Twenty-one percent of HR executives identify insufficient open-enrollment guidance as the main barrier to benefits utilization, and 26% point to a complete lack of year-round education as the biggest obstacle — figures that WEX Chief Operating Officer Robert Deshaies is using to push employers toward a different operating model.

The numbers, which Deshaies highlighted in an interview with HR Daily Advisor, frame a concrete question for HR leaders: does your benefits strategy treat enrollment as an annual administrative event, or as a continuous engagement cycle? That choice has direct implications for participation in high-value programs such as student loan repayment, lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs), financial wellness support, and tax-advantaged vehicles like HSAs and HRAs.

"Benefits utilization is a continuous, 365-day strategic priority, not a once-a-year administrative task," Deshaies said. When communications collapse into a brief enrollment window, he added, employees seldom encounter the full range of programs available to them.

What does the data say employees actually want?

Seventy-four percent of health plan enrollees rate prescription drug coverage as "very important" when evaluating an employer, according to the 2025 Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey from the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI). Deshaies flagged that demand is being amplified by therapies like GLP-1 medications, with more than two-thirds of privately insured adults now expecting metabolic health coverage as a standard plan offering.

Affordability remains the counter-pressure. Forty percent of enrollees are hit with rising healthcare costs, Deshaies said, forcing "painful compromises" such as cutting daily necessities or draining retirement savings. That financial strain is reshaping what younger workers expect: LSAs, tuition or student loan assistance, housing support, and financial wellness tools now carry weight alongside traditional medical coverage in retention decisions.

What does a 365-day benefits communication model look like?

Deshaies argued for distributing outreach across the calendar rather than concentrating it in a narrow enrollment sprint.

"Distributing these touchpoints across the entire calendar year meets people where they are, when they have the bandwidth to absorb the information," Deshaies said. "It relieves the pressure on that narrow enrollment window and transforms a complex, high-stress scramble into a clear, continuous dialogue that drives real utilization, financial health, and long-term organizational loyalty."

Operationally, that requires HR teams to track engagement signals between enrollment cycles — not just the number of elections made during open enrollment.

How should HR leaders measure whether benefits are working?

Deshaies proposed three measurement lenses that go beyond enrollment counts:

• Behavioral shifts and wealth-building — average HSA balance growth, custodial asset growth, and the share of account holders investing their funds.
• Workforce productivity — retention in high-demand roles and reductions in health-related absenteeism.
• Operational efficiency — friction in plan administration, contribution clarity, and communication effectiveness.

"True impact is not measured by the number of benefits you offer," he said. "It is measured by the tangible health, financial resilience, and organizational performance those benefits deliver to your bottom line."

Where does the industry model head next?

Deshaies drew a parallel between today's health benefits market and the pension-to-401(k) transition of past decades. "The traditional health benefits model built in the 1990s is at a breaking point," he said. "Employers cannot continue to absorb unpredictable renewal spikes and opaque pricing structures."

Forward-looking organizations, he argued, will adopt defined-contribution frameworks — capping employer exposure to high-demand therapies and giving employees a fixed budget to allocate across healthcare, financial wellness, and lifestyle benefits. WEX, which Deshaies said powers more than 20% of HSAs nationwide and serves roughly 60% of the Fortune 1000, is positioning its technology platform for that transition.

The question for HR leaders over the next 24 to 36 months is whether defined-contribution healthcare models gain enough traction outside large employers to reshape the broader benefits procurement landscape.