We talk a lot about how much employers invest in health and wellbeing benefits. We talk a lot less about what it costs when employees can't actually get to them.
In an article for Human Capital Leadership Review, Reimagining Employee Benefits Navigation: From Portals to Pathways, I make the case that the real bottleneck in benefits is access, not program quality. And that gap is more expensive than most Total Rewards teams realize:
- Nearly half of employees skip digital tools entirely and go straight to HR or their manager for basic coverage questions, turning every simple inquiry into a manual, HR-hours cost.
- Manual handling of sensitive health questions creates real HIPAA and ADA exposure, not just an admin headache.
- Portals built for desk-bound employees leave shift workers, field staff, and retail teams (often your highest-claims population) without a real way in.
- An employee weighing a health question at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday gets nothing until HR opens on Wednesday, which is exactly when they default to the ER or give up on care altogether.
My argument is that the fix isn't a better portal. It's leaving the portal model behind entirely, in favor of what I call untethered access. This is support that doesn't require logging into work to find it. I break this down into four pillars: Network Independence, Continuity, Extension (to spouses and dependents, who are often the real decision-makers), and Lifelines during critical transitions like leave or COBRA.
In the full piece, I also push back on the idea that this means replacing HR with AI. The strongest model is a hybrid one, with AI handling high-volume, structured questions instantly, with human navigators stepping in for anything that needs real judgment. The shift isn't about less human involvement. Rather, it's about HR leaders moving from gatekeepers of information to architects of accessibility.
benefits, it's already too late.
Read the full article on Human Capital Leadership Review
Reimagining Employee Benefits Navigation:
From Portals to Pathways
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