Benefit Spotlight: Estate Planning

Estate planning is becoming an increasingly popular employee benefit offering with both a rising number of companies including these kinds of services among their benefits packages and a growing number of employees opting in and taking advantage of the opportunity. 

Estate Planning Benefits By The Numbers

• Approximately 59% of US adults don’t currently have a will according to LegalShield’s 2023 survey

• Of those survey respondents who don’t currently have a will, 58% said they would be more likely to create one if services offered by their employer facilitated the process

• The proportion of US employers offering legal services bundles grew by 6% over the year up to 42%

• Estate services are the number one most popular and utilized offering in legal services bundles

Why Are Estate Planning Benefits Becoming More Prevalent Now

While estate planning benefits have long been included among employee benefits packages on a smaller scale, the recent increase can largely be traced back to the pandemic. 

‍

Seeing family members, friends, neighbors, and strangers alike have their lives forever altered and in many cases ended in a matter of weeks caused many employees to contemplate more seriously how an unplanned illness and/or untimely death may affect their loved ones. 

‍

At the same time, employers and company HR departments saw an influx of people - both employees who had lost family members as well as the family members of employees who had died - and those people needed help navigating benefits protocol, health care directives, power of attorney and life insurance issues. 

‍

The labor-favoring edge in the job market and the rise of voluntary benefits both generally and as a means of attracting and retaining top talent both factor into the increasing prominence of estate planning benefits as well.

Estate Planning Benefits Case Study

Benefits managers at Amazon pride themselves on proactively responding to the pain points experienced by their employees. When employee anxiety about financial issues increased dramatically due to inflation, Amazon introduced an emergency savings fund and financial counseling services, for example.

‍

Similarly, although Amazon was already offering benefits to employees and employee families that had experienced loss, benefits managers noticed that the people utilizing those services often also needed a significant amount of additional guidance to manage complications as a result of the deceased lacking a will or estate plan. 

‍

To better address and minimize those issues and the stress and anxiety that results from the resulting complications, Amazon began testing estate planning benefits last year. Despite having only had a 1 month enrollment period in each of 2022 and 2023, approximately 16 thousand Amazon employees have utilized the offered estate planning services, netting a total of $14 million in employee savings. 

‍

You can read more about estate planning services as an employee benefit here.