Providing employee health benefits is one thing. Making sure employees know what they have, understand how it can help them and actually use it is another. New UK research suggests there is a significant gap between the benefits employers provide and employees’ awareness of them. For employers already investing in healthcare and wellbeing, the question may therefore be less about whether they need another benefit and more about whether they are getting enough value from the ones they already have.
That matters for employees too. A healthcare benefit that could help with an everyday cost or provide access to useful support has little practical value if somebody does not realise it is available.
How Many Employees Actually Know What Benefits They Have?
Research published by GRiD in September 2026 highlights the scale of the problem. Its research among UK employers and workers found that only 18% of employees whose company provides benefits said they were fully aware of everything available to them.
Just 18% also said they understood all the employee benefits they were offered.
The research covered benefits including pensions, private healthcare, employee assistance programmes, healthcare cash plans, life assurance, long term sick pay and critical illness cover, so the findings are not specific to healthcare cash plans. But they reveal an important wider issue for employers, which is offering a benefit does not automatically mean employees understand it.
GRiD also found that 38% of businesses leave employees to initiate benefit take up themselves, and only 29% said their employer actively encouraged them to use their benefits.
For an employer paying for a benefits package, those figures raise a fairly straightforward question – if employees do not know what they have, what value is the organisation getting from providing it?
This is where ongoing support can matter. WHA Healthcare provides employers with a dedicated Business Executive who can help employers understand their healthcare cash plan and support them in communicating the benefits available to employees. This can help ensure the plan does not simply become another employee benefit that is introduced and then forgotten.
Why Do Employee Benefits Get Forgotten?
Employee benefits can easily become part of the background of working life. They may be explained when somebody joins an organisation, included in an employee handbook or listed somewhere on an intranet, but that does not necessarily mean employees will remember the details six months or two years later when they actually need them.
The problem becomes greater when benefits are complicated. If somebody has to find an old document, work out what is covered and understand an unfamiliar claims process before they can use something, doing nothing can become the easier option.
The September GRiD research found that 31% of employees were either unsure or did not know whether their employer actively encouraged benefit use. That suggests communication itself can be part of the problem.
Employee benefits are unusual in this respect. Their value often becomes most obvious at the moment somebody needs them. An employee may pay little attention to an optical benefit until they need new glasses, or access to counselling [Link https://whahealthcare.co.uk/counselling-healthcare-benefit/ ] until they are looking for support.
Regular, clear communication can therefore matter just as much as the benefit itself.
Are Employers Getting Enough Value From Their Employee Benefits?
This is not simply an employee engagement issue. It is also a question about employer investment.
The CIPD’s Reward Survey: Focus on Employee Benefits 2026, based on responses from more than 1,000 UK HR and reward decision makers, found that 22% of employers have no defined objectives for the benefits they provide. Among organisations that do have objectives, 15% do not assess their benefits against them.
The CIPD’s 2026 employee benefits research argues that employers should establish clear objectives for their benefits and regularly assess whether those objectives are being achieved.
This changes the conversation from “What benefits do we offer?” to “What are these benefits supposed to achieve?”
For a healthcare benefit, an employer might want to help employees manage everyday healthcare costs, provide access to useful health and wellbeing support, strengthen the overall employee benefits package or demonstrate a practical commitment to employee health.
Whatever the objective, it is difficult to judge whether the investment is working if employees do not understand or engage with what is available.
How Often Should Employers Talk About Health Benefits?
There is no reason employee benefits should only be discussed at annual renewal or when somebody joins the organisation.
A more useful approach is to communicate relevant benefits throughout the year, particularly when there is a natural reason for employees to think about them. An employer might remind people about optical support when discussing display screen work, highlight counselling and wellbeing services during a wider mental health initiative or explain relevant healthcare benefits when employees are reviewing their overall reward package.
Communication does not need to be constant or intrusive. In fact, repeatedly sending generic reminders may simply result in employees ignoring them.
The objective should be to make information easy to find and relevant when people need it. Employees should know where to check their benefits, what they may be entitled to claim and how to use the service without having to start from scratch each time.
That also means using plain language. “Employee healthcare benefit” tells somebody very little. “You may be able to claim towards the cost of your next eye test or glasses” immediately explains why the benefit could matter to them.
What Makes A Healthcare Benefit Useful To Employees?
A useful employee benefit should solve a recognisable problem.
With healthcare, one of those problems is the cost of everyday care. Dental treatment, and other healthcare expenses can arise unexpectedly and affect household budgets. Giving employees a practical way to manage some eligible costs can therefore be easier to understand than a benefit whose value feels remote.
Accessibility matters too. Employees need to know what is available, where to find information and what they need to do if they want to make use of it.
This fits with the wider principles we explored in What Makes a Healthy Workplace in Wales? Providing benefits alone does not create a healthy workplace. Employees also need to understand the support available and feel able to use it when appropriate.
Employee benefits cannot deliver their intended value simply by existing.
For employers investing in healthcare support, making that support visible, understandable and easy to use may be just as important as deciding what to provide in the first place.
Frequently Asked Questions About Employee Health Benefits
What are employee health benefits?
Employee health benefits are services or financial benefits provided by an employer to support employees’ health and wellbeing. They can include healthcare cash plans, private medical insurance, employee assistance programmes, occupational health services and other forms of health and wellbeing support.
Why don’t employees use their workplace benefits?
Employees may not use benefits because they are unaware of them, do not understand what they provide, cannot easily find information or do not think a particular benefit is relevant to them. GRiD’s 2026 research found only 18% of employees with workplace benefits were fully aware of everything available to them.
How can employers increase employee benefit engagement?
Employers can communicate benefits throughout the year, explain them in plain language, make information easy to find and connect individual benefits to situations where employees may find them useful. Employee feedback can also identify areas of confusion or low awareness.
How can employers measure whether employee benefits are working?
Employers can combine employee feedback with appropriate utilisation or engagement data from benefit providers and assess the results against the objectives established for their benefits package. Any use of healthcare-related information should respect employee privacy.
