How to create an AI foundation for your benefits strategy

Employers want to use AI-driven analytics to drive up benefits engagement but need the right foundation in place to generate these insights.

One in two employers believe that acting on analytical insights will lead to improved employee performance and engagement^[1]. It’s therefore unsurprising that employers across the globe are now planning to use AI (artificial intelligence) to generate these insights.

More than eight out of ten (85%) HR professionals plan to use AI in relation to their employee benefits over the next year^[2]. The overall goal is to understand their people and tailor employee benefits, communications and experiences to drive up benefits engagement.

However, the AI insights will only be as accurate as the data used. This means with lots of benefits data still in separate systems, having to be manually extracted or requested from suppliers, the race is now on to get the right AI foundation in place.

Create a ‘single source of truth’

If your employee benefits data is inaccurate and doesn’t automatically reflect how many people have recently left the business, or how many people are actually using each benefit, the data insights delivered by AI will be incorrect. Similarly, if you have accurate data, but it has to be manually accessed via disparate spreadsheets, AI won’t be able to interpret it.

As you embark on your AI strategy, critical to success is creating a ‘single source of truth’ by aggregating all the employee benefits data from across various systems into a single location. Only then can you accurately capture what’s happening across your employee benefits so that your source of truth remains constantly updated with any changes.

In practice, this requires choosing an employee benefits platform that will automatically centralise and consolidate all your employee benefits data. This will allow your platform to ‘talk’ to your employee benefits providers systems and payroll, in a safe and secure way, to automatically reflect when someone has increased their pension, taken out a new flexible benefit, added a dependent to a policy or left the business.

Ensure you have the right skills in place

Most HR professionals are not data scientists and have a skillset more suited to interpreting data insights, than figuring out how to generate those insights. Therefore, critical to automating the tasks required to generate data insights on how benefits are delivering on wellbeing, retention and engagement, is finding data specialists with the skills to help.

Although upskilling existing HR professionals, or hiring HR professionals with data expertise, is one option, 85% of employers are now looking to consolidate their benefits technology with a single broker or advisor over the next 1-5 years^[3].

This makes sense because instead of just working with a data expert, you will also be working with a benefits expert who understand the wider people risks you want to address. A partner who can help you not only interpret the data, but also act upon challenges ranging from reducing rising medical costs to ensuring your benefits aren’t driving up pay gaps.

Think about the employee experience

As well as generating the advanced analytics that most employers see as the main opportunity for AI, automating communications with employees is another priority. In addition to using obvious AI tools, such as chatbots, you can also use AI to automate campaigns tailored to different demographics, based on hard data and measurable engagements.

AI can also be leveraged to create emotional touchpoints with employees. For example, by automatically letting employees know about new benefits they might be entitled to after a significant life event, be this an illness or birth of a new child. Or signposting them to preventative wellbeing benefits to reduce the risk of mental health or MSK issues.

In this sense, creating the right foundation for your AI strategy is as much about thinking about the experience you want to create for employees, as it is about generating the data insights needed to keep the business moving forward. All of which will require experienced people professionals to help set the tone and focus for the business.

¹ BenTech 2024 Pulse Survey eBook

² BenTech 2024 Pulse Survey eBook

³ BenTech 2024 Pulse Survey eBook

Article

How to create an AI foundation for your benefits strategy

Create a ‘single source of truth’

Ensure you have the right skills in place

Think about the employee experience

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How to create an AI foundation for your benefits strategy

Create a ‘single source of truth’

Ensure you have the right skills in place

Think about the employee experience

Speak with a Mercer Marsh Benefits representative

Related insights

The GCC Growth Story India

Health on Demand 2025

Health and Wellness newsletter

Benefits transformation