Today's workforce is always connected, whether at work or throughout their personal lives. Employees have countless apps on their smartphones which often makes it easier for them to do quick personal tasks during work hours or even answer work emails in a flash when they are "off the clock." The bottom line is that mobile anywhere, anytime access makes all aspects of our connected lives much more productive. Here are three reasons why, if you're not already considering a mobile-first benefit strategy, you should be.
1. Anywhere, Anytime Access Isn't a Luxury
Take into consideration how hard your company works to provide employees with a range of competitive benefits that enable financial and personal well-being. However, while you may be paying close attention to the types of benefits you're offering, you may not be thinking about whether these benefits are easily accessible to your employees. For example, when they want to check their 401k balance on a business trip or see how many steps their employer-issued Fitbit has tracked for the day, how easy is it for them to do that?
The truth is that these tasks may be easier than others. After all, people everywhere to connect to their bank through a mobile app and manage their physical health through a mobile-enabled Fitbit, both naturally share data easily. However, are all your other employee benefits as easy to interact with? If not, shouldn't they be?
2. Mobile Apps Surpass Mobile Web Access
In today's digital world, it's important to make sure that all your employee benefits are "mobile-enabled" to also ensure flexibility and freedom. You may still envision your employees checking their health insurance benefits through the company website, but you're forgetting about a significant portion of your workforce who would like the ability and convenience of checking benefits via their mobile devices.
Moreover, when it comes to mobile use, apps account for 89 percent of mobile media time -11 percent is spent on websites. That means it's not enough to select a benefit provider that has a mobile-ready webpage; the best-case scenario is that they have an employee benefits app your team can download as well.
3. Mobile is Key to Increasing Employee Benefit Adoption
Mobile-enabled benefits are vital in helping your employees better engage with and adopt the benefits that your company provides. For example, an employee with unanswered questions about their dental, vision, and medical benefits may be reluctant to make a much-needed doctor's appointment. However, it would benefit him or her to be easily able to access this benefit information via their smartphone - and not having to wait to get back in front of their desktop.
The same holds true, and even goes a step beyond, when it comes to the increasingly popular identity theft protection e benefit. Identity theft protection relies on time-sensitive alerts and notifications to changes in financial information. Mobile-access to an identity theft employee benefit would help keep employees protected 24/7 - something that's becoming increasingly necessary in today's environment.
In a world where 55 percent of Bank of America survey respondents said they sleep with their smartphones on their nightstands to avoid missing a call, text message, or any update during the night, employees can gain real benefit from mobile-accessible employee benefits. It provides them with untethered access to benefits on-demand - from any device they choose, and from anywhere. Employers, in return, get satisfied and productive employees with a better work-life balance.
About the Author
Steven Bearak is the CEO of IdentityForce, a company commercialized from nearly four decades of in-depth experience around personal identity and security services and products. IdentityForce is a leading provider of proactive identity, privacy, and credit protection for individuals, businesses, and government agencies. In May 2017, IdentityForce introduced a mobile app to help members stay protected anywhere, anytime. For more information, visit www.identityforce.com.
