the same questions repeatedly during open enrollment or after common life events.

What it means: Employees may be skimming communications without absorbing the details, or your educational materials may be too complex.

How to diagnose it: Empyrean’s call center reporting and AI-generated case summaries can flag recurring topics. When certain benefits or processes consistently generate questions, it’s a signal that the instructions or platform guidance aren’t intuitive.

Next step: Add contextual help directly into your benefits portal, such as tooltips, guided plan comparisons, or short explainer videos triggered when employees navigate to a specific section.

3. Benefits Usage Spikes at the Wrong Time

What it looks like: Preventive care visits cluster near the end of the plan year, or FSA usage surges in December.

What it means: Employees may not realize that the benefit is available year-round, or they may misunderstand its deadlines and eligibility.

How to diagnose it: With Empyrean’s real-time utilization tracking, you can visualize benefits usage trends across the year. If activity spikes just before deadlines, it’s likely that employees are reacting to reminders rather than proactively engaging.

Next step: Deploy year-round nudges. Examples include sending a prompt to schedule preventive care six months before deadlines and reminding employees about ongoing resources in off-peak months.

4. Low Engagement with Self-Service Tools

What it looks like: Employees bypass your benefits portal, opting instead to email or call HR for information they could find on their own.

What it means: Employees may not know where to find resources, may not trust the accuracy of the platform, or may find the system difficult to navigate.

How to diagnose it: Portal analytics in Empyrean don’t just show logins. They surface what employees do once they’re inside. If most visits are brief or limited to one section, it’s worth reviewing how information is organized and whether the design is intuitive. Call data can also reveal when employees choose direct assistance instead of self-service.

Next step: Improve employee benefits navigation by using personalized dashboards, keyword search, and AI-powered virtual assistants that can handle common questions 24/7 and connect employees to a live representative when needed.

5. Employee Feedback Doesn’t Mention Benefits

What it looks like: In surveys, focus groups, or exit interviews, employees rarely mention benefits as a reason to stay, even if you offer a strong package.

What it means: If benefits aren’t top of mind, employees may not fully understand or value them. This can be a cultural signal that benefits communications aren’t integrated into the broader employee experience.

How to diagnose it: Empyrean’s platform can integrate benefits sentiment into pulse surveys and analyze open-text responses for benefits-related keywords. Low mention rates or neutral sentiment suggest employees don’t connect your programs with their day-to-day work life.

Next step: Highlight benefits stories in internal communications. For example, feature employee testimonials on how a benefit supported them during a life event. Personalized, human examples make abstract coverage feel concrete and valuable.

Move From Gaps to Guidance

When employees don’t understand their benefits, the result is worse than lower participation. It’s a missed opportunity to build trust, improve well-being, and maximize your investment in total rewards. The right benefits administration platform doesn’t just deliver benefits; it gives you the visibility to see where understanding breaks down, and it provides the tools to fix those shortcomings.

At Empyrean, we believe every benefits program should be an active, year-round experience that meets employees where they are by offering guidance, simplifying choices, and turning awareness into action. By paying attention to these five signals, you can transform uncertainty into clarity, and silence into engagement.