Benefits Communications for Today’s Employee

Traditional Benefits Communications Not Reaching Today's Employee

We used to make this distinction about certain people being “web savvy” but these days it seems we’re all pretty web savvy – perhaps there is just different degrees.  One of my colleagues always uses the example of his 85 year old grandfather forwarding him YouTube clips to illustrate this point.

At GuideSpark we spend much of our time talking to employers about taking a modern approach to benefits communications.  When we meet with an HR professional for the first time to discuss their specific issues, many of them seem to have this sense that the world of communications has somehow passed them by.

Naturally, we start by helping HR professionals think through their current approach.  I’m not sure it has ever taken us more than a couple of minutes to convince someone that thick handbooks, brochures and text heavy Web pages are not getting the job done.  The fact is, if this HR professional didn’t believe this to be true, they wouldn’t have met with us in the first place.

And then, we walk through how to really create a Benefits Communications strategy that aligns with how employees are learning today.  Here are 3 guiding principles that we offer:

• Utilize web-based multimedia.  According to comScore, U.S. Internet users watched an average of 187 videos per viewer in December 2009.  Employees are conditioned to expect rich media formats when accessing information and they want it available on demand.
• Leverage communities and shared learning.  Blogs have become a legitimate corporate training ground and in February 2009, social media usage exceeded that of email for the first time.  While not all subjects are appropriate for a shared learning environment, when making decisions, employees often just want to know what others are doing.  Build a community around your benefits and allow them to share information through polls and message boards.
• Accommodate short attention spans.  Competing for just a few minutes of a busy employee’s time has never been more challenging.  Attention spans are shrinking each day.  A great example of this phenomenon is Twitter.  Twitter limits communications to just 145 characters.  To be effective in communicating to this crowd, you must work to make your benefits communications modular, concise and meaty.

Start with these and we promise you that your Benefits Communications will begin to have the impact that you desire.