Articles
September 18, 2026
You negotiated the plan, you found the point solutions, you funded the programs—you built a genuinely impressive total rewards package.
Then most of it went unused—quietly, with nothing to show for it.
Across a workforce, every employee has a set of high-value benefits actions available to them in a given plan year. It could be their annual physical, a screening that’s due, a condition management program they’re eligible for, a second-opinion benefit before surgery, an HSA they’ve never opened or a dozen other things. Each one is part of the benefits package an employer is paying for.
When we established a baseline across clients using Evive®, the personalized benefits engagement engine from bswift®, roughly one in three of those actions was actually completed. The other two-thirds—left on the table, uncompleted—is your benefits activation gap. It might be the most expensive line item that never appears on your budget.
But this isn’t about employees making bad choices. It’s a structural problem. The benefits year was built around a single annual event, and nobody ever built the layer that comes after it. Until now.
What is the benefits activation gap?
The benefits activation gap is the share of eligible, high-value benefits actions that employees do not complete during a defined period. The completed share is the benefits activation rate.
Most benefits programs are measured by what goes into them—plans offered, enrollments completed, point solutions deployed, and the dollars spent. Almost none are measured by what they do—whether any of it actually got used. That’s the missing link, and it’s how HR can prove the value of the spending that went in.
Two measures that work better than the loosely defined idea of benefits engagement:
- Your benefits activation rate: the share of eligible, high-value benefit actions your population completes in a plan year.
- Your benefits activation gap: the inverse—what’s left on the table. For example, say 33% of employees complete their annual physical. Your activation rate is 33%. Your activation gap is 67%.
Benefits activation is about closing that gap. A question worth taking to your current benefits administration vendor: What is our benefits activation rate?
Most platforms measure enrollment well. Very few can give you a clear view of employee benefits utilization during the 11 months afterward—let alone help employees use their benefits more wisely.
Why cost control depends on what employees do next
Employer healthcare costs rise for reasons largely outside employers’ control—provider prices, specialty drug spend, high-cost claimants, and on and on. Kaiser Family Foundation estimates the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $26,993 per employee in 2025, up 6% from the year before. Business Group on Health pegged the increase even higher—a median 9% increase in 2026 before plan-design changes.
Broadly, employers respond two ways, usually both at once:
- Shift cost to employees: They move to HDHPs paired with HSAs and FSAs, which cut employer premium spend by raising employee exposure—the theory being that more skin in the game means smarter shopping.
- Spend up front to save later: They bring in point solutions for conditions and needs like diabetes, musculoskeletal care, behavioral health, fertility, and navigation to reduce claims downstream.
Both strategies can work, but neither can meet its potential just by being offered.
bswift CEO Ted Bloomberg gets at why in his latest Forbes column, Rising Healthcare Costs Are a Decision Problem, Not a Market Problem: Access alone doesn’t get employees to proactively use their benefits, Ted says, and a price signal doesn’t help employees use their benefits, either. That’s why we’re putting support in place to help employees make better-informed healthcare decisions.
Closing the benefits activation gap takes two layers of employee communications
Closing the activation gap requires broad communication that helps employees understand their benefits and personalized guidance that helps each employee identify the next relevant action. Treating either one as sufficient alone would be a mistake.
The first is the traditional benefits communication that builds shared clarity and trust. Employees get a broad understanding of what’s available and where to go. That’s a strategy-and-creative problem—audience research, a coherent narrative, a coordinated calendar, the right channels—and it’s what bswift Engagement Solutions does as an award-winning communications agency, across benefits and the rest of work life.
The second is the individual next step. That’s where Evive personalized engagement comes in. It tracks each employee’s eligibility, what they’ve told us they care about, and their behavior over time, and then turns that into a nudge in the moments that matter, like getting your physical, opening your HSA, or asking about a second opinion before surgery.
That’s the missing layer in our healthcare system that nobody built before now.
And the payoff runs both ways. Employees get told what to do when it actually matters, instead of guessing their way through a benefits guide once a year. Employers get what they’re actually paying for—lower claims, healthier employees, less absenteeism—not a program that gets funded and forgotten.
What benefits activation looks like in Evive results
Evive results show higher completion of selected high-value clinical actions over time, including annual physicals and colorectal cancer screenings. Here’s what benefits activation looks like in the numbers so far.
- Across 13 HEDIS-aligned clinical measures, completion of high-value actions rose from 34% at baseline to 53% by year five
- Nearly 4x more scheduled annual physicals
- Annual physical completion rose from 21% to 53%,
- Colorectal cancer screening increased from 29% to 57%.
- $1M+ in annual client savings through claims reduction, absenteeism, and retention
Excellent benefits administration is necessary, but it needs to be an always-on employee engagement and activation approach alongside it.
Employers will increasingly judge benefits performance by the decisions employees actually make throughout the year, not just by plan design and successful enrollment.
Ask your current benefits administrator for your benefits activation rate. Then talk to us about closing the gap.
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