Connect employee benefits to workforce culture

By Denise Stefan

Benefits are a big investment by employers and should be an investment that helps attract new employees while creating value that drives employee satisfaction. Open enrollment each year offers the opportunity for employers to reinforce their culture and drive the value that employees take from their benefits.

So how do you help clients optimize the value of their benefits programs?

First off, today’s programs are not one-size-fits-all. It’s great to offer a diverse array of benefits because everyone has unique needs and not everyone values the same thing in a benefits offering. If a client hasn’t reviewed the demographics of their workforce or if they want to attract a certain demographic of employees, now is the time to suggest changes to their benefits.

Despite all the changes we’ve seen in the past few years, employer-covered health care benefits remain the most important benefit to workers, according to a Forbes Advisor poll. But the needs of different generations are also driving new changes. The same study revealed that more than 30% of those between the ages of 18 and 41 are most concerned with having pet insurance as a benefit. Nearly 40% of workers aged 42 to 57 are more likely to prioritize mandatory paid time off, while more than 80% of those over age 42 are seeking roles that offer health insurance. The post-COVID-19 period has seen a big uptick in employees seeking additional resources for mental wellness and programs that focus on family needs such as child care or elder care benefits.

Second, what is equally as important to workers is how those benefits get communicated. This is where we often see employers lose that opportunity to create value. Employers must think about what they want employees to “feel” about their benefits. The communication strategy should have a a look and feel similar to the rest of the company culture and communication strategy.

Pixar, for example, has a culture that focuses on storytelling, teamwork and learning, so their benefit strategy should have that storytelling approach so it reflects all the company values. Southwest Airlines values customer service and employee empowerment and a family-based approach to how it addresses its employees, and the benefits communication should have that same feel to it. What is your client’s company culture? What would make employees feel like they belong?

After an employer determines how they want that communication strategy to look and feel, the third step is to find the best way to organize the information so it focuses on the pieces of the benefit offering that create the most value. Some companies want the investment they make through their contribution to their medical plan at the forefront of their communications because it is where they feel they provide the most value; so the contribution information the employer makes should be front and center.

In other cases, the support of family services, day care benefits, financial services and loan options for families might be the value that they are looking to drive, because it supports their focus on helping employees and their families so that information should be at the beginning of the communication.

Setting the right structure and organization for the benefit program is key in driving home the value of the benefit story.

Tell the story

Once the tone of the communication is set and the material is organized so that it tells the culture story, the fourth step is to find the best way employees will hear that story and to present it in a way that they will get the most value from it. The traditional way was through a packet of materials and fliers that employees could read through and pick out what was most important to them.

But today, no one wants a pile of paper, and clients want to control where the focus is placed, so it is centered on the areas that they think drive the value they are hoping to create. Much of today’s communication is obviously done online.

There are many options for creating open enrollment sites that have the look and feel of the company culture and communication strategy and that can be a launch pad for all the content the client wants to include. There are companies that do custom communications. There are videos available from insurance companies and product vendors. There are infographics that talk through the more complex topics to help streamline them and make them easier to understand.

All of these can be embedded into the open enrollment experience.

Finally, ask your clients what they really know about the value they’re getting from their benefits programs. When employees don’t participate or aren’t using benefits, we can’t blame employers for wondering whether they should cut back or make changes.

Help clients survey and track

Brokers are in a unique position to help their clients define the return on investment of their benefits program because they see across a vast array of industries and cultures and guide their clients down new pathways. The simplest way to start is to help the client survey and track what the employees value in a benefits program. Add a series of questions to the onboarding process of new employees or during the exit interview of employees who are leaving.

This will help guide where an employer should make the investment and continue to invest. If paid time off is critical in the business, that requires a different investment than is needed for employees who value family or financial resources.

Once you’ve helped develop the program, the communication strategy and the best medium for engagement, measuring how the program performs is critical to ensure that you help your client continue to make the right investments.

The world will continue to change. Ensuring that your clients’ benefit investments change with it will ensure you maximize their return on investment, as well as the productivity and satisfaction of their employees, for years to come. You’ll maximize your value as a trusted advisor as well.