3 keys to clear benefits communication

We can pile benefit on top of benefit, but if we don’t attend to employee awareness and utilization, we will never give them what they want.

Employees tend to ignore the benefits they don’t understand, and in our efforts to increase understanding, we’re tempted to blast them with information.

We’ve all heard “communication is king,” but with remote work a new reality for many of us, it’s hard to know how to execute. Some days, it seems like we’re simultaneously overcommunicating on Slack and missing cues on video calls. It’s tougher than ever before, but also more important for company leaders to pay careful attention to how and what they communicate with employees.

During my time running a high-growth startup, I’ve learned that there’s a big difference between what we say to employees and what they hear—case in point: Employee benefits. I know HR teams may feel like they’ve spent much of the last year triaging employee concerns, from mental health to financial stress to physical health. So I was astounded to learn that in our recent Employee Benefits Insights Survey, 12% of our survey pool still felt that their company didn’t care about their health and wellbeing.

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The truth is this: We can pile benefit on top of benefit, but if we don’t attend to employee awareness and utilization, we will never give them what they want. The value of your benefits must be clear to employees. To achieve that reality, you need to focus on communication.

1. Focus on value

As employers, we work hard to balance our desire to support employees with competing business pressures. A recent survey from Principal Financial Group found that affordability won out over the ability to attract and retain talent when considering benefits. The same study found that turnover is up and that employers plan to rely on benefits to keep employees around. With the average employer spending over $15,000 to cover a single family, not highlighting the value is a missed opportunity.

As we stretch to provide more support for employees, this tension may never go away. By making sure employees understand the value of their benefits, though, we can ensure we’re making the most of our investment.

We hear all the time from clients that once employees grasp HealthJoy’s fundamental value proposition—that we make it easier for them to be healthy and well—they fall in love with the product. Similarly, a wellness benefit’s value doesn’t lie in the free yoga classes they can access or even in a reimbursement check for counseling. The value is in the promise of living happier lives, being more present for their families, and giving back more fully to their communities.

You might try incorporating this subtle shift in your open enrollment and benefits materials through anecdotes, employee testimonials, and lunch-and-learn sessions. It requires you to return to the benefit throughout the year, collect feedback from employees, and send regular reminders. You’ll need to steer away from a list of features and lean into stories that explain the value. But the results are worth it. With consistent communication, you can help employees fall in love with their benefits.

2. Keep channels open

When you’re communicating about benefits, it’s so easy to focus on what you want to say. Employees tend to ignore the benefits they don’t understand, and in our efforts to increase understanding, we’re tempted to blast them with information.

But that doesn’t give employees the space they need to provide feedback and ask questions. Over the last year, we’ve incorporated so many more listening channels into our employee communications. Whether it’s an in-depth survey about return-to-work preferences, a quick employee ENPS survey, or a single-question poll at our company meeting, this feedback has been invaluable.

Employees crave a way to ask questions and give feedback on their work environments. The same is true of employee benefits, so remember that your communication channels should run both ways. Inviting questions across several different forums, like Q&A sessions, email responses, and anonymous polls, is essential. You may even find that employees prefer to speak with a third party, like a live health care concierge, who can answer questions but isn’t associated with HR.

These questions and comments can guide your communication strategies by uncovering issues you may not have even considered. Employees might not be using your new benefit because they’re tripped up on the website portal. They may have a perception that your new virtual health care benefit is expensive. Two-way communication brings these hiccups into the light before they can tank your efforts to improve employee wellbeing.

3. Meet employees where they spend time

My final tip is all about where you choose to send your employee benefits communications.

When we surveyed 1,000 consumers about employer-provided benefits in March, we asked them where they turn with benefits questions. Over half of employees turn to their benefits guide first when they have questions, and many said they also went straight to their health insurance provider or HR department.

But when asked which communication method they prefer, apps and email beat out the same benefits guide. That tells us what we already know: that employees are spending more time than ever on their mobile devices. They want their benefits communications sent there, too.

I think there’s a gap between the way we’re providing benefits communications and how employees want to receive them. That gap may not even immediately lead to dissatisfaction. But over time, it can diminish employees’ understanding and prevent them from seeing the value in your benefits. After you put the work into selecting new benefits and refocusing your messages to show value, you must employ a resource that makes it easier to reach employees on their mobile devices.

This is undoubtedly a tough nut to crack, and the downstream effects of poor communication can be blamed for so much of the dysfunction in our benefits and health care system. So as you work to tackle this in your own corner of the world, I’ll leave you with this final note: In our employee benefits survey, on a scale of one to 10, employees ranked their HR team’s benefits communications an average of six. Are you satisfied with that rating?

Justin Holland is CEO and Co-founder of HealthJoy, an AI-powered platform that helps employees make better health care decisions.

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