What 91% of Employees Don't Know About Their Benefits

Why Most Employees Don't Understand the Benefits Their Employer Provides

Nick Dial: Are you expecting your client to be the expert in any and all things interior? No, of course not, because the first thing you do is walk in and ask: what questions do you have? Well, what do they know to ask?

Robin Pasley: Right.

Nick Dial: There was a study done that only 9% of employees actually know four basic terms of health insurance: premium, deductible, co-pays, co-insurance.

Randi Lynn Johnson: Welcome back to Design to Help Your Business Grow with Robin Pasley, hello. I'm her co-host, Randi Lynn Johnson, and with us today we have Nick Dial, insurance broker and author. So, Nick, tell us — what do you do to help small business owners?

Nick Dial: I help reduce the noise of confusion and frustration when it comes to employee benefits. There's administration, education, implementation — seemingly anything that ends with "-ion." What I basically help with is taking the standard finish line further — beyond just the employer appreciating and engaging with their own benefits, to where their employees can measure that engagement through actual satisfaction.

Randi Lynn Johnson: So as a broker, do you cover everything that's out there?

Nick Dial: I would caution against claiming to know everything about insurance — that's a moving target. But I help with medical, dental, vision, the core benefits, and then ancillary lines: disability, life insurance, flexible spending accounts, HSAs, and more. I coach employers along the way on how to structure benefits so they speak to employees in a way that makes sense and that employees can actually use.

Nick Dial: In this industry, we rely heavily on jargon and clichés, and the irony is that employees don't follow jargon. They don't fully understand it. The Policy Genius study from 2017–2018 showed that only 9% of employees actually know those four basic health insurance terms. That same study showed that 96% of people overestimate their understanding of their own coverage. When it comes to communicating and educating, we need to get rid of the jargon and bring in real understanding — that's what I focus on.

Robin Pasley: I remember when we first started talking about what you do. I saw the overlap with what we do for business owners — taking what seems complex, simplifying it, and advising from a position of knowing what they actually need. That's exactly the value you bring to businesses. It's such a spider web of information, and especially for an HR director who's supposed to manage all of that on top of just taking care of people.

Nick Dial: Yes — and I'd add: when it comes to insurance, imagine a 5 am infomercial, a guy in a green apron putting raw chicken on a skewer, pointing to the camera and saying, "Set it and forget it." That's one of the single greatest issues in benefits. We establish the insurance, pull the thing up, turn it on, and never touch it again. We don't adjust with the ebbs and flows of life — having a child, graduating from college, getting a first job, parents going into a nursing home. Insurance doesn't always require dramatic changes, but it does require changes, and we don't get there. Walking employers through those changes — and their employees' changes — is what's missing in this industry.

What Does Good Benefits Strategy Actually Look Like for Small Business Owners?

Randi Lynn Johnson: That's great — helping them know the right questions to ask.

Nick Dial: Exactly. A simple way of putting it: are you expecting your client to be the expert in any and all things interior design? No. The first thing you do is walk in and ask: what questions do you have? Well, what do they know to ask? Versus — how do we start asking the questions for them? How do we engage that conversation differently? That's almost an art form that's gone dormant, and we can wake it back up.

Robin Pasley: With what we do as interior designers for commercial businesses, our sweet spot is helping clients see what they can't see. And asking the right questions helps open that conversation. We do two or three interviews before we even present a proposal, because we want to understand what their needs really are. Then on the other side, we do an hour-and-a-half deep-dive discovery interview to learn about the project itself, who the company is, and how we're going to accomplish it. You're doing the same thing — taking what feels ethereal and making it more concrete.

Randi Lynn Johnson: I'll admit I'm totally guilty of the set-it-and-forget-it approach. Just hearing that you have permission to change it, to tweak things — that's a gift to our listeners.

Robin Pasley: I think about benefits as a column I don't want to think about very much, because there are so many nuances and so much information for any business owner to absorb. But knowing that you are a phone call away — that you can take that off their plate and be the person they call when they're not sure, whether it's an employee issue, an upcoming renewal, or something they need to address — instead of having to figure it out on their own, they can just call you. That's incredible.

Randi Lynn Johnson: How can they get a hold of you, Nick?

Nick Dial: They can reach out by email or by phone — contact information will be on the screen. And if I may, I want to share one of the single greatest reasons why I do what I do: my father-in-law. In 2017, he went through a massive stroke. He was the only one working. My mother-in-law stayed at home with their five kids, and when that happened, their whole financial world turned upside down — until we found that the insurance he had built was going to work perfectly. It was a seamless transition. To this day, they've paid off their house, their last kid went through college, and my mother-in-law has yet to fill out a single job application to supplement income.

Nick Dial: I was meeting with an HR director and her benefits coordinator recently, and they had an employee who had lost a child over the holidays. Sitting there, I was right back next to my wife, thinking about my father-in-law. The point is: there are so many great organizations doing great work behind the scenes. What I want to think separates me and my company is that we jump right into the trenches with employers going through bad days. A year after the stroke, my wife called me — I travel a lot for work — and she said: the only way you make being gone worth it is if you take care of everyone the way you took care of my family. I've never forgotten that. That's behind the book. That's behind every contact I make. I don't care what you do from a product standpoint — I just want to be the advocate who's there when your worst day happens.

Robin Pasley: I love that you shared that, because that's exactly what we connected on right away — we're both people-first. That's what gets us out of bed: taking care of people and letting them know they're valued. So, Insurance Makes Sense is your new book, now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Tell us a little about it.

How Does "Insurance Makes Sense" Help Business Owners Take Control of Their Coverage?

Nick Dial: It really did start from my father-in-law's story. I was sitting in a client meeting in Madison, Wisconsin — about four or five months after the stroke — and the client was antagonistic about insurance. He had a wife and three kids and the attitude of "I don't plan on anything happening to me." Given how fresh everything was, it hit differently. About a year later, I was in the Madison airport waiting for a flight when that conversation and my father-in-law's story converged in my brain. I grabbed my iPad and started typing. By the time the flight boarded, I had however many pages and thought: that'd be a really bad book, but I think I've got something.

Nick Dial: The book is a buyer's guide for how someone can look at insurance strategically. My thesis is that as a society we treat insurance like a consumable product — no different than a cup of coffee or a car. We buy it with the intention to use it, but we never plan on something happening. That should honestly be the precursor to understanding why we need insurance in the first place. The book is more macro than micro — it won't get people lost in jargon, and readers have already said it's easy to read. It's meant to offer a different perspective: where does insurance belong, how do I use it, and how do I proportion it to my finances?

Nick Dial: Think of it this way: imagine someone saying, "Robin, I know nothing about interior design — all I want to know is how to spend my money wisely and not make my place look like junk." Same thing for me: "Nick, I know virtually nothing about insurance. All I know is I want my worst possible day covered with the least amount of money spent." That's a great setup. How do I establish the bare essentials? It's not about starting perfectly — it's about starting with confidence. Set it up well, and don't forget about it.

Why Asking the Right Questions Is the Foundation of Both Design and Benefits Strategy

Robin Pasley: So that's what this book will do.

Nick Dial: That's exactly what the book covers.

Robin Pasley: I love it. Thank you so much for joining us.

Nick Dial: Thank you for having me. This has been fun.

Randi Lynn Johnson: That'll do it for us. All the information — how to reach Nick, where to find his book — will be in the show notes. We'll see you next time.

Robin Pasley: Thanks, guys.

Randi Lynn Johnson: In an increasingly competitive market, the merits of using interior design as a strategic growth tool can make all the difference in not just surviving, but thriving.

Robin Pasley: Pasley Commercial Interiors — design to help your business grow.

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