Employee Benefits Communication Guide

The basics of benefits communication

If benefits booklets don’t work, what does? Before we get to our preferred methods of communication, let’s cover some basics. At its root, good benefits communication is simply good communication.

Write like a fifth-grader

Focus on keeping it simple. Most successful communicators know that jargon has no place in good communication. To this end, focus on writing for an audience of 10-year-olds. Would they know how to define words like HSA and deductible? Resist the urge to use the industry’s newest acronym. Remember, your employees have been snoozing through benefits presentations for years. Basic English is your safest bet for clear communication.

Keep it jargon-free

As we mentioned above, 96% of people polled in one study couldn’t define the four most common insurance terms: deductible, co-insurance, co-pay, and out-of-pocket maximum. Use the most basic terms possible in your benefits communications, knowing most employees don’t respond to jargon.

Use real-world examples

Remember that benefits exist in a vacuum, and no one needs them until they need they do. It’s crucial that you help employees understand their benefits in a way that resonates with their life. Instead of saying “you have telemed,” explain that a provider is there 24/7 to discuss their child’s medical issues.

Run benefits communications through a reading level tool

If you’re regularly writing benefits communications, you may not even be aware that you’re writing over-complicated prose. At HealthJoy, we use apps like Grammarly and Hemingway App to test the reading level, or Flesch-Kincaid score, of our writing. Run all your benefits communications through these tools, and see how far you can lower your reading level. The lower, the better.

Personalize your message

Your benefits communication should drive an emotional shift from indifferent to engaged. That means customizing your message to your audience’s life experiences. Consider segmenting your communications for different email lists, focusing on the pain points that create an emotional shift for your audience. Use tools beyond email—think Slack and text messages—to tweak your message for teams who may not be as responsive via email. HealthJoy’s artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant, JOY, can help with this customization.

Make great self-service tools available

Calculate how much those tools are costing you for every use. Even the cheapest tools are expensive when the cost per use skyrockets due to low utilization. Give your employees the tools they can use year-round, on their own, then sit back and watch your HR department save hundreds of hours a year.

Keep it short and digestible

If you don’t employees will lose interest in as little as 2 seconds. The brain sees too much information and simply disengages. It pays to make your benefits communications scannable, containing only the essential points they need. Use short, digestible, bite-sized pieces over lengthy communications (see How to Simplify Benefits Communication for Open Enrollment).

Make it visual

Finally, highlight your important messages with memorable visual imagery. Add graphics like on-brand images, authentic photos, animated GIFs, and beautiful fonts to your employee communications. According to Xerox, using color in communications increases attention span and recall by 82% and motivation by 80%. Need employees to respond during open enrollment? Add some color!

Improve benefits communication during open enrollment

The truest test of your benefits communication strategy will come during open enrollment. During OE, you’ll face disengaged employees and frustrating questions. This is probably why employees leave OE unsure of how to even use their benefits: a Gallup study found that more than 85% of large employers offer a wellness program, but 40% of those employees aren’t aware that the plan exists (see Why Tackling Benefits Awareness is Vital for Your Company). Employees just don’t know enough about their benefits to take advantage of them when they’d be most useful. An Aflac survey showed that 26% of Millennials would rather clean a toilet than research their health benefits. You’re fighting a losing battle. But benefits education is the answer. Taking time to get this phase right is crucial for increasing utilization and employee satisfaction. When done right, you can even increase trust in your benefits and minimize tricky questions down the road.  

Improve your benefits presentation

Rolling out the new year’s benefits might start with an employee benefit presentation. Unlike the benefits booklet, you can’t afford to skip this old school step. A benefits presentation is part one of your effective year-round employee benefits communication strategy, but a presentation can catapult your benefits utilization and give your employees something to remember when they need their benefits the most. Of course, the fact that you’ve always done a benefits presentation doesn’t mean you have to use the same formula from year to year. In fact, we recommend you don’t. Just a few ideas (more of which are in our “eBook: 10 Tips for Your Employee Benefits Presentation Inspired by TED Talks”): If so, you can consider a few important points:

Keep slide text minimal

Short and sweet works well. Your employees will likely remember what you said more than what you wrote. Slides are just a visual aid.

Maintain look and feel of your brand

Keep employees engaged by applying your style guide to your benefits presentation.

Use humor

Benefits may not be the most exciting subject in the world, but that doesn’t mean you have to avoid humor. Studies show humor helps with recall.

Smile, pause, use hands, slow down

In other words, master your body language.

Benefits communication requires emails. Make them better.

Like your employee benefits presentation, your open enrollment email campaign is likely in danger of getting stale. Most employees are bombarded with emails outside of open enrollment, and unlikely to open something unless it requires immediate action. To keep the vital information in your emails from falling off the map, revisit them from year to year. Simple tweaks like improving your subject line, cutting the length of your email, and hitting the right conversational tone can make a world of difference. Above all, make sure to proofread your emails. We’re all human, and tools like Grammarly.com make it simple to improve your writing.

Leverage the latest technology for benefits communication

As you consider how to effectively communicate with employees about open enrollment, try switching things up. Consider the demographics of your employee base and build your education campaign around their needs. 

If most employees are located in one office,

A lunch-and-learn style meeting might work perfectly well. The same meeting style might be difficult for your remote sales team to attend. Those employees may need a follow-up message on Slack with details from the meeting. Or, they may respond well to a live virtual Q&A through Zoom.

Perhaps you’re speaking to a mostly rural workforce.

They aren’t often at their desks and check email just once a day, so the best way to reach them may be through a combination of a couple emails and mailers sent to their home.

An SMS messaging campaign

or a push notification campaign for those with benefits centralized in an app, is likely to be effective no matter the demographics of your employee base.

By meeting people on the devices they already use and cutting through the noise in their inbox, short, punchy push notifications effectively get the message across. To succeed in benefits education during OE, make use of all the technology at your fingertips.

Build trust through benefits communications

Keep in mind that if you’re introducing a new benefit, you can either quickly build trust—or break it—with a few steps. Research indicates we decide almost immediately whether to trust something new. Once trust is lost, it’s extremely difficult, or even impossible, to gain back. To quickly establish trust in your new benefits:

Ask senior leadership to share their positive experiences with your new offering. Nothing establishes trust like real-world examples.

Display data security protocols. Does your benefits provider have a page with this information that’s in plain English? Are there security badges to include alongside their logo? Include all of these pieces in your benefits communication from the very beginning. 

Solicit feedback. Ask your employees how they feel about their new benefit using an anonymous tool like Survey Monkey. Keep a finger on issues to remedy them before utilization tanks.

Smoothly Introduce Plan Design Changes

In 2018, there was a 20 percent increase in the number of employers offering at least one high-deductible health plan (HDHP) compared to 2016 in their plan design.

Other additions and changes are proliferating as well as companies work to add more value in a competitive job market. That puts HR in the uncomfortable position of explaining that the benefits employees have always enjoyed might be changing (see Navigating an Employee Benefits Plan Design Change).

Changing your plan design can be jarring for employees, especially because most don’t understand the basics of their insurance plan. In fact, according to the UnitedHealthcare Consumer Sentiment Survey, only 9 percent of the U.S. population showed an understanding of all four of these basic health insurance terms: plan premium, deductible, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket maximum.

Help employees by explaining in plain English what’s new with their plan. Don’t forget that employees may be starting from scratch, and that understanding benefits design takes time.