Your Benefits Data Tell a Story. Employees are Listening.

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Nicole: Look at any benefits package and you will see a mix of health coverage, retirement plans, leave policies, flexible work, and plenty more. But taken together, those choices tell a bigger story. What is an employer prioritizing? Where are they willing to invest? And what do they think their workforce needs right now?

Welcome to Honest HR, where we turn real issues facing today's HR departments into honest conversations with actionable insights. I am your host, Nicole Belyna. Let's get honest. Today, we are digging into the 2026 SHRM Employee Benefits Survey data with Addie Weaver, PhD, a researcher on SHRM's Thought Leadership team who led the study this year.

Welcome to Honest HR, Addy.

Addy Weaver: Thank you. I am excited to be here.

Nicole: We are so excited to have you. So when you look across all of this year's benefits data, what is the biggest story you see about what employers are prioritizing right now?

Addy Weaver: When you look at some of the biggest increases from last year to this year, all of those big increases in offerings seem to be preparing for an issue that HR professionals might foresee in the future. They definitely address a very real issue that employees are experiencing now, but they seem to be forward-thinking and proactive.

To give you an example, paid parental leave offerings — the organizations that offer paid maternity leave, paid paternity leave, paid prenatal leave, and unpaid leave beyond legal requirements — all of those offerings experienced big increases since last year. That definitely seems to address a real issue that employees are having now. Everyone wants more paid parental leave, but it also may be preparing organizations to attract talent in the future.

We also see leadership and manager development becoming more commonly offered by organizations. I think we have an issue of not enough individuals who want to be leaders or who have the skills to be leaders. It is kind of addressing that gap, but also strengthening the leadership pipeline so more people are prepared to be leaders within their organization down the line.

We also see that the number of companies who offer AI subscriptions to their employees has actually doubled since last year. Now a third of employers offer a paid subscription to AI, and that is addressing how to prepare employees for the next chapter of work. All of those seem to be forward-thinking, preparing for the future, and proactive as well.

Nicole: Health-related benefits remain the highest priority, with 88% of employers calling them very or extremely important. But some specific offerings are shifting, including a decline in prescription drug coverage bundled with health insurance. What does the broader data tell us about that change?

Addy Weaver: Prescription drug coverage bundled with insurance was actually the largest decrease we saw in the survey this year in terms of the number of organizations that offer it. That dropped by 16 percentage points, which is significant.

There are some other trends in the data that might add a little more color to that. One is that third-party pharmacy management programs have become more common — those offerings increased by five percentage points from last year. We also see an uptick in the number of offerings for health and wellness, and what I would call proactive health benefits. Those are any benefits that help address employee health issues before they become issues at all, or that address them further up the road to make sure they do not become bigger issues.

Some of those might be health risk assessments — more organizations are offering those — along with fitness center membership subsidies and fitness equipment subsidies. Taking those things together, they may be driven by the growing popularity of GLP-1s, which are very expensive for employers.

For the pharmacy management piece, it is very expensive to bundle that with insurance, so we do see a lot of employers outsourcing that to third-party administrators, which helps shed some of the cost. For the wellness benefits, we see those increase because a lot of employers may require that employees participate in some of those wellness programs in addition to, or before, being covered for GLP-1s. That pairing is actually what makes GLP-1s effective — being paired with exercise. So we can point toward GLP-1s as a likely driver.

Nicole: That makes a lot of sense. If employers offer access to the prescription, there is a clear benefit to also balancing it with a program that helps maintain the results.

Addy Weaver: Exactly, and that is going to make the investment more effective.

Nicole: So one of the clearest themes in the data seems to be trade-offs. Employers are investing in some areas while pulling back on others. How should HR decide which benefits to prioritize when the budget gets tighter?

Addy Weaver: I can speak to some general best practices for how you can decide what should be a priority, particularly for employees, and that is surveying employees across the lifecycle. One part of that could be asking a new hire, "Was there any benefit that made the difference in you choosing to work for this organization?" While employees are working for your organization, ask, "What do you use now? What is super important to you in our benefits package? What would you really miss if it were gone?" And when employees leave, ask, "What benefits did you really take advantage of when you were here?" You use that to inform your benefit strategy.

Nicole: Asking people what they want is a great place to start, and then looking at utilization is equally important. You might think everybody is using a certain benefit, and then you look at the data and find they really are not.

Addy Weaver: Exactly. And as I mentioned earlier, employers are trying to proactively solve problems for employees that employees do not even necessarily know they want yet.

Nicole: Yes, and we do see a lot of that forward-looking thinking when you look at the changes from last year to this year.

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Nicole: Parental leave saw some of the biggest increases this year, while several civic leave benefits — such as jury duty, military leave, and voting leave — actually declined. What stands out about that contrast?

Addy Weaver: It is quite contradictory — how could one type of leave increase while another decreases? I think it comes down to what benefits really make a difference when an employee is choosing to work for a company. Civic leave is obviously important, but I do not think employees have the same relationship with it as they do with paid parental leave.

We also see that paid parental leave can be especially significant given who is in our working population. There are an estimated 105 million Americans — roughly three-quarters of the working population — who are caregivers. Not all of that is parental leave; some is elder caregiving. But a lot of it is, and that shows the magnitude of difference that something like paid parental leave can have.

There are also consequences for not offering it. Research suggests that women, in particular, will not participate in the labor force if they do not receive paid parental leave — the figure is roughly 30% fewer women participating. A lot of organizations really recognize that, and it has become table stakes for many employers and many employees.

For civic leave, there may have been action at the federal level that pushed organizations in that direction. A recent executive order rescinded federal workers' right to use administrative leave to vote. Our sample casts a wide net across government and private sector, and sometimes an action made in the government sector is followed by those in the private sector — which may be why we are seeing civic leave offerings decrease across the board.

Nicole: Is it possible that some organizations are rolling civic leave into a broader flexible or open leave policy?

Addy Weaver: Absolutely. That could be included in open leave or categorized differently — as vacation leave or something similar. It could easily be wrapped up in something else.

Nicole: Flexible work is another interesting story. Both flextime and hybrid work became less common, yet 27% of employers now offer some sort of temporary work-from-anywhere arrangement. How do you interpret those trends together?

Addy Weaver: In our sample, hybrid work prevalence decreased by three percentage points, and flextime during core business hours decreased by six since last year. However, when you look at data from the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics, that data actually shows the opposite — hybrid work becoming more common. But those efforts are usually asking workers how they are working, which is a different question than what we ask employers: are you offering hybrid work to your employees? That may account for the discrepancy. To illustrate, in the latter part of 2022, the percentage of workers who worked hybrid at least some of the time was 8%; last month, that crawled up to 11%.

Altogether, I would interpret these inconsistencies to mean that our specific sample shows a decrease in the number of employers offering hybrid work, but that does not necessarily mean hybrid has taken a nosedive.

For limited-time work-from-anywhere arrangements, we actually just started collecting that data this year, so we have no historical baseline for comparison. That is something we will be monitoring in the coming years.

Nicole: Which trend should HR pay more attention to?

Addy Weaver: I would say elder care benefits. The fact that they remain so uncommon is definitely something to consider. Adding elder care support to your benefits package helps the working population reckon with an aging population and the responsibility many employees have in caring for older relatives.

Nicole: You hear it from employees — when we are trying to solve problems for them so they do not have to worry outside of work, elder care comes up pretty frequently.

Addy Weaver: And it is also a financial burden for employees. It affects how they show up at work and their personal finances. They are taking on a lot to help care for their elder relatives.

Nicole: Absolutely. We are also seeing employer-paid AI subscriptions surge while traditional training benefits decline. What does that combination tell us about how employers are thinking about the future of work?

Addy Weaver: As I mentioned earlier, the percentage of employers who offer AI subscriptions doubled since last year — now a third of employers offer that benefit. But training to develop new skills and maintain current skills has decreased by seven percentage points each. That begs the question: if training is becoming less common, how are employees navigating this new era of AI?

There are some other data points that might illuminate that. In our benchmarking data, we saw a de-investment in learning and development overall. Last year, the median learning and development spend per employee was $400; this year it decreased to $300. That may account for some of the decline in training generally.

It is also possible that AI upskilling is happening through informal channels — bite-size asynchronous content, for example — that does not fit into our survey's definition of formal training. That may not have been captured. Regardless, this is a discrepancy worth paying attention to, and employers should seriously consider offering formal training.

Nicole: If you are going to give an employee the subscription, you want to help them maximize it — to really make their jobs easier and better. The hope is that there is some sort of training solution rather than just throwing people in the deep end.

Addy Weaver: Exactly. If you are offering the tool, it is worth making your investment worthwhile.

Nicole: How are the results of the survey structured to help you compare your benefits package to similar organizations?

Addy Weaver: We collected data from 5,400 organizations using the question, "Do you offer these benefits?" All of the benefits we ask about are available in our tool at SHRM.org/benefits. We have a database there that shows you the amount of our sample that offered each of the 230 benefits we track. You can also see results from the past five years if it is helpful to see how things have changed over time.

For comparing your organization to similar ones, we also have the ability to toggle your industry, geographic area — broken down by state and region — and your organization size. That allows you to understand what organizations like yours are doing and what you might consider for your own benefits package.

Nicole: Some great benchmarking capabilities there. So ultimately, a benefits package sends employees a message about what the organization values. Based on this year's data, what message are employers increasingly sending?

Addy Weaver: I have two. First, employers seem to be really prioritizing solving employee health issues before they become bigger issues — or before they become issues at all. The proactive health benefits, the health risk assessments, the fitness equipment subsidies, the wellness benefits — all of those are seeing increases. And the inverse is also true: some of the reactive benefits that address health issues after they arise, such as chiropractic coverage and bariatric coverage for weight loss, actually saw decreases. There is a reinvestment into preventing employee health issues, and I think that sends a clear message that employee health is a priority.

Second, I think a really big message employers are sending is that new parents are welcome in the workforce. The massive increases we saw with paid parental leave across the board make that clear. The only caveat is that we did not see the same increases for elder care benefits. Access to elder care services and referral services both still sit at 11%. Though unintentional, that might send the message that one type of caregiving wins over the other. This is a song we have been singing for a while given our aging population — it would be wise to step up those benefits to help address that.

Nicole: And a lot of the workforce is managing both — parents who have kids and are also taking care of their elder relatives.

Addy Weaver: One hundred %. That is exactly right.

Nicole: That will be an interesting trend to watch in 2027. So Addie, is there a finding that really surprised you, that you liked, or that you just want to share?

Addy Weaver: In our data, we give employers the chance to tell us about a cool benefit they offer that we did not ask about in the survey. I always love looking at those responses. One employer offered an all-expenses-paid cruise to employees who have been there for 25 years. Obviously that is expensive, but I think what you can take from it is that you can get really creative with your benefits package. If you think you are lacking in one area, get creative in another. That is what that shows us.

Nicole: Absolutely. Finding ways to recognize your employee population in a way that makes them feel valued and special — you never know what organizations will come up with.

Addy Weaver: And it ties back to knowing your unique employee population. What they are really prioritizing may be specific to your organization, so it is definitely worth focusing on that.

Nicole: Right. Well, thank you, Addie, for sharing your insights with us today.

Addy Weaver: Absolutely. It was a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.

Nicole: That is going to do it for this week's episode of Honest HR. We will catch you next time.