In today’s workplace, when it comes to retaining talent, offering meaningful staff perks is more important than ever. And a one-size-fits-all approach to employee benefits packages is a thing of the past, as the latest technologies enable businesses to offer plans tailored to their employees’ lifestyles.
Instead of assuming what people want or need, AI and machine learning analyze actual data and recommend alternatives based on individual situations. The best systems tap into multiple sources and enable payroll platforms, benefits platforms, and HR software to talk to each other. The AI predicts what employees will need and changes their options based on the data findings accordingly.
Defining personalization
According to Rory Yates, global strategic lead at EIS, meaningful personalization in the benefits market has been largely unsuccessful.
He says: “These efforts typically fail for two reasons. Firstly, customer expectations are escalating and have already outpaced the experiences offered by the sector. Customers won’t applaud you for delivering personalized messaging in logged-in environments, or natural language interfaces. Secondly, ‘personalizing’ something isn’t simply putting their name at the top of the page when they are logged in.”
True personalization, he says, requires cohesion between sources of data, how products are contained or operated and the channels through which they are experienced. Underpinning this is a shift in the operational data model, which requires a core system built around the customer, not the products. “Systems designed this way create the ability to center everything on a customer ID and provide the operational data needed to sell, service and shape experiences,” adds Yates.
Top tech for employee benefits
Entrepreneur Nirav Chheda is cofounder and CEO at Bambi NEMT, and believes technology is the only way to make employee benefits feel genuinely personal at scale.
“While our core focus is healthcare transportation, the same principles apply,” he says. “We built our platform to give each user a tailored experience depending on their unique care and accessibility needs. That mindset carries over when thinking about employee benefits.”
The most effective tech tends to be platforms that combine data analytics with automation and a clean user interface. Personalization comes down to data; knowing what stage of life someone is in, what they value and how they prefer to access services.
“The best-fit benefits are usually ones that touch everyday life; mental health, family care, scheduling flexibility, financial wellness, and transport,” says Chheda. “These are highly personal, and when delivered through customizable dashboards or mobile-first tools, employees are much more likely to engage with them. It’s not about offering more, it’s about offering what matters, in a way that’s easy to find and use.”
Horses for courses
Individuals all have different needs, and technology makes it easier to offer benefits that meet them. Jeff Kaiden is CEO of New Jersey-based Capacity, where he focuses on building strong teams and ensuring employees have the support they need to deliver exceptional results.
He says: “Some benefits prioritize health coverage that fits their lifestyle, others are focused on saving for retirement, and plenty are thinking about things like career growth, tuition reimbursement, or childcare.”
The benefits that work best for personalization are those that evolve through life stages. Capacity has rolled out a data-driven benefits platform that allows employees to adjust their benefits based according to their changing needs.
“One thing we saw immediately was that our logistics team, employees in physically demanding roles, valued wellness stipends and flexible healthcare far more than traditional office perks,” says Kaiden. “Instead of assuming what people wanted, we looked at how they engaged with benefits, asked for feedback, and made changes accordingly. That led to higher engagement and increased satisfaction, without increasing costs.”
Gamifying employee benefits
One of the biggest issues with traditional benefits programs is that they are seen as boring, so another emerging trend is the use of game mechanics like progress tracking, small rewards, and milestones to make benefits more personal and engaging.
“Companies offer great perks, but employees either don’t know about them or don’t care enough to use them,” says Karlo Čičko a software developer at GameBoost. “That’s where gamification turns the tide. People pay attention when benefits feel participatory and fulfilling. The best tech for this is AI-driven benefits platforms that adjust to employees’ needs and gamified reward systems that make engagement fun.”
GameBoost has developed systems where players unlock features based on achievements, and the same idea works with benefits. Employees can earn perks based on participation, whether it’s hitting fitness goals, completing training, or engaging with company culture.
“I’ve seen engagement in benefits programs increase by over 30% by using simple things like leaderboards or achievement badges,” adds Čičko. “If companies want staff to make use of perks, they should stop considering them as just another HR tool. Make them dynamic and rewarding and people will participate.”
Personalization for startups
Deploying technology to personalize employee benefits isn’t just the preserve of large organizations. Apify is building a flexible web scraping and automation platform, and as a startup, doesn’t have the luxury of bloated HR processes or rigid benefits structures. Instead, the company leverages automation and data-driven decision-making to ensure that employee benefits match what people need, as Apify’s Aleš Wilk SEO specialist and marketing strategist, explains.
He says: “Technology isn’t just an enabler; it’s what allows us to stay competitive in hiring and retention while keeping things flexible. In a startup, every decision needs to be agile, including how we handle benefits. When you apply the same level of optimization to HR as you do to other areas of business, the results are clear; happier employees and better retention.”
Legal considerations
While personalized employee benefits are key to greater engagement, motivation and performance, as attorney John Beck, founding partner at Beck & Beck Missouri Lawyers, points out, they can also be a legal minefield that companies fail to consider until it’s too late.
He says: “Technology makes it easier than ever to tailor benefits to individual employees, but if you don’t structure them properly from a legal standpoint, you could be exposing yourself to liability, discrimination claims, and compliance headaches down the road.”
First, he says, employers must be careful when classifying ‘personalization’. If two employees in similar roles are offered significantly different benefits packages based on arbitrary preferences rather than a structured, legally sound framework, it can lead to claims of unfair treatment, even discrimination.
“I’ve seen cases where businesses attempted to offer hyper-personalized benefits, but because they didn’t properly document their policies, it led to disputes,” says Beck. “If one employee gets full tuition reimbursement and another gets half, there has to be a clear and legally defensible reason for the difference.”
Secondly, data privacy laws apply to benefits data just as much as customer information. Employers who collect detailed preference data from employees must ensure that data is secured.
Finally, he adds, it is important to be aware of potential misclassification issues. “If benefits become too individualized, where one employee is getting perks that resemble independent contractor arrangements rather than employee benefits, it could lead to reclassification issues under labor laws. I’ve seen businesses pay out substantial fines because they inadvertently treated full-time employees more like contractors by offering stipends instead of structured benefits.”
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