{"id":8346,"date":"2022-12-14T10:40:59","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T16:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bbrown.com\/insight\/can-benefits-communication-help-to-engage-employees-throughout-the-year\/"},"modified":"2022-12-14T10:40:59","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T16:40:59","slug":"can-benefits-communication-help-to-engage-employees-throughout-the-year","status":"publish","type":"insight","link":"https:\/\/www.bbrown.com\/ca\/insight\/can-benefits-communication-help-to-engage-employees-throughout-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Benefits Communication Help to Engage Employees Throughout the Year?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Employee Benefits<\/p>\n

\n Can Benefits Communication Help to Engage Employees Throughout the Year?\n <\/h1>\n\t\n <\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2\/3″]\n
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\n Can Benefits Communication Help to Engage Employees Throughout the Year?\n <\/h1>\n\t\n <\/div>[vc_column_text]Many companies treat annual enrollment as their \u201cSuperbowl\u201d of benefits communication. They spend most of their time and money on a one-time opportunity to capture attention\u2014thinking it\u2019s their best chance to capitalize on the focus of employees and family members who are faced with an often-complex set of health care plan decisions.<\/p>\n

This year, many of our clients took the opportunity to change their tactics and use annual enrollment to launch a new approach to a year-round benefits communication experience for employees. Across varying industries and geographies, we saw five key approaches to the most effective strategies when creating a year-round communications plan:<\/p>\n

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  1. Taking a Page from Marketing.<\/strong> Leaning into their external brands, organizations who create compelling internal benefits brand identities help to convey a story about their benefits value proposition and bring programs to life in a way that is aligned with culture. Brand identities also help to visually reinforce the human element of benefits through dynamic imagery or illustration.<\/li>\n
  2. Keeping it \u201cEdutaining.\u201d<\/strong> Benefits education can be heavy. Benefits marketing, on the other hand, can be dynamic and engaging when we combine education<\/em> with entertainment<\/em>. Reducing the reading level to improve accessibility is a start, but organizations that push further with simplified, bite-sized information delivered through interactive media\u2014such as visual emails and quick-hit videos\u2014see increased awareness across their workforce. For instance, launching a mobile-responsive email design can increase unique mobile clicks by 15%.1<\/sup><\/li>\n
  3. Meeting People Where They Are.<\/strong> To truly capture attention, we must deliver relevant information in the right place at the right time to the right people. For example, text messages are opened five times more than email. In fact, 98% of text messages are read within two minutes compared to 20% of emails.2<\/sup> To help increase the likelihood that employees and family members watch a video, read a newsletter or visit a site, send it to their phone. It is also important to consider where people spend their time. Is a large segment of the population based in a physical location? If so, leverage break rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, elevators and other spaces employees are more likely to notice information.<\/li>\n
  4. Making it Personal.<\/strong> Today, most organizations have diverse workforces\u2014spanning generations, family status, lifestyles, life stages, socioeconomic realities and more\u2014and benefits are not one-size-fits-all. A great way to help improve communications is with storytelling and including personas or \u201cpeople like me\u201d in materials to bring benefits to life by connecting them to relatable human needs and interests. Using available HRIS and benefits administration data, organizations can take personalization further through targeted messaging tailored more closely to individual needs.<\/li>\n
  5. Gathering Employee Input.<\/strong> Perhaps one of the best ways to engage employees is to discover what they are interested in\u2014along with when and where they want to hear about benefits. Build benefits communication questions into employee surveys, conduct focus groups with people managers to learn the questions they are most asked and meet with employee resource groups to receive guidance on relevant topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The good news is that organizations don\u2019t have to tackle every approach at once. As you kick off a new well-being campaign early in 2023, try to infuse storytelling to describe your program. If you send out monthly benefit emails, introduce infographics to make them more visual. Add a new monthly poll or quiz to your benefits website to make it interactive. And don\u2019t forget to measure the impact of your refreshed communications, so you can focus on the tactics that work for your unique populations.<\/p>\n

    1<\/sup> MailChimp<\/strong><\/a>, 2021<\/p>\n

    2<\/sup> https:\/\/www.openmarket.com\/resources\/why-enterprises-use-mobile-messaging-infographic\/<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”2314″ alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_circle_2″][vc_separator border_width=”2″ el_width=”60″][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

    Erika Illiano<\/h6>\n

    Partner, Communication Practice Leader<\/p>\n

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    \n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tConnect Now<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n[\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [vc_row row_style=”page-hero” full_width=”stretch_row_content”][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2\/3″][vc_column_text]Many companies treat annual enrollment as their \u201cSuperbowl\u201d of benefits communication. They spend most of their time and money on a one-time opportunity to capture attention\u2014thinking it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":8347,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"insight_category":[31],"class_list":["post-8346","insight","type-insight","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","insight_category-employee-benefits"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCan Benefits Communication Help to Engage Employees Throughout the Year? - Brown & Brown<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbrown.com\/ca\/insight\/can-benefits-communication-help-to-engage-employees-throughout-the-year\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can Benefits Communication Help to Engage Employees Throughout the Year?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[vc_row row_style=”page-hero” full_width=”stretch_row_content”][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2\/3″][vc_column_text]Many companies treat annual enrollment as their \u201cSuperbowl\u201d of benefits communication. 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