4 ways to help support employees’ health literacy in 2025
As you plan your 2025 goals for your business, an important one to add to your list is supporting the health literacy of your employees.
Health literacy is your employees’ ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions. It includes everything from understanding preventive care, diagnoses, and treatments, to the ability to read medical bills and navigate the health care system.
As many as nine out of 10 adults in the U.S. struggle with health literacy, and it can make a big impact on your business:
- Limited health literacy can impact health care utilization and cost of care, which drives employer health care costs.
- It can lead to negative health outcomes among employees, which can lead to absences and lost productivity.
- It can also impact employee appreciation of benefits. If your employees don’t understand the health care benefits you provide, they’re unlikely to value them, which can impact retention.
Review these four ways you can help support the health literacy of your employees in 2025.
1. New hire education
Make health literacy part of your benefits onboarding process. For example, you could provide your employees with resources that explain basic health insurance terminology so they’re more likely to understand their benefits and feel empowered to use them.
2. Communication
Communication about health care benefits should be a year-round effort, not just in advance of open enrollment. That’s because the more employees know about and understand their benefits, the more likely they are to properly use and value them. You could send a monthly newsletter or video featuring health tips, benefits information, and resources about the health care system.
3. Guided enrollment
Rather than leaving employees to sign up for benefits on their own via self-service platforms, consider bringing in benefit specialists to provide expert guidance. Through one-on-one meetings, employees can explain their unique circumstances, get answers to their questions, and have confidence they’re making the best decisions.
4. Benefits advocacy
Provide your employees with access to a benefits advocacy service to help them understand how to navigate the health care system. Employees can call on a team of knowledgeable and experienced advocates who can answer benefits questions, provide procedural cost and quality reports, explain employees’ out-of-pocket costs, resolve claims issues and more. With access to a benefits advocacy service, employees can make more informed decisions that help improve health outcomes and lower spending.
Want more? Check out this blog, The importance of health care transparency.
Call on Washington National for health literacy support!
Washington National’s individualized education and enrollment tools, expert assistance, and customizable selection of voluntary benefits are here to help support the health literacy of your team. Learn more about our workplace solutions and get in touch!