It can be challenging for your recruitment teams to find the right mix of talent to keep your business running smoothly. Even when you’re able to make a successful hire, there is plenty of competition from other businesses to entice employees to think about shortening their tenure in search of a better employment option elsewhere.
Employee benefits are an effective way to show your employees you value their contributions and can help them feel more confident in their employment choices.
However, simply offering these benefits isn’t necessarily enough to showcase the value they bring. You also need to have an effective strategy in place to promote those benefits to all your employees. Below are some practical ways to do this
Clearly Explaining Benefits’ Value
Benefits coverage information isn’t always straightforward and can be confusing for many employees to manage. To help everyone in your business have a clear understanding of all the options available to them, it’s important to take some important steps:
Use Straightforward Messaging
To simplify the messaging given to your employees surrounding their benefits, be sure to:
- Keep the Language Simple – If you’ve ever seen a benefits guidebook provided by an insurance provider, you know they’re often long and filled with industry jargon. Instead of repeating this information word-for-word to employees, take the time to explain each relevant detail in terms that everyone can understand.
- Use Real-Life Examples – Even if your employees understand the basic concepts of their benefits coverage, it’s often a good idea to try to provide different scenarios where they could apply. For example, you could outline what the typical costs of doctor visits or prescription refills for the average person might be throughout the year when paying out of pocket versus when paying monthly coverage premiums.
- Provide Quick Summaries – Many times, less is more when it comes to digesting large amounts of information. Benefits plans are no different. Instead of only giving employees long, comprehensive breakdowns of each of their benefit options, you should also provide them with quick summaries of their coverage. This gives them a quick reference tool they can use to make decisions during open enrollment periods.
Equip Employees With Decision-Support Tools
Your employees should feel confident in the decisions they make when customizing their benefits coverage for themselves and their families. To make this process easier, you should look for ways to provide various decision-support tools they can use.
Best-of-breed benefits administration platforms can provide employees with user-friendly tools they can reference whenever they need to better understand their coverage options. These tools include integrated premium cost calculators, side-by-side plan comparison tools, and helpful educational videos, all of which are designed to provide employees with an easy self-service experience.
Provide Personalized Services
While self-service tools can be helpful, sometimes employees might need some more personalized assistance when navigating their benefits options. But instead of putting more strain on your HR teams, you can outsource your benefits support to the professionals who can offer the most value to your teams.
Benefits call centers are a great resource you can rely on to give your teams fast answers to all their benefits-related questions. These resources are available by phone, email, or chat, and connect employees with various insurance experts who can offer more detailed explanations of coverage plans and help walk employees through each stage of their enrollment process.
Utilize Webinars For Assisting With Open Enrollment
As open enrollment periods get closer, it can be a great idea to work with your benefits consultant and have them host a webinar for your employees. Webinar formats are perfect for distributed teams and help to inform employees about benefit options before OE periods begin, and there’s a rush for businesses to finalize their ACA reporting.
These webinars are also a good format to allow employees to ask specific questions they have about plan options or specific terms related to their plans. These interaction sessions tend to help employees retain more information than simply reading through a long list of coverage details.
Gather Feedback From Employees
While you may have put in place various initiatives to help promote your benefits packages to employees, it’s important to know whether the offerings you’re providing are actually valuable enough for your teams. The best way to do this is to ask them directly by conducting surveys and regular one-on-one discussions.
After open enrollment periods end, send out a quick survey to each of your employees to get feedback or suggestions on how you can improve the process. You could ask them how satisfied they are with their options, if enrollment workflows were smooth, and whether the benefits platform resources they have access to are easy to understand and use.
Refine Your Benefits Packages Over Time
Putting together a valuable benefits package for your business isn’t always straightforward and takes time and resources to manage. However, some businesses get into the habit of leaving their benefits untouched for too long, which could be causing them to see negative returns on their investments.
Over time, the needs of the business and its employees change. This is why it’s important to make it a habit to regularly evaluate and refine your benefits packages. It’s best practice that every year, you thoroughly examine the type of coverage options you offer to employees and make sure they’re still providing value based on your employees’ needs. This helps you identify coverage options you may be paying for that employees rarely use and could be removed or replaced.
If you do decide to make certain changes, be clear to your employees about what’s changing and explain any potential impact these adjustments might have on them, so everyone stays informed moving forward.
Help Employees Appreciate the Value Your Benefits Provide
A well-designed benefits package is a considerable asset businesses can use to attract quality talent while keeping them motivated to stick around for the long term. When you make a consistent effort to educate your employees about their benefits, it helps to highlight their value while ensuring you maximize usage.
Author Bio: Frank Mengert
Frank Mengert continues to find success by spotting opportunities where others see nothing. As the founder and CEO of ebm, a leading provider of employee benefits solutions. Frank has built the business by bridging the gap between insurance and technology driven solutions for brokers, consultants, carriers, and employers nationwide.