Research: To Get Employees to Use a Benefit, Make Signing Up a Little Harder
Executive Take
Frictionless enrollment gets more signups but fewer people who actually stick with the benefit. HR teams should design a small effort step at sign-up, like a short commitment question, to filter for real intent.
Executive Summary
A Harvard Business Review research piece finds that adding a small amount of friction during benefit sign-up can increase employees' follow-through on behaviors that require ongoing effort, compared to making enrollment frictionless.
Why It Matters
HR leaders spend heavily on wellness, savings, and training benefits that employees sign up for and then abandon. This research suggests the fix is a design choice at enrollment, not more spending.
Bizquad Perspective
Most HR teams measure benefit success by signup rate, when this research shows that's the wrong metric to optimize for follow-through.