What Employees Want: Benefits, AI, And The Multigenerational Workforce

Forbes

4 days ago

For decades, employers, benefits providers, and retirement plan sponsors worked on a shared assumption: there was such a thing as an 'average worker.' Generally, employees could be described as full-time, with a linear career, married with children. That profile provided a predictable, nearly linear life course with equally predictable needs and wants for compensation and benefits. Many employees have been offered what might best be described as a standard benefits plate: health insurance, a 401(k) match, maybe some disability coverage, and a flexible spending account.
That was the entrée approach to employee benefits.
But in 2025, the average is over. The entrée model no longer fits. Employees need and want a buffet selection.
Today's workforce is more diverse in age, life stage, lifestyle, and career trajectory than at any point in history. We're managing 25-year-olds with side hustles and living solo, 30-somethings with student debt and less likely than previous generations to have children, 40- and 50-somethings juggling caregiving of aging parents, and 60- and 70-somethings transitioning into retirement but still wanting to work in some other capacity.
Yet most benefits systems are still designed to serve that historical average. A prix fixe plate, served with good intentions but poorly aligned with reality.
Employees Want Personalization. Most Aren't Getting It.
Only 15% of U.S. workers have access to cafeteria-style or flexible benefits, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the private sector, it's just 11%.
Meanwhile, a Mercer survey found 41% of employees say their benefits don't reflect their real needs. Among workers who say they're satisfied, many consider their package 'good enough' but not ideal. And nearly 70% say that the ability to personalize benefits is important to them.
This isn't just a mismatch. It's a missed opportunity. In today's competition for talent, benefits are no longer only about compensation; they are part of a larger conversation. They are a conversation between the employer and employee where the benefits offered signal if your employer 'gets you' or 'cares about you.'
Multigenerational Workforce, Different Generations, Different Needs
For the first time in modern workforce history, five, sometimes six, generations are working side by side. Similar to medieval alchemists who sought ways to turn different metals into gold, employers must now perform a generational alchemy, transforming multiple generations into an engaged and productive workforce.
Think about it. Gen Z may be interning and onboarding. Gen X and younger Boomers might be leading departments while caring for both kids and aging parents. Millennials are moving into management while paying off student loans and hoping to purchase a home.
Older Boomers and some Silent Generation workers are rethinking retirement as more of a transition than an exit. Many older workers either don't want to leave the workforce entirely or can't afford to do so. However, most employer benefits systems still treat retirement like a switch: you're either in or out. That all-or-nothing approach is leading to loss of talent, knowledge, and trust.
Employer Benefits Moving From An Entrée To A Buffet Model
Some employers are flipping the model. Instead of one-size-fits-all, they're creating buffet-style benefits: modular, flexible, and personalized. Benefits that adapt to where people are. Not just a calculation of how old they are and what the 'average' employee of similar age years ago needed or wanted.
This isn't about being generous. It's about being responsive.
A 28-year-old engineer may want pet care. A 35-year-old designer may want fertility benefits. A 45-year-old shift supervisor may need skills training. A 60-year-old marketing director might seek phased retirement planning or Medicare navigation. A 72-year-old contractor might only want telehealth and wellness benefits.
When everyone is served the same prix fixe plate, someone walks away hungry or walks away entirely.
Real-World Signals: A Benefits Model Is Emerging
Some companies aren't waiting for a demographic wake-up call, they're already rewriting the benefits playbook to match the lives of a multigenerational workforce better. But, in a workforce defined by complexity and generational overlap, 'some' is no longer enough.
At Microsoft, employees who move into phased or part-time roles don't lose their benefits. Instead, the company treats it like a lane change, not an exit ramp. It's a subtle but powerful shift: contribution matters more than classification. That approach allows flexibility without sacrificing institutional knowledge.
AIS Inc., a manufacturer with nearly 40% of its workforce over age 50, made a similar move. When a 73-year-old technician asked to reduce his hours, the company allowed him to keep full benefits. The decision not only retained valuable expertise on the factory floor, it sent a broader message of loyalty and inclusion to workers of all ages.
Travelers Insurance has gone beyond the traditional model of dependent care by partnering with Wellthy to support employees caring for aging parents and relatives. Recognizing that caregiving isn't just for young families, they've built a benefit that aligns with the real pressures many midlife and older workers face.
Other employers are adopting platforms like Virgin Pulse and Foodsmart to give employees greater autonomy offering mental health coaching, nutrition support, and lifestyle stipends tailored to individual needs.
These benefits don't just check boxes. They reflect the real-life needs and wants of today's employees.
The Multigenerational Workforce's Health, Wealth, And Missing Middle
Personalized benefits have long been the dream but rarely the reality. This isn't because employers did not care, but because the cost, complexity, and compliance risks were too high. Traditional systems offered by benefits providers and retirement administrators were built to serve the 'bookends' of work life: health and wealth. Health across careers, wealth for retirement years.
But in between health and wealth are life stages and lifestyles that this approach misses.
In today's multigenerational workforce, the middle matters more than ever. Employees aren't just joining and leaving or saving and retiring. They're caregiving, reprioritizing, upskilling, downshifting, and re-entering. Addressing this dynamic middle is essential not just to recruiting talent, but to retaining talent, and reengaging professionals across the career lifecycle.
AI Meets HR: Is Personalized Benefits the Next Competitive Advantage?
The convergence of AI and the multigenerational workforce holds the power and promise to break the personalization barrier.
AI has long promised personalization, but only recently have we begun to see it take root in the workplace. In a study conducted by the MIT AgeLab in collaboration with Bank of America, human resource leaders across industries shared how artificial intelligence is reshaping their work today—and how they expect it to evolve. Far from fearing a robotic takeover, these HR professionals view AI as a trusted assistant: a tool to save time, reduce administrative burden, and enhance the quality of their decisions.
The study found that AI is already widely used in recruitment, but its potential reaches far beyond hiring. HR leaders anticipate using AI to personalize onboarding experiences, deliver targeted training, and, equally critical, to customize benefits and compensation in ways that better align with employees' diverse life stages and needs. For a workforce that spans college interns to professionals in phased retirement, AI could be the key to unlocking modular, relevant, and timely support across the entire career lifecycle.
The direction is clear: personalization at scale is no longer an aspiration. It's an expectation. And in a multigenerational workforce, using AI to deliver the right benefit at the right time may be the next competitive edge.
For employers and plan administrators, AI could automate compliance, reduce administrative overhead, and enable data-driven decisions at scale. Moreover, plan administrators that offer tools that truly personalize employee experience provide a competitive advantage to compete based on how well they partner with employers to support employees across the lifecycle, not just on measures of clicks and costs.
The result? Personalization becomes not only possible but practical.
If Amazon Can Do It, Why Can't Employers?
Most benefit systems are still optimized for an average world that no longer exists, one with nuclear families, linear careers, and a hard stop at 65. If the workforce has changed, the workplace must change with it.
Call it the Amazon-effect.
In a world where Amazon can anticipate your next purchase and make personalized suggestions in real-time, employees are expecting personalization that reflects similar empathy and engagement from their employers, who are invested in recruiting the best talent, retaining star employees, and re-engaging with those who may be retirement age but remain contributors to the enterprise.
Let's stop serving a one-size-fits-all plate; it's time to serve up a buffet.
We now have the tools, technology, insight, and demand to build a better model: a modular, buffet-style benefits AI-enabled ecosystem that reflects real people in real life.