Good benefits are something every employee wants, however not all employees want to spend time reading about benefits or tracking down the information they need. This challenge regularly presents a dilemma for HR professionals with poor employee uptake inevitably creating an issue when it comes to justifying the budget for services which aren’t being used. Getting benefit communication right will not only make budget conversations easier but might also increase employee tenure.
At its heart, benefit communication is simply internal marketing and so the same approach should be taken to communicate with your employee audience as your prospects. Here’s our expert tips to help you optimise employe.
- Use the skills of your workforce – first and foremost, draw on the skills of your marketing team. So often we speak with HR professionals who are sending out ad hoc email updates without recognising there are talented professionals who understand marketing strategy available to help them. Allocate the role of internal communications to the department where it will have a dedicated resource.
- Plan a long-term strategy – with your marketing experts, draw up a 12-month calendar, plan in key calendar events which will complement your benefit comms. For example, if you have an employee discounts platform use days like Valentine’s day to trigger action.
- Use multiple channels – email fatigue is a major issue, make sure to build out a strategy which leverages multiple channels. Include canteen screens (or posters if you don’t have screens), intranet, IM, social media, company apps, Forbes.com even suggests using old school post to get your message in front of people. Word of mouth is an invaluable method of communication, identify champions, engage them in regular trainings and update meetings to keep them up to speed with what’s on offer, where to find the info and how to redeem/register for available benefits.
- Apply the rule of seven – The rule of seven is an age-old marketing concept which says your audience should hear or see your message seven times before they will take action. The same can be said for your workforce. Over communicating will guarantee employees know about every benefit on offer to them.
Effective benefit communication is essential to make a strong business case for existing and future initiatives. Take the time plan out your goals and how you plan to achieve them applying the above tips.
Author: Sara Glynn – Marketing & Customer Success Manager @ Wrkit.
Wrkit specialise in the creation of better, healthier working environments. Our platform connects global, remote and local teams through five modules; Surveys, Recognition, POWR, Learning and Savings. Speak to an Engagement Specialist today – info@wrkit.com