Dive Brief:

• Digital health company Tuned announced Tuesday the launch of an employer-sponsored benefit aimed at addressing pediatric hearing care needs for children ages 13 through 17.
• The benefit provides parents a tablet computer pre-installed with hearing assessment programs as well as a pair of headphones used to complete assessments; it then connects them to an audiologist who can explain the results and make recommendations, Tuned said.
• Children with hearing loss may be “overlooked,” the company said in a press release, due to factors such as a lack of screening and lack of access to educational audiologists in U.S. schools. “Children are especially vulnerable to hearing loss since they are more sensitive to loud sounds and damage can occur at lower levels in less amount of time," said Tuned CEO and Co-founder Danny Aronson in a statement.

Dive Insight:

In the bid to retain working parents and caregivers since the pandemic, employers have leaned on family-focused benefits to differentiate themselves from competitors.

For example, the results from the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2023 Employee Benefits Survey found that one-third of employers offered paid leave to care for an immediate family member, while the share of employers offering paid adoption leave and paid foster child leave has increased since 2022.

Those findings align with a recent Maven survey of HR professionals in which 63% said their organizations planned to boost family health benefits within the next two to three years, while 87% said that such benefits were extremely important to current and prospective employees.

Rising benefits costs continue to challenge employers and employees alike, a recent Aflac survey found, and employers in the same survey said that offering a competitive total compensation package was their top struggle. The insurer also found that 21% of employee respondents said they had to decide between paying for healthcare and paying a bill.