Employee Benefits Communication Guide

Guardian reported in its 2017 Workplace Benefits Survey that 3 in 5 millennial workers wish it were easier to understand and access their benefits, and in an HR Tech Weekly poll, 50% of employees reported they couldn’t access their benefits in the way they prefer. The Guardian survey reported that 77% of companies rated employee engagement as a top priority.

Your benefits booklet just isn’t cutting it.

That’s because benefits booklets are a maze of complicated language, confusing details, and unclear points of contact. They’re so ineffective that employees will likely neglect to read them entirely. Instead, they’ll wait until they need their benefits, then make a hurried decision (see It’s Time to Kill the Benefits Booklet).

If you’re feeling discouraged, try not to panic. Not all communication is doomed. Instead of investing all your efforts in a print product, you can put your weight behind more impactful methods of communication. Strive to meet employees where they actually want to communicate: in their inbox, on their mobile phones, in their Slack feeds, or all of the above (see Why Baby Boomers are Flocking to Healthcare Apps).

During OE: improve benefits education

Employees just don’t know enough about their benefits to take advantage of them when they’d be most useful. An Aflac survey showed that 26% of Millennials would rather clean a toilet than research their health benefits.

You’re fighting a losing battle. But benefits education is the answer.

Taking time to get this phase right is crucial for increasing utilization and employee satisfaction. When done right, you can even increase trust in your benefits and minimize tricky questions down the road.

Improve your benefits presentation

Rolling out the new year’s benefits might start with an employee benefit presentation. Unlike the benefits booklet, you can’t afford to skip this old school step.

A benefits presentation is part one of your effective year-round employee benefits communication strategy, but a presentation can catapult your benefits utilization and give your employees something to remember when they need their benefits the most.

Of course, the fact that you’ve always done a benefits presentation doesn’t mean you have to use the same formula from year to year. In fact, we recommend you don’t.

Just a few ideas (more of which are in our “eBook: 10 Tips for Your Employee Benefits Presentation Inspired by TED Talks”):

If so, you can consider a few important points:

Maintain look and feel of your brand

Keep employees engaged by applying your style guide to your benefits presentation.

Smile, pause, use hands, slow down

In other words, master your body language.

Benefits communication requires emails. Make them better.

Like your employee benefits presentation, your open enrollment email campaign is likely in danger of getting stale. Most employees are bombarded with emails outside of open enrollment, and unlikely to open something unless it requires immediate action.

To keep the vital information in your emails from falling off the map, revisit them from year to year.

Simple tweaks like improving your subject line, cutting the length of your email, and hitting the right conversational tone can make a world of difference. Above all, make sure to proofread your emails. We’re all human, and tools like Grammarly.com make it simple to improve your writing. For more, read our eBook 6 Tips for Better Open Enrollment Emails.

Leverage the latest technology for benefits communication

As you consider how to effectively communicate with employees about open enrollment, try switching things up. Consider the demographics of your employee base and build your education campaign around their needs.

If most employees are located in one office,

A lunch-and-learn style meeting might work perfectly well. The same meeting style might be difficult for your remote sales team to attend. Those employees may need a follow-up message on Slack with details from the meeting. Or, they may respond well to a live virtual Q&A through Zoom.

Perhaps you’re speaking to a mostly rural workforce.

They aren’t often at their desks and check email just once a day, so the best way to reach them may be through a combination of a couple emails and mailers sent to their home.

An SMS messaging campaign

or a push notification campaign for those with benefits centralized in an app, is likely to be effective no matter the demographics of your employee base (see What Are HealthJoy’s JOY Campaigns?).

To succeed in benefits education during OE, make use of all the technology at your fingertips.

Build trust through benefits communications

Keep in mind that if you’re introducing a new benefit, you can either quickly build trust—or break it—with a few steps. Research indicates we decide almost immediately whether to trust something new. Once trust is lost, it’s extremely difficult, or even impossible, to gain back (see Building Trust in Your 2020 Benefits).

To quickly establish trust in your new benefit:

• Ask senior leadership to share their positive experiences with your new offering. Nothing establishes trust like real-world examples.
• Display data security protocols. Does your benefits provider have a page with this information that’s in plain English? Are there security badges to include alongside their logo? Include all of these pieces in your benefits communication from the very beginning.
• Solicit feedback. Ask your employees how they feel about their new benefit using an anonymous tool like Survey Monkey. Keep a finger on issues to remedy them before utilization tanks.

Build trust through benefits communications

Keep in mind that if you’re introducing a new benefit, you can either quickly build trust—or break it—with a few steps. Research indicates we decide almost immediately whether to trust something new. Once trust is lost, it’s extremely difficult, or even impossible, to gain back (see Building Trust in Your 2020 Benefits).

To quickly establish trust in your new benefit:

• Ask senior leadership to share their positive experiences with your new offering. Nothing establishes trust like real-world examples.
• Display data security protocols. Does your benefits provider have a page with this information that’s in plain English? Are there security badges to include alongside their logo? Include all of these pieces in your benefits communication from the very beginning.
• Solicit feedback. Ask your employees how they feel about their new benefit using an anonymous tool like Survey Monkey. Keep a finger on issues to remedy them before utilization tanks.

Smoothly Introduce Plan Design Changes

In 2018, there was a 20 percent increase in the number of employers offering at least one high-deductible health plan (HDHP) compared to 2016 in their plan design.

Other additions and changes are proliferating as well as companies work to add more value in a competitive job market. That puts HR in the uncomfortable position of explaining that the benefits employees have always enjoyed might be changing (see Navigating an Employee Benefits Plan Design Change).

Changing your plan design can be jarring for employees, especially because most don’t understand the basics of their insurance plan. In fact, according to the UnitedHealthcare 2017 Consumer Sentiment Survey, only 9 percent of the U.S. population showed an understanding of all four of these basic health insurance terms: plan premium, deductible, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket maximum.

Help employees by explaining in plain English what’s new with their plan. Don’t forget that employees may be starting from scratch, and that understanding benefits design takes time.

Driving employee benefits satisfaction with benefits communication

From outdated benefits booklets to stale presentations, benefits communications no longer work the way we expect. The result is low employee engagement, low employee benefits satisfaction, and poor healthcare decisions.

Luckily, there’s a solution. By employing the basics of good communication, you’ll establish a firm foundation. From there, analyze your OE communication plan. Consider killing your benefits booklet in favor of delivering benefits communication in a way that meets employees, and their families, where they already are.

During open enrollment, nail your presentation and emails with a few of our tips, leverage technology to get creative with campaigns, and pay attention to building employee trust right away. Don’t get nervous when introducing a plan change. Instead, help employees see the upside and offer support to navigate changes.

After OE, don’t neglect the remaining 364 days of the year. A year-round communication plan and willingness to track and tweak are essential. Build a strong benefits communication and watch as employee engagement and benefits satisfaction soar.