HRTech Interview with Anthony Favry, Vice President, Disability & Absence Product, MetLife

Anthony Favry, Vice President, Disability & Absence Product, MetLife chats about the nuances surrounding leave management and what modern HR teams should do to drive better processes for specially abled employees in this HRTech Interview by HRTech Series:

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Hi Anthony, tell us about yourself and your role at MetLife.

Thank you for having me on HRTech Series. My name is Anthory Favry and I am a Vice President, Disability & Absence Product at MetLife. Like many of your readers, I’ve spent my career looking at ways to leverage technology to bolster HR capabilities and employee interactions.

My role at MetLife has mostly centered around enhancing the full leave and disability experience. This includes enhancing the way employees interact with their disability and leave products, during as well as in advance of having a claim and making sure employees get the most out of their benefits.

Day in and day out, my team is focused on finding better ways to deliver the disability and leave management experience for our customers and their employees. 

We’d love an overview of MetLife’s new My Leave Navigator…

In July 2024, MetLife launched My Leave Navigator, a personalized online experience designed to assist employees navigating a disability and leave.

My Leave Navigator offers a streamlined service experience that includes pre-leave planning, claim submission, ongoing benefits tracking, and support. 

For employees, My Leave Navigator represents a supportive tool that can help employees plan and navigate their leave. For example, within the My Leave Navigator experience, employees

are provided with the tools and resources to educate themselves on their leave options, a modeled calendar, and an easy interface to submit claims, track their benefits and get answers from an online support agent. In addition, employee can easily track the status of their claim submission, adding transparency to the claims process.

For employers, by integrating My Leave Navigator into their leave management process, HR teams can stay ahead of and in compliance with mandated policies, make sense of overlapping policies, and provide employees with a clear understanding of their leave options and leave calendar without the need to manually intervene.

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When it comes to leave management across businesses and industries: what top concerns and challenges are team heads still plagued with? 

There are several fundamental challenges that surround disability and leave management. For employers, the top concerns include compliance, bandwidth and how to improve return to work results – all while supporting their workforce. For employees, their challenges center around the leave experience – and includes education and understanding of what is and what is not covered, and how to navigate leave and submit claims.

Overall, the challenge has been how can HR teams deliver a simple and intuitive experience that provides that right level of guidance and support, while also ensuring that decisions can be made quickly and with confidence.

What unites these concerns is a common theme: confusion. Let me give you two data points the point to this fact. The first is from MetLife’s 2025 Annual U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study and shows that more than half of all employees (52%) don’t fully understand their benefits. The second is from LIMRA’s Benefits and Employee Attitude Tracker 2024 and says only 17% of employees understand their short-term disability benefit “extremely well.”

Understanding what is and what is not covered, and by who, can be made more confusing still because the landscape governing leave continues to change, particularly family leave.

For example, in the past, employees taking parental leave largely relied on the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) for job protection.

Today, the landscape has become far more intricate: an employee might qualify for up to five overlapping programs—federal, state, and employer-sponsored—creating a mixed and confusing patchwork of leave protections. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, eligibility for state PFML will skyrocket to over 104 million workers by 2027, up from just 36 million in 2019.  These changes open HR teams up to potential compliance pitfalls, misunderstanding, and, frankly, a lot more paperwork. By solving them, employees will be better able to understand what is available to them and the value of their employer-provided benefits, increasing employee retention and satisfaction. 

How can modern business heads and HR teams be more sensitive to the needs of their specially abled workforces, especially when it comes to leave and benefits?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990 and set the benchmark, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities and requiring employers to provide reasonable accommodations.

A lot has happened since then, including the dawn of remote work and a broader emphasis on creating more supportive workplace cultures. Many businesses have adopted accommodations like modified work schedules and assistive technology.

Support has also included providing disability and leave benefits that are transparent, inclusive of a variety of needs, and are easy to understand and use.

When it comes to leave and benefits, to create a more sensitive environment for all, HR teams can be attuned to the needs of employees, providing them with a comprehensive set of accommodations and benefits that look at improving life in and outside the office.

This could include short-term and long-term disability insurance options, to commuter benefit or financial planning. When employees feel supported in all aspects of their lives, they’re much better for it.

What can HR leaders do to build a more inclusive culture?

MetLife has found that care and trust are key to building a positive employee experience and company culture. If an employee feels that a company is inclusive, and the employee feels seen and heard, they’re more likely to trust their organization and be more engaged and productive at work.

To build a culture of care, HR leaders need to focus on empathy and providing opportunity. This includes fostering a supportive culture and promoting a positive benefits experience.

Specifically, actions employers can take include open and honest communication, recognizing and rewarding good work, keeping promises and commitment, listening to employee concerns and feedback, and supporting employee work-life balance.

According to MetLife’s research, employees who trust and feel cared for by their employer are more likely to feel holistically healthily (3.8x), engaged (2.4x) and productive (2.4x) than those we don’t. 

A few thoughts on the impact of AI on HR and leave management? 

There’s a big opportunity for AI to make a positive impact on leave management, especially when it’s HR-led and AI-supported.

Leave is a critical time for an employee – it could mean the birth of a child, the illness of a loved one, or personal injury – so advancements that can streamline and improve experience are key.

For disability and leave management products, this might include leveraging AI to surface useful disability and leave materials, creating interactive experiences that explain complex leave parameters, or creating tailored leave programs based on an employee’s geographic location and preferences. It could also mean using AI to accelerate claims so that an employee that needs support gets that support faster or freeing up HR and managers’ time to focus on delivering empathy and support to employees during and after a leave.

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[To share your insights with us, please write to psen@itechseries.com ]