Canada (EN)
Insights from the 2025 enrollment season show how data-driven guidance, personalization and AI-powered decision support can help employees make confident, cost-conscious benefits choices - while helping employers manage rising healthcare costs.
Benefits enrollment continues to carry enormous weight for employers and employees alike. Rising healthcare costs, complex plan designs and growing expectations for personalization all converge in a short window where decisions matter for the year ahead.
In a webinar for Alight’s benefits administration clients, we shared lessons learned from the 2025 Annual Enrollment season, results from Alight’s 2025 Employee Mindset Study and how those insights helped Alight shape a smarter enrollment experience. In a live demonstration, clients saw the new experience and heard how Alight redesigned benefits enrollment to help people make informed choices with confidence to meet their benefits needs in the coming year, with personalized support from our new digital Alight Assistant and backed by human expertise.
In 2025, employers focused on a clear priority: managing rising costs while keeping coverage affordable for their employees and their families. Many adjusted plan designs, changed carriers or pharmacy benefit managers and expanded access to alternative medical plans. At the same time, employees faced more complex decisions with more plan options, more digital care vendors and more responsibility for understanding tradeoffs. Especially for large employers with goals tied to employee satisfaction and engagement, simplifying enrollment isn’t just a usability goal. It’s a business imperative.
Our data shows that employees want help and they respond when it’s available. During the 2025 enrollment season, enrollment in alternative medical plans doubled compared with prior years. Use of decision support tools correlated to measurable savings and stronger confidence in choices. Employees also increased contributions to pretax accounts, including dependent care FSAs, following legislative changes and targeted education. Together, these outcomes reinforce the impact of guidance that is clear, relevant and grounded in each individual’s situation.
“During the 2025 enrollment season, enrollment in
alternative medical plans doubled compared with prior years.”
Employee research further underscores this need. Most workers say enrollment guidance tools are valuable, yet few have access to them today. Employees also want a single place to manage their health, wealth and wellbeing benefits, especially through mobile-friendly experiences. The majority of workers are willing to share personal data when it leads to more relevant guidance.
At the same time, cost remains a barrier to care for a significant portion of the workforce, making the consequences of poor enrollment decisions very real. Better guidance at enrollment can help bridge that gap.
These insights led Alight to rethink how to provide support and guidance through enrollment. Our new personal profile and curated health packages connect people to options that best reflect their coverage and financial preferences, rather than isolated plan recommendations. A package is a combination of:
- A medical plan, including prescription drugs
- Dental and vision plans
- Supplemental health plans (Hospital Indemnity, Accident, Critical Illness)
- Eligible savings accounts (HSA, HCFSA, LPFSA, HRA) based on compatibility rules
A rules-based engine considers all plan combinations and runs scenarios based on an employee’s eligibility, employer-specific rules, preferred providers and their potential healthcare usage. Results are shown with a range of healthcare usage, so employees are confident in their decisions and ability to afford care when needed.
Employees are supported, not processed, with the new Alight Assistant, which uses advanced AI to help participants get answers when they need them. Throughout enrollment, employees can interact with the assistant conversationally and get personalized responses with direct links to client-specific sources.
Alight recognizes that connecting people with benefits in this new way will require thoughtful change management. The new enrollment experience includes communication support, offered at no cost to employers, with additional opportunities to customize for employers who want more extensive or customized communications for their employees.
Alight’s approach to enrollment helps employees get the maximum value from their benefits and ultimately makes enrollment feel more human and personal. Contact us today for more information.
