Through customized queries, the tool now allows for comparing and contrasting benefits offerings, objectives, strategies, and preferences along more than 80 dimensions such as industry, company size, region, and many employee demographics, according to MetLife. Users can compare and contrast the data along multiple variables, creating more than 600 possible charts.
Another new feature of MetLife’s Benefits Benchmarking Tool is the ability for employers and brokers to answer a few questions to determine their—or their client’s—benefits profile. Determining into which of four benefits profiles an employer falls can not only help in defining the current approach to benefits, but also help in determining future benefits strategies, MetLife said.
Through examining market research data about employer attitudes about benefits business objectives and strategies, Ronald Leopold, vice president, MetLife U.S. Business, found four distinct benefits profiles (see “MetLife Book Offers Strategies for Maximizing Benefits Investment”), which he labeled: Traditional (preserving commitments), Standard (providing the basics), Progressive (innovating for competitive advantage), and Flexible (balancing employee choice and cost).
The MetLife Benefits Benchmarking Tool uses as its underlying data the MetLife Study of Employee Benefits Trends and the MetLife 2008 Open Enrollment Study (see “Study Finds Employer-Worker Disconnect about Advice” and “Gen Y Wants Financial Advice in the Workplace”).
The free tool is available at www.whymetlife.com/benefitsbenchmark.