The advantages of thinking like a marketer when developing benefits strategy

HR and marketing share a core responsibility: to understand and empathize with the needs of their target audiences and users. Because employees are consumers, too, they’ve come to expect the same digital, personalized experiences at work that they get from their favorite brands. This is true even in older generations of workers. Businessolver data shows, for example, that boomer and Gen X employees are the most likely to opt into text messaging when it comes to engaging with their benefits.

For HR to meet the expectations of today’s employees, they need to meet them where they’re at by thinking like a marketer.

Freedom to explore lends marketing valuable first-hand experience

Depending on the industry, marketing can be given more leeway to experiment because the stakes are different. Marketing tests out different strategies and techniques to earn new business. HR, on the other hand, is focused on earning the loyalty of a company’s most precious existing resource. After all, the departure of even a single key employee can be far more consequential than missing out on a potential customer.

Greater freedom to explore means marketers generally have more first-hand experience with emerging tools and strategies. Today, that includes digital and omnichannel communication, data-driven audience segmentation and hyper-personalized experiences. When HR borrows a page from the marketing playbook, employee satisfaction increases. They feel supported and empathized with—something Businessolver research tells us is increasingly crucial to maintaining a satisfied and productive workforce. For example, 85% of employees who had access to advanced technology, like personalized decision support, to help them enroll in their 2023 benefits rated their enrollment experience as “good” or “excellent.”

Employee benefits brokers and advisors have a role to play in helping their HR partners strategically incorporate marketing best practices and new approaches. Brokers and advisors are no strangers to many of the tenets of marketing, including market research, adapting to digital trends and maintaining relationships in a highly competitive marketplace. In fact, they may even find it natural to point their clients in this direction to help them improve performance and engagement year-over-year through the benefits strategy.

5 ways to tee up a marketing-centric approach

Thanks to its inherent two-way nature, employee benefit programs provide an ideal testing ground for HR teams that want to try a marketing-centric approach to engagement and satisfaction. There are five key ways brokers and advisors can tee up a successful approach.

Co-developing KPIs: Monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) provides early warning signs of shifts in employee satisfaction and engagement with their benefits. Particularly in today’s generationally diverse workforce, benefits that resonate for one group of employees may not be so valuable for another. Brokers and advisors who collaboratively develop KPIs with their clients and deliver regular reporting help HR emulate one of marketing’s most significant success markers—accountability.

Leaning into benefits analytics: Thanks to advances in analytics, today’s HR data goes far beyond reporting metrics. Predictive models empower brokers and advisors to test all kinds of strategies in a virtual environment—from adopting new point solutions to utilizing different communication channels. This crystal ball-like wisdom lends HR the confidence and proof-points they need to make highly strategic moves that are most likely to result in a desired outcome.

Integrating peer comparison and benchmarking: Knowing how their organization stacks up against others is essential for marketers seeking a competitive edge. In industries with the hottest talent markets, developing strategies to optimize this edge is essential for marketing’s HR counterparts. Insights into how their organization’s benefits engagement and satisfaction compare to like-sized employers empowers HR to make competitive adjustments to their compensation strategy.

Related: How benefits call centers improve your clients’ strategy

Scaling hyper-personalization: Marketers recognize the value of personalized customer experiences but often face challenges implementing this winning strategy across large customer bases. HR shares this pain point. Marketing automation, however, has allowed marketers to scale personalized customer interactions without sacrificing quality. HR can do the same. By taking an omnichannel approach to benefits communication, inclusive of mobile app, SMS and email messaging, HR meets each individual employee right where and when they expect to meet.

Implementing AI: As AI becomes integrated into more HR tech, leaders are reaping the benefits of vast, global insights in minutes. Take employee benefits support calls, for instance. For decades, the industry has relied on randomly selected recordings to analyze and improve interactions. With the help of AI, the same can be done across every call. Layer in generative AI, and now the HR team is receiving summaries of individual or aggregate calls, overviews of global sentiment analysis and trendspotting that may improve future interactions.

While brokers and advisors can assist their partners in thinking like marketers, they don’t necessarily need to supply all the benefits marketing tools and expertise. Encouraging their HR clients to consult with their internal marketing colleagues is another important piece of building a positive HR-Marketing dynamic. Ultimately, bridging connections between HR and marketing is about better serving an organization’s internal customers, who deserve the best and most empathetic employee benefits experience possible.

Dr. Kimberly Dunwoody is vice president of member experience for Businessolver.