The Benefits Intelligence Index tracks real utilisation data across UK employee benefits — EAP, PMI, dental, wellbeing programmes, and more. See the benchmarks employers should be measuring against.
UK employers spend over £50 billion annually on employee benefits. Most cannot answer a basic question: what percentage of that spend is actually being used?
The Benefits Intelligence Index is Nightingale's ongoing research initiative to benchmark utilisation across every major employee benefit category in the UK. It exists because the data that should inform benefits strategy — real utilisation rates, cost-per-use metrics, and demand signals — is scattered across provider portals, broker reports, and HR systems with no aggregation layer.
This page collects the best available benchmarks and will be updated as new data emerges. If you're an HR leader making renewal decisions, a broker advising clients, or a CFO asking "what are we getting for this spend?" — these are the numbers you need.
| Metric | UK Benchmark | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employer offering rate | 79% | CIPD 2024 |
| Employee awareness | 27% | Personnel Today 2024 |
| Average utilisation | 3–5% | EAPA UK |
| Typical cost per employee | £8–15/year | Industry average |
| Effective cost per use | £200–1,000+ | Calculated (spend ÷ users) |
| Average sessions offered | 3–6 | Standard EAP contract |
| Referral to self-help rate | ~60% | TELUS Health |
| Male utilisation share | 29.5% | Wiley HRM Journal 2024 |
Key insight: EAPs are the most underutilised benefit in the UK workplace. At 3–5% utilisation, employers are paying £200–1,000 per employee who actually engages — not the £8–15 headline rate. The primary barrier isn't quality — it's awareness and access friction.
Why don't employees use their EAP? →
| Metric | UK Benchmark | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employer offering rate | ~50% (large employers) | CIPD Benefits Survey |
| Employee enrolment | 50–70% | Industry average |
| Claims utilisation (annual) | 40–60% | ABI / insurer data |
| Mental health claims share | 13% | ABI 2024 |
| Average employer cost | £1,200–2,500/employee/year | Laing Buisson |
| Premium inflation (2024) | 8–12% | Broker market reports |
Key insight: PMI is the highest-cost benefit in most packages, yet 40–60% of enrolled employees make no claim in a given year. Mental health claims are growing fastest at 13% of total claims spend. Proactive benefits (EAP, wellbeing programmes) that reduce PMI claims have a direct premium impact.
| Metric | UK Benchmark | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employer offering rate | ~30% (large employers) | CIPD Benefits Survey |
| Employee take-up | 40–60% | Industry average |
| Annual utilisation | 60–75% | Denplan / Bupa Dental |
| Average employer cost | £150–400/employee/year | Broker benchmarks |
Key insight: Dental has the highest utilisation of any voluntary benefit — because the need is tangible and the access pathway is clear. This is the model other benefits should follow: visible, low-friction, obviously useful.
| Metric | UK Benchmark | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employer offering rate | ~65% | CIPD Health & Wellbeing 2024 |
| Employee awareness | 30–50% | Varies by programme |
| Active engagement | 10–20% | Platform analytics |
| Completion rate (programmes) | 15–25% | Industry average |
| Average employer cost | £50–200/employee/year | Platform pricing |
Key insight: Wellbeing programmes suffer from the same awareness gap as EAPs. Sign-up rates look healthy, but completion rates tell the real story. The programmes that sustain engagement (like GoJoe) use social gamification and team-based challenges — not content libraries that employees visit once.
| Metric | UK Benchmark | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employer offering rate | ~25% | Simplyhealth / Westfield |
| Employee take-up | 30–50% | Industry average |
| Claims utilisation | 50–70% | Provider data |
| Average employer cost | £100–250/employee/year | Provider pricing |
Key insight: Cash plans have decent utilisation because they reimburse everyday health costs (optical, dental, physio) that employees actually incur. The barrier here is employee knowledge of what's claimable — many don't know their cash plan covers physiotherapy or optical tests.
| Metric | UK Benchmark | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employer offering rate | ~40% | Cyclescheme / Green Commute |
| Employee take-up | 5–10% | Scheme providers |
| Average salary sacrifice saving | 25–39% | HMRC tax relief |
Key insight: Take-up is low but those who use it get significant value. The issue is awareness — most employees don't know the scheme exists or how salary sacrifice works. A benefits navigation layer that surfaces cycle-to-work when employees search for fitness or commuting support would meaningfully increase take-up.
When you aggregate the waste across every benefit category, the picture is stark. A typical UK employer with 1,000 employees and a £800/head benefits budget spends £800,000 per year. If average utilisation across the suite is 30% (generous), £560,000 is spent on benefits that nobody uses.
That's not an argument for cutting benefits. It's an argument for making existing benefits work harder — through better awareness, lower friction, and intelligent routing.
This is what benefits intelligence is designed to solve. Not another benefit to add to the pile, but a way to make the existing pile actually deliver.
The benchmarks on this page are compiled from publicly available sources including CIPD surveys, ABI data, EAPA UK reports, provider benchmarks, and academic research. Where ranges are given, they reflect variation by employer size, sector, and plan type. All data is UK-specific unless otherwise noted.
This page is updated quarterly as new data becomes available. Last updated: March 2026.
If your benefits utilisation is below these benchmarks, navigation is the gap. If you can't measure your utilisation at all, intelligence is the gap.
Nightingale AI provides both. Book a demo to see how benefits intelligence works for your organisation.