Human Resources
Bolstering Employee Engagement Through Benefits Communication
Aug 26, 2020
Right now, HR is having a giant, mountain of a challenge motivating, engaging, and informing employees. It’s no secret that employee compensation is a lot more than just a salary, but do you know just how much your benefits package impacts your employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention? Employee benefits packages are often unintentionally noninclusive. Here are a few simple things that can be done to ensure that your benefits package and benefits communication is inclusive and tailored to fit your employee’s needs:
Talk to your staff.
Nobody knows what your employees want more than your employees! Listen to your employees’ challenges, daily problems, and concerns and tailor your benefits package around those things. This will not only solve real problems for your employees, but it will also let employees know that you are listening to what they are saying and value their input.
Example – Upon asking about employee concerns, management realizes a huge challenge for their workforce is the rising challenge of childcare. To help with this, management chooses to make an investment in their team adding a childcare assistance plan to the mix.
Make Sure You Cater to Employees of All Seniority Levels
Every part of the employee life cycle is looking at your benefits package with a different perspective and it is important to remember this difference and be inclusive to all. Entry-level employees are more concerned with things like health & wellness programs, PTO/vacation time, and more culture related benefits. Mid-level employees are looking more into the insurance, childcare, and savings benefits, while senior-level employees are looking into 401K, retirement, and post-retirement benefits. All these different demographics should be represented in your benefits plan and in your benefits communication with equal value to foster inclusion in your workforce. However, grouping what your employees care about in terms of benefits based on tenure or age is not the most inclusive strategy. To really take everyone into consider, just ask. The more you ask, the more information you have to make decisions around.
Foster Inclusion Through Your Benefits Package
Some benefits may not be possible for all members of your workforce to utilize, such as a work-from-home benefit. An Administrative Assistant may thrive in a work-from-home setting, while a Production Worker is unable to do his job from home. In cases such as this, it may be better to have different policies for the different areas of business so that everyone is able to fully utilize their benefits package. When in doubt, ask! Assumptions in this area can create issues of equity in the company.
While taking a more individualized approach to benefits, it is still important to maintain equity when it comes to offerings and benefits communication with your employees. Be transparent and have an open dialogue about this goal as you adjust your benefits or consider new benefits. For instance, an employee may not use a childcare benefit, but they may use an education reimbursement benefit, or a post-retirement insurance benefit. Benefits packages can be stressful and confusing for employers. “What will they use?” “What will they benefit the most from?” Don’t spin your wheels. Start a conversation.
The most important part of creating a benefits package is to listen to your employees! Benefits communication should be an open dialogue, they have all the answers you are looking for and they will be excited to have a voice in the decision-making process.
A closing thought: As you consider adjusting or creating new benefits for your team, keep in mind how to enroll your team in said benefits if it needs to done completely virtual or remote. This “new way of work” is not going away any time soon, rather, has emerged into a very popular, productive new normal.
Thinking about streamlining your benefits planning and enrollment?
We can help!
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