Employers have increased costs when they assess the service offers: WTW

Diving brief:

• The increase in benefits of benefits is the main concern influencing employers’ services in 2025, according to a new survey by the consulting company WTW.
• Forty-four percent of the survey respondents said they were facing challenges offering health services due to the cost increase. In addition, 44% said the financial challenges have created obstacles to the supply of well-being programs and 36% said the costs have challenged their leave.
• In light of financial problems, few employers plan to extend the service offers this year, WTW said. Instead, employers focus on “value extraction” of current plans, improving financing or transition to new partners who can offer a better user experience.

Diving insight:

The cost increase weighs on the majority of employers, according to the survey. Ninety percent of the 696 employers questioned said that the cost increase was the main concern influencing their services strategy this year, against 67% in 2023.

Consequently, the majority of employers interviewed seek to rebalance their expenses in the coming years, 63% claiming that they would reaffirm spending over the next three years. It is a huge leap compared to the 8% that brought back the same thing last year.

According to the survey, almost three -quarters of respondents plan to move to new benefits of services in order to save. At the same time, 44% of employers interviewed plan to deal with high cost medical conditions and 37% plan to adopt a network of favorite medical providers.

“After a long period of inflation of high advantages and faced with an economy possibly weakened, employers take a step back and seek to focus on what stimulates the real value for employees and the company,” said Jeff Levin-Scherz, head of health of the population of the population For North America, health and benefits in WTW, said in a press release.

Employers are also trying to increase the use of employee offers that could benefit them over the next three years, especially in areas like mental health, according to the survey. Employers will increasingly use communication and “elbows” to increase behavior and improve employee experience, WTW said.

The concerns about the increase in costs are nothing new. WTW predicted last year that American employers would see health costs increase by 7.7% in 2025, against 6.9% in 2024 and 6.5% in 2023.

At the time, the Council sounded the alarm on the importance of managing the cost increase, noting that almost half of the employers they interviewed said that the expected costs were to exceed employers’ budgets.

Employers have already started to pull levers to reduce costs. Last year, employers began to promote drug reduction cards and direct prescription delivery to consumers, the Council said.