Every year, companies put real money behind benefits programs meant to support employees: an EAP, student loan repayment, financial wellness coaching, mental health resources, tuition assistance. And every year, a meaningful share of that investment goes untouched: not because employees don't need what's being offered, but because they never fully understood it was there for them.
When usage numbers come back low, the instinct is to question the program itself. Maybe the EAP isn't a good fit. Maybe employees don't want financial coaching. Maybe it's time to swap vendors again next renewal. But that instinct is usually misguided. In most cases, the program is fine; what broke down is the communication that was supposed to connect it to employees.
This gap tends to hide in plain sight because it doesn't look like a communication failure from the HR side. A benefit gets added to the plan documents, a line gets included in the onboarding packet, and the program gets listed on the benefits portal alongside everything else. On paper, employees have access. In practice, though, "listed somewhere" and "actually understood" are two very different things, and most benefits programs never make it past the former.
The programs aren't the problem
Employees don't skip their EAP because they've decided they don't need support. They skip it because they don't know it exists, because they were told about it once during onboarding and never again, or because the one email that mentioned it didn't explain what it covers or how to use it. The same pattern shows up with student loan repayment programs, financial wellness coaching, and nearly every benefit that isn't health insurance or a 401k.
This is worth sitting with, because it changes where HR teams should be looking for the fix. A program with low value or a poor design shows up differently than a program with an awareness problem. A design issue means employees try it and don't come back. An awareness issue means most employees never try it at all. Most underutilization data reflects the second pattern, not the first, which means the fix isn't a bigger benefits budget or a vendor swap. It's making sure that employees know what they have.
Four reasons underutilization keeps happening
Underutilization rarely comes down to one clean cause. It tends to show up as a combination of a few recurring gaps.
- Employees don't know the benefit exists. Most benefits communication is front-loaded into onboarding week, when a new hire is absorbing a dozen other things at once and benefits information gets skimmed at best. After that first week, the benefit rarely comes up again unless open enrollment forces the conversation. A program mentioned once in a packet an employee barely read isn't a program employees know about. It's a program that will inevitably fall through the cracks.
- Employees don't understand how to access it. Knowing a benefit exists isn't the same as knowing what to do with it. An EAP buried three clicks deep in a benefits portal, described in generic language that could apply to any vendor, doesn't give an employee a reason to act. If using the benefit requires finding a login, remembering a code, or calling a number nobody wrote down, most employees will let it go rather than track down the details.
- The message never felt relevant to their situation. A generic "don't forget about your EAP" email sent to the entire company misses the employee going through a divorce, the one drowning in student loan payments, and the one quietly stressed about their parent's health, none of whom see themselves in a message written for everyone. Relevance is what turns a benefit from something an employee has into something an employee uses, and most communication never gets specific enough to make that connection.
- The timing never lined up with when they needed it. An employee going through a stressful stretch at work isn't thinking about benefits at all until something forces the issue, and by then the EAP mention from six months ago is long forgotten. A message about financial wellness coaching that arrives during a slow week lands very differently than the same message arriving during a round of layoffs or right after a cost-of-living news cycle. Communication that only runs on a fixed calendar, rather than around the moments when a benefit is relevant, misses a lot of the windows where employees would have engaged.
None of these gaps require a new vendor or a richer plan design to close. They require communication that runs more than once a year and says something more specific than a name and a login link.
Why this becomes urgent right before open enrollment
Open enrollment has a way of exposing every communication gap that's been quietly building all year. It's the one moment HR teams are guaranteed employee attention, at least briefly, and it's also the moment where the cost of underutilization becomes visible in a very direct way: usage reports, renewal conversations with brokers, and the annual question of whether a program is worth keeping.
The problem is that open enrollment communication tends to focus almost entirely on plan selection: which medical plan to choose, what's changing with premiums, when the deadline lands. The supplemental benefits, the EAP, the financial wellness program, the ones companies are already paying for regardless of enrollment, get a passing mention if they get mentioned at all. And because HR teams are managing plan comparisons, deadline reminders, and a hundred individual employee questions all at once, they don't have enough room to properly address the underutilization of those programs. It's difficult to squeeze in a real communication push for underused programs during the window where it's needed most, and the cycle repeats into next year.
What HR teams can do about it
Fixing underutilization doesn't start with negotiating a better benefits package next renewal. It starts with treating communication as a year-round function instead of a once-a-year event tied to enrollment season.
- Communicate benefits year-round. A program that only gets mentioned during enrollment is a program most employees will forget about by February. Building a cadence that touches on the EAP, financial wellness coaching, or student loan support at a few points throughout the year, tied to moments that make sense (open enrollment, tax season, a new parental leave, a company-wide stress point) keeps the benefit visible instead of buried.
- Make the "how" as clear as the "what." Every mention of a benefit should answer the practical questions an employee is asking: what do I click, what do I need to have ready, and how long does this take. A communication that says a benefit exists without saying how to use it puts the burden of figuring that out on employees, and most don't have enough time in their day to do it.
- Segment messages by what's relevant. Not every employee needs to hear about every benefit in the same way. New parents care about parental leave and dependent care FSAs. Employees closer to retirement care about the 401k match and long-term care options. Communication that's segmented by life stage or role tends to land because it feels aimed at the person receiving it instead of the entire company at once.
- Treat usage data as the flag it is. Low usage on a specific benefit isn't just a renewal-time statistic. It's a signal that communication around that specific program needs attention now, not next year. Tracking which programs are quietly going unused throughout the year, rather than discovering it all at once during a renewal review, gives HR teams the chance to fix the gap before it shows up as a line item worth cutting.
- Start before open enrollment opens, not during it. The programs most at risk of getting lost in an enrollment push are the ones that need attention before that push begins. A short campaign in the weeks leading into open enrollment, focused specifically on the supplemental benefits that tend to get overlooked, gives those programs a moment in the spotlight that isn't competing with medical plan comparisons and deadline reminders.
The fix is communication, not a bigger budget
It's tempting to read low utilization numbers as a signal to spend more or switch vendors, especially heading into a renewal conversation where the benefits budget is already on the table. But in most cases, the programs that are going unused aren't underfunded. They're under-communicated. Employees who never hear about a benefit in a way that feels specific to them aren't going to use it no matter how good the program is on paper.
The programs that go unused usually aren't underfunded. They're under-communicated.
The good news is that this is a fixable problem, and it doesn't require a bigger line item next year. It requires a communication approach that runs continuously, speaks to what employees are dealing with, and makes the path to using a benefit as clear as the benefit itself. Getting that in place before open enrollment arrives is what determines whether the same programs get overlooked again this year, or finally start earning back the investment behind them.