Five essential tactics for communicating employee benefits

Amba

With 64% of employers failing to communicate their employee benefits schemes effectively,1 there’s a strong argument for making communications an essential part of the employee benefits solution.

So let’s take a look at the five best ways to get employees on board with your employee benefits scheme.

  1. Network internally

Train up managers, mentors or employee benefit champions to spread the word within your organisation about what the employee benefits scheme can do. Regular conversations among colleagues will make sure your scheme doesn’t fall off the radar.

  1. Face-to-face

Even in this digital age, people need to hear the spoken word and feel the enthusiasm if they’re really going to get the message loud and clear. Roadshows, seminars and benefit days, where providers come and meet employees to explain why their benefits matter, can all help to boost take up and bring the scheme to life.

  1. Printed materials

Digital overload can be a problem for many employees, so don’t rely solely on e-communications. There are many ways to repeat a message until it’s heard. Posters, printed reward statements, handy pocket-sized benefit guides and desk drops help to reinforce the message that you have great benefits on offer and that they’re easy to take up.

Printed materials also have staying power – leaflets can stay pinned to desks long after launch day. And if you want to involve your employees’ partners in the scheme, then letters to their home address will encourage joint decision-making.

  1. Digital communications

Regular newsletters and emails keep awareness high. A quarterly e-newsletter and occasional emails will allow you to highlight specific benefits at different times to boost engagement with particular products.

When we used a newsletter to highlight a client’s health cash plan, claims jumped from 58 to 160 in one quarter. This actually reduced the companies spend on Private Medical Insurance (PMI), helping us to negotiate great savings for them the following year.

  1. The might of merchandise

People love gifts, even small ones. Show your employees how much you value them by investing in mugs, pens, notepads, calendars, sweets, mousemats and more. Or come right up to date with items like portable phone chargers, fidget spinners and Bluetooth speakers. You can add your own logo and employer branding, to keep the benefits alive throughout the year.

Don’t get left behind

Research shows that some employers are getting wise to the need for effective employee communications to make their employee benefits strategy sing. According to Employee Benefits magazine, 68% offer some kind of digital communications, 59% offer face-to-face communications and 45% deliver printed materials. We think there’s still room for improvement. Better still is a co-ordinated strategy that involves a good mix of these different activities, tailored to the employee demographic.

More evidence that it works

Example 1

When one of our clients introduced its health cash plan, only eight employees upgraded to a higher level of cover. After a year’s ongoing communications, 63 people had upgraded. The communications included presentations on site, webinars, focus groups, promotional items, quarterly newsletters, and an intranet and employee magazine article.

Example 2

We arranged for a Group Income Protection (GIP) provider to give a range of workplace talks to one of our clients about their early intervention services. This led to an increase in use of these services, reducing the average length of absence and therefore the number of GIP claims. This meant that our client avoided an increase in their premium, despite a reduction in employee numbers and an ageing workforce.

Don’t think you can’t afford it

Cutting costs by cutting down on communications is a false economy in our view. Businesses need to have a planned, targeted and measurable communications strategy in place. It needn’t cost the earth – a provider who’s committed to making a success of your scheme should be able to offer integrated, scalable communications solutions that won’t break the bank.

1Money Talks: communicating employee benefits report. Cass Business School on behalf of Unum, 2013