How point solutions can enhance employee benefits engagement

Point solutions can help your employees get more out of their benefits by offering specialized advice for a specific need or situation. As technology improves, more options are available than ever, but employers must balance offering enough variety without overwhelming their staff. Streamlining the technology can prevent fatigue while improving employee engagement.

The growth of point solutions

A point solution is a software, product, or tool designed to address a specific issue or need for employee benefits. These support tools are meant to enhance core offerings and help employees get more out of them. They can range from enrollment platforms that help employees compare voluntary benefits and chronic condition management programs for specific issues to telehealth services for different needs, including mental health.

Technology has improved to the point where employers can offer countless apps, platforms, and programs, especially as they expand their benefits offerings. While a wide selection is helpful for customization, too much of a good thing can sometimes create issues.

Point solution fatigue

Employee benefits have become more expansive over the years with new categories, like LGBTQ-inclusive benefits or eco-friendly benefits. Each benefit could come with its own list of possible point solutions, and these can add up quickly — most employers offer multiple solutions, and it's not uncommon to offer a dozen or more.

While it may seem like a greater variety of personalized support tools would boost employee engagement, it can often have the opposite effect. Each tool is something employees must spend time learning. If there are too many, employees might be unable to learn each one properly and feel discouraged. Employees might not even realize some solutions exist if there are too many.

Ways to reduce point solution fatigue

Employers can use a few simple but effective strategies to reduce fatigue, including:

Create a summary page

You could create a single summary page on your employee intranet that lists all available point solutions and an explanation of what they do and how they help. That way, employees can easily compare and don't have to search through the online instructions for each one.

Avoid unnecessary communication

You should also work with your vendors to reduce communication to only what's needed. Ask how often they communicate with employees and what the message schedule entails. Ensure employees don't feel like they're being bombarded by too many emails from many different directions.

Keep point solutions to the essentials

Continue reevaluating the value of your existing solutions. Are all necessary, or are there some that have overlapping functions?

Before adding a new technology solution, pay close attention to the ease of integration with your other benefits and the employee experience. These were rated as the most important factors by brokers when recommending a new product or service to clients, according to Optavise's 2025 Benefits Broker Survey.

Fine-tune for healthcare needs

Meet with your health insurance provider or broker to better understand your employees' healthcare needs so you can identify solutions that would be most helpful in controlling costs and supporting overall well-being.

The value of integrating systems and technology

Integrating and streamlining your technology solutions can also improve engagement and reduce fatigue. It's easier for employees to learn a single coordinated system than a separate one for each solution. It can also cut down the number of messages they receive.

When point solutions are not connected, they aren't sharing health data, leading to inefficient health recommendations and outcomes, especially if an employee has multiple chronic conditions.

An integrated system is positioned to share information between solutions. For example, a diabetes management plan can be connected with a nutrition tool to work together. That can help provide more personalized advice to employees because it compiles all the data from each tool, rather than each solution only seeing a snapshot of one area. As a result, employees can work on their health holistically and get more out of their benefits.

Challenges with technology integration

Upfront costs can be a significant challenge with technology integration if you design the system internally. Building the system takes time and money, and you'd need to work with the point solution providers so they can connect their tools with your platform to share employee information using integration methods such as APIs and cloud services. You must also spend to maintain your integrated system, especially as you add and remove solutions annually.

With this being the case, cost is an understandable concern. According to the 2025 Optavise survey, 38% of brokers said that cost was one of the most important factors when recommending a new product to clients.

However, this upfront investment could pay for itself over the long run. You could enhance employee engagement with the solutions themselves, and then, they would be empowered to improve their health, theoretically reducing your overall expenses over time. In other words, better employee benefits education and engagement can improve your bottom line.

Using an integrated benefits solutions platform

Another way to streamline technology is by working with a benefits solutions platform that's already connected and linked with other products and tools. Each additional point solution can create further value by collecting and sharing more data-driven insights to both improve business outcomes and support employee wellness. Employees also only have to learn one system.

Ideally, the benefits solutions platform should not be fully automated. It should be backed by human support that can analyze the data behind each point solution to answer questions and help give more customized advice to employees based on the complete picture, something that individual tools cannot see.

The drawback of working with one integrated platform is that you're using the solutions only offered by that company. If you find tools you like from another company, it will take some extra work to integrate and streamline them. However, it's still a fraction of the effort compared to building a cohesive system with individual companies from the ground up.

Maximizing workplace benefits technology and innovation

New technology tools can improve employee benefits engagement, but only if the system sets them up for success. There must be a clear plan for each point solution so they can all work together seamlessly. Streamlining the technology can help do so.

Optavise is your benefits partner

Optavise is a trusted partner, guiding employers and their employees through healthcare choices including voluntary benefits, benefits administration, and year-round advocacy services that reduce costs and increase benefits engagement.