Is the benefits information you have to tell employees important before and during Open Enrollment? You bet! Easily understood? Not always.
According to the latest MetLife employee benefits trends, close to 90% of employers believe their benefits are clear and easy to understand. Yet only 65% of employees (only 56% Gen Z) agree.
Uncomplicating the complicated is not an easy task, but it’s well worth the effort. Employees who better understand their benefits are ones who better appreciate the benefits they have.
Let’s look at 4 steps to help supercharge your Open Enrollment communications strategy.
Step 1: Know Your Audience
For HR, this means not just thinking about employees. Think like employees. Heck, you are an employee.
When Open Enrollment season hits, chances are you’ll be making some decisions about your benefits. Just like all the other employees. What (and who) are you thinking about when you’re comparing options? Your family? Your health? The costs? The coverage? Yep…just like all the other employees.
If you can hold on to that “employee to employee” connection when you’re communicating to them about benefits, you’re more likely to create understandable, compelling communications. Make your messages relatable and relevant, with a hint of emotion.
Relatable – We’re all people. We can empathize with each other. Remember this when you communicate to employees. Make an emotional connection. That’s how you get employees to engage.
What does that mean? For example, many employees have families they love, and so do you. And you all want the best benefits you can get for them. Relay that feeling.
Relevant – Present information from the employees’ points of view, not the company’s. Avoid touting your company’s awesomeness (“We’ve added a great new dental plan”). Talk more about why it matters to them (“You have more dentists to choose from in the new plan”). Instead of saying, “We have a new enrollment system,” say, “You can enroll faster and easier with our new enrollment system.”
Keep the message conversational, too. If you were talking to a colleague, how would you get your message across? Probably not in a verbose, run-on sentence with oodles of detail.
Step 2: Plan Bite-Size Information
If you’re sending a firehose flow of information two weeks prior to Open Enrollment, employees will not absorb everything you’re telling them. Try starting communications about six to eight weeks prior to your OE start date, especially if you’re making major changes.
Strive for a slow drip campaign that feeds bite-size bits of information. A sample campaign for a late October enrollment may look like this…
Late August
- Teaser/kick-off announcements
- Watch for what’s to come messaging
- Training webinar for leaders and HR partners
September
- Weekly or bi-weekly communications with chunks of information
- Home mailer with highlights and a few important details
- Portal/website or interactive guide with a deeper dive into info, tools, and resources
Mid-October
- Meetings, webinars, and benefits sessions
- Displays for enrollment to-do’s and timing
- Weekly reminders to enroll (first day, one week left, last day)
To get the word out, a wide variety of channels is best. But when it comes to education, a Colonial Life Employee Enrollment Survey (via Unum) shows how employees rank their three top choices: benefits portal or website, in-person counseling session, or printed materials.
Step 3: Stay on Point!
When you start crafting your Open Enrollment communications this year, remember that employees:
- Check their phones 150 times a day
- Check email 30 times an hour
- And are still trying to do their jobs
Competition for their attention is fierce. How do you break through the distractions, buzzing and beeping all around them?
Diligently.
You must spend time considering the message you’re putting out there. Is it going to drive the results you’re hoping for? The key is to build messaging super-focused on achieving that objective. Avoid filling headspace or airwaves with any other content — stick to information employees need to know to make the decision at hand.
Also, our brains don’t want to work hard at processing information. Keep content easy-to-read and scannable.
- Short sentences (14 words or less)
- Short paragraphs (3 sentences or less)
- Eighth-grade reading level
- “Chunked-out” content with subheads (bite-size)
- Lots of “you” and “your” and less “we”
- Human language — no acronyms and other benefit geek speak
Don’t be afraid to use phrases and incomplete sentences. No, really. (See what we did there?) It goes against everything you learned in grammar class but write like you talk. Employees will trust it more, as they read it like a conversation.
One last trick — after you’ve created your first draft, cut the amount of text in half. Get rid of any sentences that are repetitive or words that don’t help employees understand your message.
It may be interesting, amusing, or truly relevant, but if it’s not essential, it’s just brain clutter.
Step 4: Don’t Bury the Bad News
They may not like bad news — but they’ll like it even less when they find it hidden among other news. Employees are adults. They can adapt to change if you’re upfront, honest, and help them through it.
Rip off the band-aid. Give them the “why” of the situation through consistent and continuous communications.
- Tell the same story, the same way, and tell it often
- Provide a specific date when they’ll know more
- Be honest and open (or transparent if you speak HR)
Are rates increasing? Probably because the company’s costs keep increasing. Explain that to employees. “U.S. health care costs are expected to rise 10-15 percent this year, but we’re keeping your increase lower, at only 6 percent.”
It’s Time to Change Things Up
HR professionals tend to be criticized for overexplaining and using confusing terms that make benefits hard to understand. We know why that happens, and we get it.
Put in the work now so you can achieve effective, results-generating communications. Communications that have higher employee engagement. But put yourself in employee shoes when you communicate. Wait…you’re wearing employee shoes.
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