5 Ways to Boost Remote Employee Engagement Around Benefits
Let’s face it. Benefits are often seen as a boring topic. But, they are an absolute must! It’s important for employees to truly understand how their benefits work in order for them to perceive them in a positive light, and to properly utilize them.
It was tough getting employees engaged in their benefits prior to the pandemic. Now, that’s an understatement given our remote and virtual world. Here are some remote employee engagement activities that you can try at your company to get employees engaged in their benefits!
Try These Remote Employee Engagement Activities for Benefits
Activity #1: Offer One-On-One Support
Nothing beats good ol’ one-on-one time with an expert. Our research finds that employees get very frustrated with their benefits not because of a lack of resources, but because of difficulty using those benefits.
Employees can spend hours researching benefits or calling multiple providers trying to figure out what’s in-network, what care they actually need, etc. Don’t let your employees wander in the desert of uncertainty!
Consider hosting a month of one-on-one meetings with your benefits representatives, insurance providers, mental health concierge and more. Give employees the opportunity to schedule a one-on-one 15-minute session to ask their questions. If successful, you could try implementing this twice a year.
TIMING: Do not do this during Open Enrollment. I repeat, do not do this during Open Enrollment. Open Enrollment season is overwhelming...for everyone. And employees use their benefits all throughout the year, not just during open enrollment season.
So, if you want to super-charge employee engagement around benefits, it’s best to host one-on-one support a few months after open enrollment is complete. This will give employees a few months to use their benefits and see if there are any gaps in their knowledge.
Activity #2: Get Competitive With A Scavenger Hunt
If you have a (friendly) competitive team, nothing beats a good challenge! Set up a virtual scavenger hunt for employees to find information on their benefits, and offer a big prize for the winner. (Hint: Some insurance carriers or wellness providers offer employers some great giveaways at no additional cost like FitBits. Be sure to ask them!)
Here’s how to execute:
Step 1: Decide which benefit features you think employees will really appreciate, or are under-utilized. For example, 401(k) employer match, contributing to an HSA, $10 generic drugs or free counseling for mental health.
Step 2: Design questions that will guide employees to the benefits listed in step 1. For example,
“Did you know that we give you money to help you retire?
The money is yours and will never expire.
Can you find how much we contribute to you?
You may save enough to retire in Honolulu!”
Step 3: Assign points to each question. For harder questions, assign a greater amount of points.
Step 4: Then, it’s off to the races. Give employees a scavenger hunt sheet to fill out (fillable PDF form will do nicely), provide instructions and announce the big prize they’ll win. Don’t set a due date, just let them dive in and race!
TIMING: The best time to do a scavenger hunt is a month prior to Open Enrollment. That way, employees can learn about some of the great perks of their benefits, and they can make any necessary changes come Open Enrollment.
Activity #3: Give Them Something to Binge
Look, it’s getting harder every year to get employees to pay attention when you want them to pay attention. Netflix ruined us all. We all want to absorb information on our terms. When we’re ready to watch or read, that’s when we’ll do it. And, we want the flexibility to not have commercials, fast forward through information that isn’t relevant or skip around to other content. So, give your employees that same experience for benefits education!
Offering a plethora of short videos (hint, hint: BeneBits™) on different benefits topics that employees can watch whenever they want helps improve employee understanding and engagement. Host these videos on a platform that is visited frequently by employees, such as your Intranet.
Benefits videos have been proven to reduce employee confusion surrounding benefits and improve employee appreciation of their benefits package. Just take a look at our suite of bite-size, binge-worthy benefits videos.
TIMING: It’s important that employees have easy access to their benefits information all-year long. Think of these short videos as “on-demand” – they’re there for employees when they need it. And think about it, this also will cut down the number of questions coming your way. Win-win situation!
Activity #4: Tell Stories
When it comes to benefits, you almost have to sell these great packages to your employees. Your company spends a lot of money on benefits, so getting your employees excited about them and engaged with what you’re offering is a must.
Want to hear a secret when it comes to selling benefits? Stories matter! Stories are a game-changer. Stories make the subject matter interesting, relatable and way more educational.
So, how can you incorporate stories while trying to engage your remote team with benefits? Choose a route…
- Fictional stories: If you’re in HR, a benefits consultant or are a business leader, you have heard plenty of stories! You’ve heard the worst of them such as getting bills in the tens of thousands of dollars, or spending way too much on prescription drugs, or getting an unexpected bill due to balance billing.
Use the information you have to create stories that will help employees navigate their own benefits. Create a fictional character, but use the real stories you know and add your suggestions on what could’ve been done to prevent the worst from happening. Choose a story to send out every month. Keep this up for a year, and you’ll have 12 awesome tips for your employees to be a smart healthcare consumer!
- Non-fictional stories: If you have employees that want to share their experience with other employees, let them! Encourage them to make a video of themselves talking about what happened and then share that story with the rest of the team. And these stories don’t always have to be about something “bad” that happened. Employee stories can also be used to highlight the good of the benefits.
For example, employees can talk about how much money they saved with their daycare by using a Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account. This story will resonate with the other parents of young children at the workplace, and perhaps give them a different perspective.
Stories are powerful and if you can find a way to release a story every month about one little nugget of information, by the end of the year you’ll have an entire video library of content that is sure to give employees an entirely new way of thinking about their benefits.
TIMING: Release one story every month. A helpful tip is to create four stories before your first release. That way you have plenty of content and won’t be rushing to get more stories out to employees.
Activity #5: Make It Fun
During the first major Open Enrollment season of the pandemic era, we saw a lot of employers going in the direction of virtual benefit fairs. While it was great that employers were genuinely trying to make this experience valuable for their employees, it wasn’t working out quite right. We spoke with employees all over the country to listen to what they want and need during Open Enrollment season. A virtual benefits fair was the last thing on their list. The benefits fairs were long, boring and they just weren’t resonating with employees and getting them excited about their benefits.
Transition your focus to the employee and what they may want. It’s hard to turn down fun. Consider hosting a virtual trivia all about benefits. Employees can even get their families involved! Perhaps you send employees something fun to their home like candies, a coffee or -- if you have the appropriate culture – a bottle of wine. Then, get employees online for a fun trivia game of benefits.
Of course, always offer the winner something that’s worth competing for. Consider multiple winners or teams in order to up the engagement level. There are so many directions you can go! But, it’s important to take a step back, deprogram all the things you think you should be doing when it comes to benefits education, and then think about what your employees want.
TIMING: You can do this any time! Choose a slow period for your business so that there won’t be any glaring distractions or added stress during this fun time.
So Many Ways to Boost Remote Engagement Around Benefits!
Wow, there are a lot of ways to engage your remote employees about benefits. Technology has made it so much easier to get your employees excited about signing up for benefits and using their benefits. So, take advantage! Get creative. Have some fun with it. It doesn’t have to be so boring.
When you incorporate small changes in how you interact with your team about benefits, your company will start to see a positive ROI on your investment in benefits. (And, far fewer questions that you have to answer over and over again!)
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