Let's talk employee benefit plan communication

 Last week I talked about the connection between the quality of a benefit plan and an employee’s satisfaction in their job and braggable benefits. You’ll recall my braggable benefits formula is

Braggable Benefits = Personalized + User Experience + Digital + Communication

The key here is communication. Communicating the benefit program is one of the most impactful things employers can do. Why? Well 83% of employees believe that their employer pays a fixed cost to the insurance company, no matter how much or how little the benefit plan is used. This means that some employees may use benefits that they don’t need because they think there are no consequences in doing so. Plus 58% pf employees are just unaware of their benefit entitlement. This means, employees who may need care, aren’t getting it because they don’t know they can. This could lead to turnover (due To a lack of perceived care form their employer) absenteeism, disability, higher long term drug costs or worse case scenario, an unclaimed claim for a benefit like CI.

Communicating the benefit plan doesn’t have to be a big task. Here are some tips to get you going.

Start by communicating a summary of what you have in the benefit plan. There’s lots of nitty gritty programs like health risk assessment, and iCBT built into plans. If you’re not sure what perks your insurers have included ask your advisor or your Group Account Executive.

Next, Communicate what’s free in Canada

• Telehealth like programs offered by Maple, TELUS myCare and Tia Health.
• Mental Health Resources
• Bouncebackbc.ca
• Anxiety Canada
• Meditation apps like Smiling Mind

Everyone has a lot of communication coming at them all day, every day. So keep your short and sweet. When you communicate is small but frequent bursts, your message is more likely to be received. Also try communicating in different ways, in person employee meetings, email, posters, mail, webinar, intranet and so on.

What is a short communication? This post isn’t. In person, it could be a short as quickly mentioning a service. In writing it means keeping message length equal to no more than one mobile screen. When people have to scroll to read the while message, they move on without reading.

Last, when possible bucket communications into structured buckets.  For example

• Bucket 1: Mental Health
• Bucket 2: Physical Health
• Bucket 3: Financial Health
• Bucket 4: Drugs
• Bucket 5: Being a consumer

That’s it! What communication tips do you have?

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