3 Most Creative Ways to Communicate Employee Benefits
With all eyes on reinventing the employee experience this year, your organization’s benefits program is likely going through some significant changes. In fact, Harvard Business Review reported that 98% of businesses plan to expand their benefits program this year. However, as every HR leader knows, having a great benefits program doesn’t guarantee that employees will recognize the value or sentiment.
As your team prepares for open enrollment season in the new normal (it’ll be here before you know it), it’s imperative that you find creative ways to communicate employee benefits information. Here’s our list of the top 3 most impactful communication approaches for attracting and keeping your employees’ attention.
1. Incorporate The 3 C’s Of Communication
Condense
Compliance rules have a way of hindering creativity, but that doesn’t mean HR teams should wave the white flag and surrender to the fine print. There’s plenty of time to get the legally required details across.
Before you do, capture your employees’ attention by cutting the crapola and getting to the juicy parts of their benefits. Lead off your communications strategy with the highlights and only share the must-know details of your benefits program. Follow up with the finer details after you’ve earned their attention.
Conversationalize
Nothing puts the kibosh on a benefits conversation like using a bunch of insurance jargon to explain what makes your program so great. Avoid using complex language and acronyms whenever possible. If insurance-speak is crucial to the messaging, educate employees on what terms mean by explaining the basics, like having a friend-to-friend dinner conversation. Keep it casual, use short, simple sentences, and don’t be afraid to toss in a little pop culture humor.
Convert
Employee engagement initiatives are a fool’s errand without the means to track and measure how employees interact with communications. Take a page from marketing’s playbook and incorporate a “call-to-action” or CTA in your communications. CTA’s are action-oriented and tell the recipient what you’d like them to do after receiving your message. Marketers often include a “CTA button” or link at the end of the message to encourage the recipient to fill out a form, download additional resources, visit a particular website page or contact a representative for more information.
For use in your benefits communication strategy, consider adding CTA buttons that take employees to their benefits portal or other related resources that will further their knowledge and understanding of benefits (and how to use them).
2. Promote Like An IG Boss
Instagram is insta-famous for its ability to entice consumerism by placing creative, bite-size video ads in its target audience’s scroll path. I get it; employee benefits aren’t as “sexy” as consumer products, but in an office setting, there’s a lot of space to “disrupt” the usual corporate communication pattern with a little color, character, and (dare I say, animation).
The important detail to remember here is “promotion.” Promotional strategy is all about creating awareness around opportunity. Instead of an exclusive sale or product feature, your employee benefits promotions can showcase unique details about the program, success stories from employees who used the program to better their lives and use cases that teach employees how to get the most value out of their benefits.
3. Show Employees What’s Up
When it comes to communicating complex topics -- especially those related to healthcare plans, retirement and other notoriously confusing employee benefits -- providing a visual audio experience is still considered the most powerful form of communication.
For starters, the average employee receives over 120 emails per day and sends over 40. That’s a lot of reading and writing, plus the countless business reports, corporate memos, articles and other documents they digest regularly. Video is easier to consume and appeals to multiple learning styles, which means that the information communicated is more likely to “sink in.”
Furthermore, employees often fit time for communications from HR about employee benefits in-between other more pressing job priorities, which means their attention span is already reduced to its lowest capacity. In such moments, things such as music, voiceovers and on-screen action provide the entertainment value needed to engage employees. When compared to a screen or a page full of text, it’s a no-brainer!
Even though video is the superior modality for internal communications (especially where complex topics are concerned), length is still an important factor to keep in mind. Attention can wane during even the most action-packed videos. Revert back to the 3 C’s of creative communication and shoot for no longer than 2-3 minutes.
THE Most Creative Way to Communicate Employee Benefits
How will you fit so much information into just a few minutes of video? We have the answer -- don’t! If you really want to break the creative barrier in your employee benefits communication strategy, invest in a video library that breaks down all the basics of employee benefits into bite-size videos that can be watched at any time, anywhere, in any order.
For example, the BeneBits™ video library offered by brand28 is a subscription-based solution to your employee benefits communication challenges. Each video features professional scriptwriting, voiceover, animation, music and more!
Furthermore, BeneBits™ focuses on a variety of different tactics to keep your employees engaged with the information. From game shows and truth bombs to quiz questions and fun facts, employees will appreciate the break from traditional benefits talk. Plus, leadership will appreciate that they can monitor viewing trends and standardize how they talk about benefits across employee populations and branches.
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