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Benefits procurement has a working vocabulary at any given moment, a set of terms that appear in RFIs, search queries, shortlist criteria, and strategy conversations.
However, that vocabulary is not static and does not follow the trends shaping HR thought leadership content.
The following benefits procurement trends show why a disappearing term does not necessarily signal a disappearing need.
Sometimes the market has simply found a more practical way to ask about it.
Procurement Language Tracks Unresolved Decisions
Mention counts in the procurement process become more useful when paired with a second question: What work was the term doing for the buyer?
| Term | What changed | What the language may signal |
|---|---|---|
| COVID-19 | The emergency period ended | The urgent label retired, but parts of the response became infrastructure. |
| Remote work | Location became a standard design condition | A broad topic separated into practical product requirements. |
| DEI | The label became more legally and corporately exposed | Related work may be narrowed, renamed, distributed, or reduced. |
| GLP-1 | Existing categories did not fully contain the purchase | A new term organized a buying decision the market was still defining. |
The answer changes how the arrival or disappearance of a term should be interpreted.
Benefits procurement language can therefore show where buyers still need a shared category and where they have moved on to more specific criteria.
From Crisis to Infrastructure
COVID-19 is the most predictable exit.
In May 2023, the World Health Organization downgraded COVID-19 from its highest emergency classification and called for a transition to long-term management.
The terms lost procurement value because buyers no longer needed an emergency label to organize the response.
However, virtual care, mental health access, and leave administration remained relevant long after buyers stopped treating COVID as a distinct purchasing category.
Although the emergency term had expired, much of its procurement infrastructure remained in place.
At the same time, remote work followed a less obvious route because the work model itself still remains common.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 22.6% of workers teleworked in March 2026, with the monthly rate remaining within a narrow range during the preceding year.
However, buyers no longer need to describe remote work as a niche workforce initiative.
Today, they can ask whether a solution serves employees in multiple states, delivers care virtually, supports mobile access, and protects data outside a central workplace.
Once location became part of ordinary product evaluation, remote work no longer needed to appear as a separate requirement.
From Stated Priority to Reframed Language
Few terms generate more content volume than diversity, equity, and inclusion, yet few surface as often in standalone procurement searches.
Corporate language around diversity, equity, and inclusion has changed dramatically under legal and political pressure.
In March 2025, the EEOC issued technical guidance explaining how Title VII applies to workplace DEI programs, including when race- or sex-based preferences could violate federal law.
Public filings show how companies adjusted their terminology. Use of the acronym “DEI” dropped 68% in S&P 500 annual filings between 2024 and 2025, according to The Conference Board. A third of S&P 100 companies also stopped using the term “equity” altogether.
Instead, corporate language and internal oversight moved in different directions. The Conference Board found that the share of S&P 500 companies disclosing formal board-level oversight of DEI increased from 72% to 79%.
Procurement may capture a similar pattern. A broker rarely searches for a “DEI vendor,” yet may still evaluate accessibility, language support, or outcomes across employee populations.
The disappearance of the acronym does not, on its own, reveal what happened to the work behind it. Some organizations may have scaled back their programs, while others reframed the requirements.
From Clinical to Commercial
The newest vocabulary emerged within areas that employers were already buying.
Employers already had diabetes management programs and corporate weight management programs when GLP-1 medications drew attention.
Because the medications are used in both type 2 diabetes and obesity care, the new GLP-1 programs crossed the boundary between those categories. They also introduced coverage considerations that did not fit neatly inside either one.
Employers had to evaluate prescribing, PBM coordination, clinical oversight, discontinuation support, and the cost of maintaining coverage.
As a result, Shortlister’s research on GLP-1 buying behavior found that broker interest in GLP-1 vendors rose quickly, while formal evaluations often broadened into cardiometabolic health.
In other words, GLP-1 became the language that opened the search, even when the eventual purchase covered a wider care model.
Future activity will show whether the term remains a distinct category or becomes one requirement within broader metabolic care.
What Vendors Should Learn from the Eras
Procurement vocabulary gives vendors two different instructions.
When a term recedes, the next step is to trace the underlying requirement.
Remote work may now surface through geographic access, while DEI-related concerns may appear through accessibility or population-level reporting.
On the other hand, a rapidly arriving term creates a different task.
Buyers may need help defining the scope, from assigning ownership to mapping how the new option overlaps with benefits they already run. GLP-1 rewarded vendors and publishers who met that need early.
The common failure is treating the loud word as the current word.
Employee benefits trends travel through language, and the content that ages well track the buying conversation rather than the headline.
Why the Vocabulary Matters
Benefits procurement records its priorities in the words it keeps and the ones it drops.
A term that leaves is an instruction to find what replaced it, and a term that arrives quickly is an instruction to help buyers make sense of it.
The content that lasts considers both.
Written by Ivana Radevska
Senior Content Writer at Shortlister
Telehealth Services
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