Client communication adds value for employers, workers

The role of a benefits broker or agent extends well beyond providing insurance options for their employer clients. Clients rely upon agents to be consultants playing an active role as an extension of their team. As a trusted advisor, your role can span across many functions — from strategy, thought leadership and plan design to claim and cost management, insights analyzing data, support for human resource initiatives and compliance.

Your impact on your clients is even greater when you provide active support to your clients’ communications efforts. Effective employer communication can play a pivotal role in enhancing employee engagement, promoting wellness programs, and creating a culture of safety and health within organizations. When you add communications to your other efforts, you bring more value to your clients and their employees.

Employers usually offer a range of benefits that are designed to meet the diverse health, financial and personal needs of employees and their families. Communicating — some would call it advertising — the benefits that the employer’s plan offers is important because such efforts help reinforce or solidify a key part of the employee value proposition. Employers want to see a return on their significant financial investment, and that return can be measured by the impact it may have on people’s lives.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, benefit costs can represent on average 30% of the total compensation costs for private and federal workers and up to 38% for state and local government workers. Employers have a vested interest in promoting benefits to support employee engagement as well as employee productivity and work/life balance.

In addition to offering traditional benefits, employers are being called upon to support employees and their families across a wide range of well-being areas that address health, financial, social and emotional needs.

If communication is done properly, employer engagement in these areas can increase employee perception of how much their employer values them.

Feeling “cared for” at work was revealed as a key driver of employee holistic health and happiness in MetLife’s 21st annual U.S. Employee Benefits Trends Study. These drivers are strongly connected to employee productivity and job loyalty. Yet the study found nearly half of today’s employees (42%) don’t feel cared for by their employers. Targeting communications can help employees feel their employers value them.

According to WRN research, health and retirement benefits are growing in importance as attraction and retention tools. Employers have a clear path to deliver communications that reinforce their support for employee needs.

A recent Optivise survey showed the growing demand from employees wanting to understand their benefits and manage health care costs as part of overall financial wellness. Brokers must be ready to meet clients’ changing needs so employees can become smarter, more informed health care and financial consumers. Here are some key ways to partner with your clients.

Plan in advance

Effective and thoughtful communication efforts take time and planning. This planning should consider client-relevant factors such as resource availability, budgeting and internal approval.

Start discussing communications needs with clients well in advance, using a project management mindset. Identify what resources may be needed to support each client’s goals while allocating sufficient time to put those resources into place. Developing a calendar of communications activities that incorporates the employer’s benefit priorities can manage expectations, position deliverables as achievable, and balance workload and resource availability.

You may want to include reminders about claim-filing deadlines and open enrollment dates.

During your financial and claims management meetings, you may identify top health claim trends or drivers such as high rates of musculoskeletal issues or low rates of preventive care. You then can use those trends and drivers to develop a communications campaign.

Target moments that matter

Benefit brokers and HR personnel often wear many hats, and communications could be one of the more challenging issues they encounter. Employers are required to not only inform but also inspire employees to take action during any number of critical touch points during the benefits life cycle.

Sometimes a simple reminder about a benefits feature or a required action item can help an employee avoid a poor financial decision. Using your knowledge of qualified life event rules, you can assist employers in targeting unique moments to enact change and avoid compliance issues. Promoting benefits during QLEs is another way to highlight that your benefits are a differentiator and how they’re a valuable part of the employee experience.

Examples of these moments could include:

» Birth of a child: Enroll in a flexible spending account or increase contribution to a health savings account.

» Marriage or divorce: Dependent enrollment changes impact payroll contributions; update life insurance beneficiary designations.

» Child turning age 26 or aging out of a plan: Removing a child from the plan in a timely manner; arranging for transitional support for COBRA or other health insurance plan options.

» Retirement or reaching Medicare eligibility age: Evaluate health plan elections, transition a 401(k) account to an individual retirement account or convert life insurance policies.

Which way works best

Find out the ways in which the organization communicates with employees and what resonates well with their workers. The employee base will often drive the way communications are delivered.

According to the WTW Emerging Trends in Healthcare Survey, 2 in 5 employees are expected to work remotely in the future. As a result, employers must communicate with employees where they are, no matter the location, time of day or device they use.

Electronic methods, including intranet and email, are cost effective and increasingly relied upon.

In-person meetings and periodic mailings are often more impactful and effective but require more lead time and coordination.

Leader support is often key and is required before any significant communication is delivered to employees. Getting buy-in in advance from leaders on an established yearlong communications strategy that includes specific details on the tactics, dates and methods of communications will make executing on the plan efficient and effective for everyone.

Leverage vendor resources

If your client has an internal communications team that can support content creation, offer to lend your expertise to develop engaging and informative materials. This would include sourcing and sharing pre-developed content from existing benefit plan vendors. To avoid reinventing the wheel, vendor materials and resources can be used as is or act as a starting point for content creation.

Remember, not all employers have the luxury of an in-house marketing team. This can be an opportunity for you to step in to help with content creation.

Employers may prefer communications to contain their own branding and voice. Helping collect key vendor resources such as flyers, videos and presentations is a great starting point for content creation. Vendors may be flexible in modifying their communications with the employer’s logo to help in brand recognition. A perfect example is a postcard mailer sent to employee homes. If the employee sees their employer’s logo on the postcard, they may be more inclined to read it and not think it’s junk mail.

Where needed, negotiate with vendors to support your client’s communication needs. This could include delivering on end-to-end fulfillment needs and even offering a wellness fund or credit that can be used to pay for third-party communications costs.

Measure success

Evaluate the effectiveness of client communications initiatives. Implement metrics and mechanisms to assess employee engagement, comprehension and satisfaction. Analyze the data, and provide clients with actionable insights to improve future communication strategies.

Start simple. Develop a scorecard or metrics in your reporting dashboard to measure year-over-year activity on programs that you’re focusing on through targeted communications campaigns, such as increasing adult preventive visits or enrollment in a health coaching program. Many intranet portals and bulk email software systems can report on the number of eyeballs that read an article or click on a link.

Supporting your clients with their communications efforts is a powerful way to demonstrate your value as an insurance broker or trusted partner. By collaborating on content creation, educating employees and leveraging existing resources, you can enhance the effectiveness of your clients’ communications and ultimately contribute to their success. Remember, effective communication is the key to building strong relationships and fostering a culture of well-being in organizations.

William J. Pokluda, CEBS, is a certified benefits professional with more than 30 years of experience managing corporate benefits. He is the author of Maximize Your Health Insurance. He may be contacted at [email protected].