Spouses and partners share the responsibility for making proper employee benefit elections. Yet many organizations make accessing benefits engagement materials complicated and the materials themselves unmodern, at best. Organizations need to take a long, hard look at properly structuring communications methods to improve access. Here are a few recommendations:
- Benefits Administration Systems Aren’t Engagement Platforms. Benefits Administration systems are amazing and are doing wonders for all size organizations. All organizations should have one. This being said, in many cases, they aren’t ideal for engagement. They regularly hide engagement behind logins, tabs, documents, forms, and spreadsheets. Engagement and decision support should be front and center. Educate people then request elections. Focus on video as well, since it’s faster, more engaging, and accessible with even below-average internet speeds.
- Move from many to one. How many URLs do your employees need to remember? Do they also access a ben-admin system and ERP? How many pages is your benefits summary? We recommend moving to a benefits communication hub. Give your staff a benefit education starting point. This starting point will then direct them to wherever they need to go. The user-interface must be uncluttered and intuitive. Small and mid-sized organizations have struggled with this in the past, but it’s now easier than ever to create one.
- Remove the need for a login or VPN. Many organizations view benefits offerings confidential compensation and competitive in nature. Yet many organizations leave it open for accessibility and promotional purposes. We recommend making engagement videos and benefits information as publicly available as possible. Yes, we do agree some matters should be confidential, such as specifics around incentive programs or stock incentive programs, but many of the benefits an organization offer can be publicly promoted rather than hidden away. We hear time-and-time again from clients “our benefits are competitive.” We have no doubt that’s true, in most cases. So why not promote them and reassure talent pools this is the case? Why are we hiding what many organizations also have?
- Mobile is Important. A viewer should have access to most benefit engagement materials from their desktop and mobile device. They should be able to view a video on their laptop at work, view the same video with their spouse at home with minimal effort, then, with one click, access their benefits administration system (ideally with single-sign-on).
For more information or to review potential solutions visit http://blog.learnyourbenefits.com or www.learnyourbenefits.com.
