As Human Resources Director at Access Development, if I had a nickel for every time an employee called me from the dentist office to ask me who our dental insurance provider is, I’d own my own tropical island.
We go over it upon hire... and then each year at open enrollment. We send home printed materials detailing our plans. Each employee completes their personal enrollment forms. Then they tuck all that valuable information away into the nethermost corner of their mind.
Until they need it.
And then it’s panic time.
Meanwhile, in the HR department, we are immersed in benefits all day, every day. It’s our job. Some days, I feel like nothing more than a benefits vending machine. Employees feed in their needs and expect me to dispense the perfect solution in an easy-to-open package.
However, true magic happens when we take on the role of teacher, helping them master not only what their benefits are, but also how and when to use them.
Why Do We Need To Communicate Employee Perks/ Lifestyle Benefits?
We spend a ton of money in the effort to offer the best employee benefits. They are a huge component of employee compensation and a great opportunity to promote employee engagement. (We talk about this more in our article: Why Usage Matters.) We want our employees to recognize that working for our company makes their life easier, happier and better. We don’t want to be among the 74% of businesses that believe employees are underutilizing the benefits they make available.
Imagine what it would be like if your employees were taking full advantage of every single benefit your organization provides. How would that change the way they feel about their employer and affect their loyalty and performance as a result? Check out these recent statistics:
To sum it all up, employees who know about their benefits are more likely to use them, and employees who use their benefits are more likely to stay. Therefore, every opportunity to educate is an opportunity to deepen employee engagement and loyalty.
Why Don't Employees Use Their Benefits?
It’s tough to find a one-size-fits-all employee perk / lifestyle benefit. Most employers are expanding available options for health insurance plans and types of leave because employees’ needs vary so greatly.
It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, then, employees won’t use all of their benefits to the same degree.
Some reasons we have little control over. For example, some Access employees LOVE the Mass Transit Pass we offer. Others aren’t interested. Disinterest is actually a completely valid reason for employees to ignore a benefit or two (though hopefully your benefits package overall is diverse and inclusive enough that every person has something to love and enjoy).
Other reasons are well within our control. According to employees, the top reason they don’t use their benefits is because they don’t know about them. How are U.S. businesses doing? One study found that 69% of employers find it a challenge to help employees understand and value their benefits package. Plus, 73% of employees admitted they need more education about their benefits than they have.
As frustrating as this may be to hear, it’s actually good news. We can always do more to educate, and therefore, more to engage.
So how DO we market our benefits?
How To Promote Employee Benefits and Perks
History has shown us that most employees won’t regularly use their benefits without a little nudge or two… or two hundred.
When it comes to promoting benefits and employee perks, no single medium will do the trick on its own. Why? Employee preferences, benefit complexities, timing, etc. all favor different solutions. If you rely on one method of communication, you’re likely to get uneven results, with some employees more educated than others, and/or some benefits better understood than others.
Therefore, the best solution is to promote everywhere you can, and often.
Here are My 15 Favorites (and Why They Work):
- Offer Letter. It starts at the very beginning for us. Each time we extend an offer of employment to a new candidate, we issue an offer letter with a thorough list of the benefits they’ll receive upon hire. This is a great place to kick things off with them as it showcases the important role benefits play in their total compensation.
- New Hire Orientation. Each new employee receives a binder and electronic documents on their first day, which detail information about their benefits. We also set time aside for a benefits-specific orientation meeting as part of the onboarding process. New hires are given at least an hour to learn about benefits options, ask questions and complete enrollments.
- Open Enrollment Meeting. We hold a company-wide open enrollment meeting annually regardless of whether or not any changes have occurred to our insurance plans. This gives all employees the opportunity to ask questions of company leaders and benefits providers.
- HR Virtual Assistant/AI Chatbot. More and more businesses are implementing AI tools to answer common questions, link employees with valuable resources and even to assist employees in choosing the best benefit options for their unique circumstances. This frees up time for you to tackle less repetitive tasks. The good news is, 70% of employers and 30% of employees trust AI to make benefits recommendations, and the numbers are growing.
- Emails. Emails are easily the most frequently used and broadly accepted method for promoting our benefits. Although they tend to have the broadest reach, they also occasionally get lost in the shuffle since our employees use email so heavily for their personal job duties. To avoid this, we label our emails with clear subject lines and encourage employees to save them in a special folder. That way, it’s easy for employees to search by keywords when they want to revisit an email for future reference. These savable emails are a great place to attach copies of our benefits guide, video tutorials, links to carrier sites, lists of important phone numbers, etc.
- Slack or Teams Channels. At our company, we use the instant messenger tool Slack for internal communication. In addition to employees using it for one-on-one or small group collaboration, we have a handful of company-wide channels. Two benefits-specific examples include: “Be Well”, where we promote company physical and mental health initiatives and “Savings Stories”, where employees are encouraged to post savings they’ve received when using our employee discount program.
- Short Videos for Micro-Learning. In today’s TikTok world, people are used to consuming information in quick, visual bursts. Science shows that micro-learning improves learning speed and retention, making it an ideal vehicle for teaching complex topics like benefits. For example, a short video about when to use telehealth or visit an urgent care center instead of the emergency room can help employees receive appropriate care AND help keep premiums down for the entire company by directing them to the more economical option.
- Walk-Abouts. You can’t ever really beat face-to-face. We love to go Paul-Revere-style and walk around the office to promote upcoming events whenever possible. We’re able to communicate our excitement for the benefit and employees can get clarity if they have any questions. It’s been one of the most effective means for us to get the word out and build excitement surrounding our benefits.
- Monthly Newsletters. Each edition includes a message from the HR team about benefits utilization and an article from a member of our Be Well team which focuses on physical and mental health and wellness. They typically incorporate tips for improving in one or more areas of wellness and include any company benefits that would help with those goals.
- Internal Wiki or Intranet. Our benefits section on our internal wiki serves as a great central location to house overviews of all the benefits we offer. We include links to more specific details and instructions when needed. It’s the best place we’ve found to provide an all-inclusive “how-to” for all the benefits in our package.
- Outlook Calendar Events. Rather than leave it up to employees to remember all the on-site benefits we provide, we send out calendar invitations for events like 401K consultations, Q&As, financial workshops and others so they show up right on their Outlook calendar. This is an easy way to ensure they see friendly reminders of the benefits at their disposal.
- Time Clock and Payroll Management. Many benefits have to do with leave or vacation, so the best time to promote them is at the moment employees are already thinking about their schedules. For example, when they use our tool to request time off, we remind them about their discount travel booking benefits to help them save on their vacation adventures. When they check up on their electronic paystubs, we prompt them to check in on their 401(k) contributions.
- On-Site Events. Our annual health fair is a popular event each summer. Over the years, we’ve invited employees and their families to visit vendors and take advantage of great services like a CPR class, flu shots, DNA allergy testing, vision screening, chair massages, blood drives and lots more. Once an all-day event, we’ve reformatted our health fair into a health month to better fit a hybrid (in-office/at-home) work model. Our annual 5k that we hold each fall is a big hit with our employees AND since our providers sponsor a goodie bag for participants, it’s also a great chance to educate about wellness initiatives/benefits.
- Visiting Consultants. Each quarter we bring in benefits specialists and representatives from our benefits carriers. This gives employees an opportunity to bring up any issues and ask the questions that help them be better consumers of their benefits. For example, our 401(k) planner meets with employees individually if they’d like. Employees can schedule an appointment to go over their plan, ask questions and seek advice regarding their investments. This has really helped our employees maximize the value of our retirement benefits.
- Employee Surveys: Employee surveys can pull double duty. Not only will you be getting valuable feedback about what benefits, tools and communication methods your unique workforce prefers, surveys also remind employees about their benefits and help them feel heard. We love to use both long and short (some only 2-3 questions long) surveys throughout the year to gauge what matters to employees. There are free survey tools and it doesn’t take more than a few minutes to create the survey and assess the results.
Do What Works
It’s a huge task helping everyone understand not only the carriers and benefits you offer, but also how to utilize them to their fullest potential. Hopefully this list of my most effective communication strategies will give you some new ideas. The key is to identify what works for your benefits and your people.
Drop us a comment below with some of YOUR favorite and most effective methods for getting the word out about your corporate benefits. We love new ideas!