Don't Just Renew—Redefine Your Employee Benefits
Renewal season is here for many mid-size companies, and with that comes the common misconception that decision makers like CPOs and CHROs are stuck with renewing their benefits offerings as-is.
This mindset can unfortunately lock a company into inefficient and underperforming benefit strategies that cost both the employee and the company.
The financial pressure is real: Industry analysts project employer-sponsored health care cost trend to be near 8% for 2025 with mid-size groups seeing as high as 25% or more. (Business Group on Health, 2025 Employer HealthCare Strategy Survey), which is the highest anticipated increase in over a decade. Continuing with the status quo is simply too expensive for mid-size companies.
Leaders shouldn’t have to settle. With modern solutions and expertise, like those offered by Sounder Benefits, you can proactively design a benefits offering that finally optimizes value for the employers and your employees.
5 ways to leaders can innovate benefits strategy this renewal cycle
1. Strategic Product Design Expertise
- The Old Way: Choosing from a limited menu of traditional, one-size-fits-all plans that fail to address the specific needs of your people.
- The Sounder Way: Leveraging deep benefit product design expertise to create customized, highly efficient plan strategies that truly serve a diverse and growing workforce.
2. Innovative Funding Strategies
- The Old Way: Passive acceptance of traditional, fully-insured rates, often resulting in unpredictable, year-over-year cost increases.
- The Sounder Way: Exploring and implementing modern funding strategies (including value-driven fully insured strategies, level and self-funding, captive solutions, and data-driven risk management) to give the employer more control and stability over costs. Research shows that employers who self-fund their healthcare plans often experience up to 15% lower overall healthcare spending compared to fully insured plans. (Intercept Health, The Hidden Cost of Fully Insured Plans: Why Self-Funding is Usually Better for Employers.)
3. Modern Employee Engagement and Enrollment
- The Old Way: Confusing PDFs, rushed and tepid presentations, and resulting low employee understanding about their options, leading to misuse and dissatisfaction. Understandably, over 85% of employees report being confused with their benefits. (Benefitssolver Insights Report)
- The Sounder Way: Deploying advanced methodologies (like behavioral science and personalized communication flows) to ensure employees not only enroll, but actively understand and use their benefits correctly and confidently.
4. Leveraging Technology Advancements
- The Old Way: Administrative chaos, underperforming benefit products, and manual processes that drain HR resources.
- The Sounder Way: Utilizing proprietary technology for maximizing value in benefit strategy design, implementation, and integrated care solution adoption.
5. Dedicated Service and Support
- The Old Way: A transactional relationship focused on quarterly meetings and the annual renewal deadline.
- The Sounder Way: Providing continuous, high-touch support from a dedicated team that acts as an extension of your HR department, offering proactive guidance, integrated benefits administration, compliance oversight, and year-round benefit strategy optimization.
Leaders shouldn't passively accept the status quo this renewal season. Instead, they can strategically leverage these five advancements with Sounder Benefits.
Sounder Benefits builds benefits solutions that align core incentives: employers achieve greater ROI for each benefit dollar spent, and employees receive higher-value, understandable benefits.
It’s time to stop renewing as-is and start unlocking the full potential of your offering with Sounder Benefits.
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