Nearly half of workers say they want supplemental insurance coverage, but only 15% know their employer already offers it, according to a new survey reported by Insurance Business.

That spread — a gap of roughly 32 percentage points between demand and awareness — points to a benefits communication failure rather than a benefits design failure. For HR teams, it raises an immediate question: if the majority of employees who want supplemental coverage don't know it's available, the enrollment numbers that justify the offering are being suppressed by silence, not by lack of interest.

What does the gap mean for people-process decisions?

The data suggests two practical consequences for employers.

• Enrollment underperformance. If demand sits near 50% but awareness sits at 15%, participation rates for supplemental lines — critical illness, accident, hospital indemnity and similar products — are likely far below what employee preference would support.
• Wasted spend on existing programs. Employers that already fund, broker or administer supplemental coverage are absorbing administrative cost for a benefit most employees cannot name. A benefit nobody knows about delivers no retention or satisfaction return.

The finding also touches total-rewards strategy. Supplemental coverage is typically positioned as a low-cost lever for boosting perceived benefits value. If only 15% of workers register that the offering exists, that lever is not being pulled.

Why does awareness lag demand?

The survey points to a communication problem that most benefits teams will recognize: supplemental products are usually communicated once a year, during open enrollment, and often as a secondary item behind medical plan selection.

Employees making a medical plan decision under time pressure tend to skim everything else. Voluntary or supplemental lines — often employee-paid through payroll deduction — get a line in a benefits guide and little else.

The result is the pattern the survey captures: stated demand near half the workforce, recognized availability at one worker in seven.

What should HR teams do with this?

The numbers frame a measurable internal test. Before the next enrollment cycle, benefits leaders can benchmark awareness in their own workforce with a short pulse survey: do employees know supplemental coverage is offered, and do they understand what it covers?

Where awareness is low, the standard levers apply:

• Move supplemental coverage out of the open-enrollment-only window and into year-round touchpoints, such as onboarding and mid-year check-ins.
• Use plain-language examples of what the coverage pays for, rather than plan summaries.
• Segment communication, since the roughly half of workers expressing demand may cluster in specific groups — by age, income band or household situation — that generic emails miss.

The broader signal

For carriers and brokers, the 15% awareness figure is a distribution problem: products are in place, but the channel to employees is broken. For employers, it is cheaper to fix. Closing an awareness gap requires communication redesign, not new procurement.

The finding lands at a moment when employers are under pressure to demonstrate benefits value without raising fixed costs. Employee-paid supplemental coverage is one of the few instruments that expands perceived value at minimal employer expense — but only if the 15% awareness number moves.

How many employers will measure that awareness before the next open enrollment, rather than after it, will determine whether the near-half of workers who want this coverage ever find it in their benefits portal.