Despite good intentions and significant investment in valuable employee benefits, it's not uncommon to see low engagement and utilisation figures. A key component often missing for driving meaningful engagement and emotional commitment towards your benefits offering is effective communication.
The impact of poor benefits communication
Lockton’s recent study of the Irish workforce found that one-third of respondents do not use their benefits because they don’t know what’s available or where to find the relevant information. This represents a missed opportunity to maximise organisational objectives and investment, drive employee wellbeing and overall employee experience.
The benefits utilisation challenges experienced by employers may be solved with a proactive approach to benefits communication. Employers can do this by knowing what their employees and organisation currently find valuable and ensuring that engaging and frequent communication with employees is central throughout the processes.
Identify employee needs and gain data-driven insights
Achieving meaningful engagement requires more than occasionally broadcasting messages—it needs a tailored, easily accessible, and understandable approach that speaks directly to your audience. This can be accomplished by understanding the current environment and finding alignment between the needs of your organisation and your people.
A clear understanding of your company’s vision, business objectives, and people priorities will lay the foundation for your reward and benefits strategy. Employee feedback and careful analysis of trends, demographics, communication metrics, and workforce insights will help identify areas requiring immediate attention and future opportunities.
Looking at significant life moments that require employer support can be a good starting point when exploring when people need benefits and how they access the information. For example, during times of personal crisis, such as the loss of a loved one, or during life events like marriage, the birth of a child, significant time off, or a promotion, your benefits communication should enable your people to find the information they need.
Develop your benefits communication approach
Armed with a needs-based understanding and the view that communication is a core component of your benefits strategy, you can develop a communication plan with tactics to help address your current state and support longer-term objectives or budget considerations.
Lockton’s approach to organising your benefits communication is to develop a plan across three communication tiers: connect, educate, and engage. This provides options. You can focus on implementing one tier and its related tactics, implement one tier and then move on to the next, or combine different tactics from each tier to support the needs of your business and people.
Connect: Imagine this as the stage where the relationship with your employees begins. At this point, it’s about making employees aware of the benefits available, where to find information about them and how to use them.
Educate: To ensure the people driving your business understand the benefits at their disposal, you should prioritise content that promotes learning opportunities and identify communication opportunities throughout the year – instead of only during new joiner onboarding or annual enrolment.
By offering essential information in an accessible location and aligning awareness opportunities with relatable key dates or moments, you begin to bridge any knowledge gaps and start to empower your employees to make informed decisions about their health, finances, and overall wellbeing. Through clear communication, you can also demonstrate that the benefits on offer have been considered with business objectives and employee needs in mind. You can also highlight how it’s been negotiated with providers, usually at better rates with additional value-added services.
Engage: Enrolment initiatives, broader strategic efforts, message development and, importantly, benefits branding should be crafted to align with the insights gained about your organisation and people. It should involve and interest your employees while cutting through the noise to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.
To drive greater engagement, you may consider implementing a mixed-media approach - videos, short-form articles, webinars, brochures, how-to guides, or FAQs. By focusing on accessibility and leveraging both targeted and mass communication channels, you can ensure your message reaches its intended audience. The goal is to stimulate employee curiosity, encourage interaction, and foster a connection or emotional involvement with the communicated content.
Moving towards an integrated programme
Importantly, communication doesn't end with delivery—it's an ongoing process of refinement and adaptation. By evaluating members' responses and understanding their comprehension of implemented plans, you can continuously refine your plans to meet the evolving needs of your business and workforce.
A well-integrated benefits programme will ensure that communication plays a central role. In turn, efforts to plan how and when benefits information is shared and accessed will reframe your employees’ understanding of their benefits and how to use them effectively. This can help create a greater appreciation for benefits' role in one’s total reward package, driving business priorities and assisting with everyone’s overall wellbeing.
To find out more on how we can support your business with its benefits communications, visit our People Solutions (opens a new window) page or contact your Lockton consultant.
