Creative Ways to Communicate Benefits to Employees

Employ­ee ben­e­fits pack­ages can be com­pli­cat­ed, espe­cial­ly if they aren’t ade­quate­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed from the start. That’s prob­a­bly why 54% of mil­len­ni­al employ­ees say they don’t ful­ly under­stand their employ­ee benefits.

In an increas­ing­ly diverse envi­ron­ment, lead­ers have to go beyond for­mal pre­sen­ta­tions to ensure their peo­ple under­stand the val­ue of their ben­e­fits pack­ages. In oth­er words, they have to get cre­ative. But how?

Antiquated Ways of Discussing Employee Benefits

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Most com­pa­nies put a lot of thought into their ben­e­fits pack­ages. They gen­uine­ly want to give their employ­ees valu­able ben­e­fits that impact their health and over­all well-being. How­ev­er, when it comes to com­mu­ni­cat­ing those ben­e­fits, many com­pa­nies fall short.

8 Creative Ways to Communicate Employee Benefits 

So, what are some cre­ative ways to com­mu­ni­cate employ­ee ben­e­fits that will leave employ­ees feel­ing informed and appre­ci­at­ed? Here are eight proven ideas:

1. Choose Simpler Benefits Options

Rather than select­ing com­pli­cat­ed ben­e­fits pro­grams, com­pa­nies should con­sid­er choos­ing more straight­for­ward options. For exam­ple, Fringe’s per­son­al­ized lifestyle ben­e­fits plat­form makes cus­tomized ben­e­fits a breeze. Com­pa­nies sim­ply give their employ­ees points to use on the ben­e­fits plat­form, and the employ­ees choose the ben­e­fits that fit their needs now. 

2. Use Modern Communication 

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Rather than rely­ing on out­dat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion medi­ums, com­pa­nies should con­sid­er using mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools to dis­cuss ben­e­fits. Some exam­ples are short and rou­tine text mes­sages or quick Slack chan­nel updates and con­ver­sa­tions. The key is com­mu­ni­cat­ing infor­ma­tion in short, engag­ing bursts on a reg­u­lar basis.

3. Create Videos and Helpful Documents

Engag­ing videos and help­ful doc­u­ments are excel­lent tools for lead­ers to use to help com­mu­ni­cate ben­e­fits. Peo­ple are real­ly com­fort­able with this way of learn­ing — espe­cial­ly younger employ­ees. Videos and doc­u­ments pro­vide employ­ees with self-ser­vice edu­ca­tion when they want more infor­ma­tion, allow­ing for more flexibility.

For exam­ple, if a com­pa­ny chose Fringe’s lifestyle ben­e­fits, they might use quick videos show­ing a walk-through of how to use the plat­form or a one-pager for fre­quent­ly asked questions.

4. Have Regular One-On-One Check-Ins

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Employ­ers shouldn’t rely on employ­ees approach­ing them for infor­ma­tion about ben­e­fits. Instead, they should imple­ment reg­u­lar one-on-one chats to give the employ­ees space to ask ques­tions with­out hav­ing to ini­ti­ate the con­ver­sa­tion or feel uncom­fort­able ask­ing in the pres­ence of co-workers. 

5. Engage the Frontline Supervisors

For ben­e­fits pack­ages to take off, the lead­ers have to be on board and excit­ed about them. Com­pa­nies should encour­age the super­vi­sors to be the cham­pi­ons of the ben­e­fits and sup­port them to use and under­stand the ben­e­fits so that they can lead by example.

6. Gamify The Benefits Education

Sta­tis­tics show that 80% of employ­ees find gam­i­fi­ca­tion-based learn­ing more effec­tive than tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion. Gam­i­fi­ca­tion in the work envi­ron­ment means using game-like ele­ments like points, scor­ing, com­pe­ti­tion, etc. to boost employ­ee engage­ment. Com­pa­nies can work to gam­i­fy their ben­e­fits pack­ages or the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of those ben­e­fits to increase engage­ment and use.

Using a points-based ben­e­fits plat­form is an effec­tive way to take advan­tage of this trend. Anoth­er way could be hold­ing com­pe­ti­tions where employ­ees are reward­ed for using their ben­e­fits packages. 

7. Encourage Employee-Led Education

One of the most cre­ative ways to com­mu­ni­cate employ­ee ben­e­fits is to let the employ­ees lead the edu­ca­tion of those ben­e­fits. For instance, com­pa­nies can assign sep­a­rate depart­ments dif­fer­ent por­tions of the ben­e­fits pack­age and have them cre­ate a pre­sen­ta­tion on it. Each depart­ment would take time cre­at­ing inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tions to com­mu­ni­cate the val­ue of their ben­e­fit to the oth­er employees.

The advan­tages here are two-fold. For one, the pre­sen­ta­tions will pro­vide ben­e­fits edu­ca­tion. Sec­ond, it ensures that every­one knows who to ask when they have ques­tions about their ben­e­fits. An extra bonus is that the team gets a chance to come togeth­er and have an infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sion they can all ben­e­fit from.

8. Offer Personalized Lifestyle Benefits Worth Sharing

If com­pa­nies real­ly want to com­mu­ni­cate val­ue and edu­cate their peo­ple about their ben­e­fits pack­ages, they need to ensure the ben­e­fits are worth­while in the first place. If the ben­e­fits aren’t real­ly impact­ful to begin with, then employ­ees have min­i­mal incen­tive to learn about or under­stand them.

Com­pa­nies should offer per­son­al­ized lifestyle ben­e­fits that give their peo­ple what they tru­ly need to be healthy and hap­py. When they do, employ­ees will want to learn about the ben­e­fits and be moti­vat­ed to pro­mote and share them with their col­leagues. In that way, the employ­ees become the advo­cates for the ben­e­fits, mak­ing uti­liza­tion rates soar.

Using a per­son­al­ized lifestyle ben­e­fits plat­form like Fringe can help accom­plish that goal. Talk to our team to get start­ed today!