Tips to Promoting Benefit Programs

We all know it can be tough to get employees excited and willing to learn about benefit changes each year. All the benefits jargon can be confusing to those who do not deal with it on a daily basis, and with all the ACA changes, it is becoming increasingly important to communicate all benefits information to employees in a way that they understand. Keeping all this in mind, here are a few tips or new ideas to consider in your employee communication tactics. Get Creative How do you currently talk to your employees about their benefits? Think hard about the different places where your messages can appear. Don’t be afraid to get creative! Take a look at the examples below for new channels to communicate your benefits:

• Newsletter (Printed or Electronic)
• Posters and Flyers
• Benefits Portal
• Email
• Text Messaging
• Benefits Presentation (Live or Webinar)
• Lunch and Learns
• Screensavers

Request a Word or Two from the Boss Don’t underestimate the appeal of hearing from leaders in the organization. Getting your CEO or other trusted company leaders to speak about an important topic is an excellent and free way to make sure your message is consumed. Including the boss’s name in the “Sender” field increases the likelihood of people opening your email. Your executive’s message doesn’t have to be very long. I recommend keeping the message to 150 words, tops. Acquire and Feature Employee Testimonials Honest, first-person accounts of using a product or service is a super powerful tool for promoting resources and programs. Getting your employees to talk to their peers about important benefits topics can be a great way for you to increase awareness of helpful solutions, programs you’re trying to promote, FSA and HSA accounts, or all those financial wellness tools you’re making available but nobody seems to understand. Having someone explain their experience in a conversational setting can be very beneficial to employees. I hope these tips have been helpful, and encourage you to get creative and have fun with communicating benefits information to your employees.