4 Tips to Maximize Utilization When Launching a New HR Initiative

Spread the Word

Clear communication to employees is the foundation to any successful rollout. During a new program launch, your HR department should proactively communicate with and rally employees at three key touchpoints:

Preliminary communication. 

Before the rollout, start generating buzz for the program internally. Send out an email or a text message giving sneak peeks that highlight some of the coolest features of the program. It may also be helpful to reach out to the program vendor to get tips on how to build excitement for the launch based on past rollout experiences at other companies (see our post How to Simplify Benefits Communication for Open Enrollment for more).

Communication during rollout. 

The rollout period should be informative and appropriate. Don’t assume bigger is better. Depending on your organization, small group meetings in-person or via Zoom might be more appealing to employees than bigger lecture-style presentations.

Follow-up/after rollout. 

After launch, continual communication is essential to integrate a new program permanently into your company culture. Make sure to maintain follow-up communication in a frequent yet focused manner, so employees aren’t overburdened with information. It’s important to repeat, repeat, repeat. Even if employees don’t hear you the first time, they’ll remember where to go when it matters.

Rule of Seven

When communicating with employees, consider the “rule of seven” from marketing. This rule says a person needs to hear or see a message over seven times before it enters their consciousness. You can’t expect to fire off a single email and have it work for you. It’s always better to over communicate in the channels employees already use and love. It’s also important to leverage your workforce’s preferred communication channels. In our 2021 Employee Benefits Insights survey, 28% of respondents ranked an app as their top preferred way to receive benefits communications; 23% ranked email as their No. 1 preferred source.

Educate Your Employees

Once employees are aware that the program exists, they need to know how to use it. Employees might need additional education outside of open enrollment, especially if there’s new tech involved. While it may be easier to put employee education on autopilot, any effort will be more rewarding if it’s well-suited to your organization’s culture. Think outside the box — innovation has the power to influence engagement. Instead of sending emails people might not read, a brief, monthly video call could provide a more effective setting for coaching employees.

Education helps employees understand the true value of the benefits they are receiving. Once they know exactly what they have and how it works, they’ll realize its worth, boosting engagement and utilization rates naturally.

The Right Incentives Matter

Employees often need an extra push to engage with new HR initiatives, and incentives, such as financial rewards, are an opportunity for your HR team to motivate new and existing talent. Depending on your program, different approaches could lead to equally fruitful employee participation.

Sometimes small, lottery-style incentives work best. By giving people the opportunity to win (rather than a guaranteed reward), you can create strong motivation without producing entitlement. These incentives can take the form of raffles for gift cards, prizes, tickets to events, and more. Other times, more significant incentives are necessary when the behavior is hard to achieve or if the reward to the company is greater than the individual reward. For example, having an employee go to a local MRI provider (whose fee is $500) instead of going to a hospital for the same procedure (where the fee might total $1,000) might require a more significant incentive, but the payoff is also greater.

To drive utilization, employers need to choose the right incentives. In other words, the target behaviors being rewarded must drive employees to engage with the program and experience its benefits firsthand. For instance, the incentive for a 100-day step challenge should go to those who meet their weekly step goal, not just those who sign up for the program.

Lastly, make sure that employees are aware of the full value of the financial benefits they can receive by participating. Healthcare and benefits are complicated, and employees may not always understand what they’re getting in return for their time.

Ensuring Success

Launching a new initiative is stressful and tedious, so you need to guarantee that your HR department’s diligent efforts pay off in the form of high participation rates. From employee benefits to compensation and performance management, high employee utilization is key to the successful launch of any new HR initiative. By following these steps, you can optimize the employee experience, and ensure the investment of your time is well worth it.

This post was originally published in August 2018. It was updated in January 2022.