Packaging your employee benefits experience
Use best practices to build a gift-wrapped benefits experience that engages your people and optimizes your employees’ well-being.
July 26, 2024 | 6-minutes
Health savings pathways, a 3-part series
As an employer benefits team, you’re invested in your employees’ overall well-being and your organization’s success.
Our 3-part health savings pathways series has covered a lot:
- Part 1: The connection between money and health explores wellness challenges individuals and families face.
- Part 2: An employee benefits strategy that balances cost and care shares results employers can achieve through benefits strategy.
In Part 3, we’re concluding the series by sharing best practices you can use to package your employee benefits experience to support your people’s well-being.
Part 3: Providing a gift-wrapped benefits experience
More than half of employees (53%) say they’re at least somewhat likely to accept a job offer that includes slightly lower compensation but more robust benefits.1
Like the physical packaging of retail goods, the user experience wrapped around your benefits has an impact on your employees. Most Americans agree that packaging design (72%) and materials (67%) affect their buying decisions.2
We see the importance of packaging all over the internet. Google found that 53% of shoppers always research before they buy.3 And trendy unboxing videos share the thrill of opening a package for the very first time, with over 25 billion views last year on YouTube.4
The goal is to connect your audience with a delightful first impression when they’re deciding if they’ll buy. This common shopping experience translates to wrapping your employee benefits in a way that makes them more appealing.
Let’s explore how you can use your partners and your communications to support a satisfying, and even delightful, employee benefit experience.
Illustration of hands holding an orange gift box with an open lid, showing a symbol for a well-being benefit
Choosing your benefits consultants and partners thoughtfully
The benefit experience you offer starts with the partners you select. They’re an extension of your team and a reflection of your commitment to your employees. Alignment is key. A misaligned benefit partner likely produces a clunky benefit experience.
Most companies work with a combination of partners, including an employee benefits broker or a health benefits consultant. According to MetLife,5 employers rely on their brokers and consultants to help choose the best providers while balancing cost and employee well-being.
Top employer expectations for their broker/consultant include 62% recommending cost saving alternatives; 61% providing prompt, effective services; 59% recommending product bundling to meet employee needs; 58% advising on health care reform requirements; 58% recommending new/innovative benefit solutions; 58% reducing the frequency and expense of claims
When choosing your benefit partners, use a robust process similar to how you recruit your own employees. These tips will help you find brokers, consultants and providers who support a delightful employee benefit experience.
1. Interview benefit partners like they’re part of your team
Your benefit partners should support your company's values, be knowledgeable and collaborate with you. Think beyond the hard costs and ask thoughtful questions about how they work to explore their real strengths.
Questions to consider when selecting an employee benefits partner:
- How are you compensated? Does this model complement my company's objectives?
- Who will my main contacts be? Who are your in-house experts? Who are your subcontractors?
- What financial institutions interact with your funds? Are your accounts insured or safeguarded?
2. Identify your organization’s unique needs
You’re looking for a benefits partner who meets the needs of your people. Think about your entire employee population and the specific needs of different segments.
Take health savings account (HSA) providers, for example. When looking at investment opportunities, you need to consider the experience provided to employees who invest their HSA dollars and how that experience is different for those who don’t invest.
Questions to consider when determining if a benefits partner fits your organizational needs:
- How do you support employee wellness during open enrollment and all year? For my entire population and for individual segments?
- What is your core expertise and what are newly added capabilities?
- Based on our employee population, what should we consider adjusting in the next 3 years?
3. Ask for access to data and insights
To build the best customer experience for your employees, you need to know them. Look for partners who use deep analytics and maintain sophisticated customer databases. Ask them to share insights with you.
Questions to consider when evaluating data and analytics:
- Do you have access to benchmarking data and insights in my market, industry and region?
- What kind of regular reporting and review functions do you support?
- Are you exploring artificial intelligence capabilities?
4. Ask about innovation and emerging benefit trends
Industry recommendations suggest you evaluate your employee benefits consultant or broker every 3 years.6 Set yourself up for success and ask your potential benefits partners how they look to the future to identify emerging employee benefits trends.
Questions to consider to lean into innovative employee benefits:
- What’s on your roadmap that I should be excited about?
- What challenges exist that you don’t yet know how to solve for?
- What do you see in the employer benefits industry in the next 3–5 years?
Communicating employee benefits in a way that sticks
Once you’ve developed your employee well-being strategy and selected the best partners, there’s more work to do — getting your employees to use their benefits. People buy or use what they understand. And most employees need help when it comes to understanding benefits.
Fewer than 50% of employees say they completely understand their benefits.7 Despite that concerning number, 89% report they choose the same benefits each year.8
When asked about their understanding of the benefits their employer offers, 48% of employees say they completely understand them, 36% say they have some questions, 13% are mostly confused, and 3% don’t understand at all.
Your benefits communication strategy should be intentional and shouldn’t feel complicated. To improve employee engagement, create a plan that outlines content, channels, your calendar and how you’ll listen for feedback.
Content — share tiny tips, tell stories, and think in pictures
Keep benefit information simple and relatable. Think about how to convey your message through stories about people and in visuals. A good way to get started is to identify your goal and choose the format to meet it.
Long content like user guides, plan documents and FAQs are helpful reference materials that cover details from beginning to end. Short content like emails, videos and infographics are better for highlighting specific information in an easy-to-digest format.
Store all your benefit content on your intranet so it’s all easily accessed in one place. Try using short and long content together with emails linking to more detailed reference material.
Open enrollment communications
Open enrollment announcements are the foundation of benefits communication, so they need extra attention. The main goal is to support employee decisions for choosing benefits. Make sure you start with the most important information.
Include actions to take, the deadline and any changes to benefits. Describe when changes are taking place and the impact on the employee and the organization. Link from your announcement to content on your intranet for more information.
Channels — surround them with omnichannel communication
Think about all the ways you can reach your employees to surround them with the benefit information you have available. Use a variety of communications, including emails, team meetings, social or chat channels, newsletters and messages from leaders.
Calendar — repeat your messaging, so it’s always on
Many employers communicate about benefits during open enrollment and not much after that. You don’t want to overwhelm employees with unwanted messages; however, it’s not likely they’ll catch everything they should know about their benefits in one pass.
Your employees all have plenty to do, so they’ll be grateful for thoughtful tips and timely reminders. Once they’ve enrolled in a benefit, give them a tutorial or tips on how to use it.
Plan your calendar and communicate throughout the year to increase the chances that your employees will engage. Think about frequency and send similar messages that link to the same content. Sending out benefits communication quarterly or every other month is a great place to start.
Leverage your partners for benefit communication and education
You carefully selected your benefit partners as an extension of your team. Now’s the time to use them. Consider the support they offer for open enrollment and ongoing benefit education.
Does your provider want to email your employees? Opt in. Are they giving you email templates to send your employees? Use them. Are they giving you articles to put in your newsletter? Include them.
Your benefit partners can help you provide the information that your employees want. Their resources, communication campaigns and snack-sized info support the next best step your employee should take for managing and using their benefits.
Listen — communication is a two-way street
To reach your employees with a benefit experience that works for them, you need to know them. Use employee benefit surveys and conversations to find out how you can help them learn more about available benefits.
Ask your employees which benefits they really use. If they haven’t used a benefit, ask why. Maybe it’s not valuable to them, or maybe it’s cumbersome and difficult to use. You can base your approach to improve the benefit on what you hear.
If they have used a benefit, ask employees for their story. Ask if they’d suggest the benefit to other employees. Ask if they’re willing to be featured as a benefit champion in an upcoming internal communication.
Employee success stories promote benefits in a way that feels organic, trustworthy and supports the information they already have. Personal stories are also a feel-good way for employees to contribute to and help influence your company culture.
Individuals look to user-generated content to find trust and confidence. 78% say they feel more confident in a purchase when they view user-generated content, 62% say user-generated content helps determine if there’s value for the money, 74% say they trust user-generated content more than branded content, 83% say they want to see both user-generated content and branded content, 44% say user-generated content helps them determine if the product matches the description.
Thoughtful convenience drives employee benefit engagement
The future of work is employee well-being. And employees want benefits that meet their needs without complications.
The employee benefit experience you provide is a culmination of the challenges your employees are facing and the benefits you’re offering to support their well-being. Your providers, communications and innovations bring those benefits to life.
Little touches have a big impact on your employees’ engagement with their benefits. You can increase the chances of your employees understanding and using their benefits by capturing their attention with a convenient and engaging experience.
Sources
- Aflac Workforces Report “Workplace Benefits Trends,” 2023-2024
- Paper and Packaging Board, “Most Americans Say That the Design of a Product’s Packaging Often Influences Their Purchase Decisions,” Ipsos poll April 2018
- Google/Ipsos, U.S., Omnichannel Holiday Study, Nov. 2017–Jan. 2018.
- YouTube “Taking a peek into the world of unboxing on YouTube,” YouTube data, Global, 1 Jan–1 Nov 2023.
- Metlife How brokers can use benefit trends in their strategy | MetLife
- SHRM. The Ultimate Guide to Hiring a Benefits Broker (shrm.org)
- NFP 2024 NFP US Benefits Trend Report
- MarshMcLennan Agency 2024 Employee Health and Benefits Trends Report
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