Wellness Programs Call for Better Benefits Communications

Wellness programs are all the rage this year. But what’s the point of a program that employees don’t understand and, therefore, don’t use? Midwest Business Group on Health has done some research evaluating employee engagement in health benefits and wellness programs.

What they found: Employees still do not understand their benefits. Part of the reason why employees are having trouble meeting their wellness goals is a lack of good communication and resources. MBGH found, “Most employees and dependents don’t fully understand what health care benefits are available to them nor do they fully comprehend the summary plan description (SPD) or what requirements they need follow to achieve incentives (i.e. premium differentials) that may be part of the benefit plan design. As a result, communications efforts frequently go unnoticed, are ignored or misunderstood by the employee.”

According to MBGH, employees want:

• Clear, concise communications
  • “Employees indicate they want clear and concise communications on benefits and what’s available to them, such as cost, coverage, co-pays, benefit changes and who is in their physician network.”
  • Better tools and resources 
    • “Provide employees with best-in-class tools, resources and support, and make it convenient for them to have access to this information at any time.”
    • The ability to easily share information with spouses
      • “Include family members, especially spouses, in providing information about health care benefits and workplace programs.”

So, you may want to re-think some of your current approaches to benefits communications that probably involve a lot of lengthy documents locked behind the firewall.  Here are some quick tips:

• Establish a public website that provides on-demand access to employees and all family decision makers.
• Aggregate everything an employee will need to make educated decisions in a clear, organized way. Include plan docs, calculators, and links to enrollment and carrier websites.
• And most importantly, understand the role of the benefits guide.  It may have a place for those employees who want all of the juicy details but shouldn’t be something you lead with.  Pull out the most important points and serve them to employees in plain, non-jargon language. Your average employee is not going to understand all the insurance terms, let alone read through all of the dense plan docs. So make it easier on them with short, straightforward benefits communications.

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that we’ve touched on which benefits videos to start with to get the most interest and involvement from your viewers. Will it be your Consumer Directed Health Plan or your 401(k)? You will also have learned what to include in an Open Enrollment video, which is a powerful place to start engaging employees.

Once you’ve decided on which topic to cover, here’s a plan for pulling together everything you COULD talk about and, from that, how to work out what to actually include in your video and what to provide through supporting documents.

1. Start with plan docs – Pull together and review all of your plan documents. View them through your employees’ eyes and be an advocate for their experience.
2. Decide on scope – Do you want a teaser to get employees interested, a full support solution that replaces your benefits guide or something in-between? Your choice will affect the watchability and usefulness of your video.
3. Beginnings and endings are critical – You have 30 seconds to buy attention span. Be creative. Wrap up with next steps.
4. Keep it Simple – Speak in plain English, as you would if you were having coffee with a good friend.
5. Find your voice – Are you corporate, anti-corporate or somewhere in-between? Make sure your video reflects your organization’s unique culture and voice.
6. Look and Feel – Consider incorporating these five elements:

• “Talking head” introduction – from a key executive is great for Open Enrollment or New Hire Training videos
• Company images – good for branding but be careful using faces as those employees may eventually leave
• Stock photography – select a powerful image to reinforce a key message
• Text – again, used sparingly, it can reinforce your key messages effectively
• Tables/charts/graphs – with video, you can walk your viewers through difficult concepts using tables, charts, graphs and other illustrations

Want more detail? Click here to watch the video course.

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GuideSpark has created a new video course to assist HR departments making the exciting leap into video communication. In this course, our director of Content Development and Video expert extraordinaire, Joseph Larocque, explains that topics which are more complex or require careful explanation are natural places to start. Good candidates are core benefits, Open Enrollment changes and tough messages such as a premium increase.

“Video can really help people understand how these plans work, how they compare, and why they are compelling,” says Larocque. “If you are introducing one of these in the upcoming year, starting your video communications here will drive adoption.”

GuideSpark’s system tracks the usage of our customers’ video libraries in great detail and provides this information the the HR department in an easy-to-read dashboard. Based on our customer statistics, the Top 5 Most Viewed Employee Benefits Videos are:

• Consumer Directed Health Plan
• Medical Plan Options
• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Roth vs. Traditional 401(k)

To learn more about how to create benefits communication videos, click here to watch the video course: Transform Benefits Education with Video.

In his new video course–Transform Benefits Education with Video–Joseph Larocque, GuideSpark’s Director of Content Development and video expert extraordinaire, recommends including these five pieces of basic information:

1. Open Enrollment process and deadlines
2. Open Enrollment events
3. Changes to your plan
4. How to enroll in benefits
5. Where to get help

It may sound simple but HR departments are frequently tempted to include large amounts of detail in an Open Enrollment video. The key message here is NOT to give viewers everything they could possibly want to know. Just touch on the main points and tell the viewer where to go for more information.

“An Open Enrollment video can provide a lot of value,” says Larocque. “If you hit these points effectively, you can avoid a lot of support calls.”

For more information on creating benefits communication videos, watch the video course Transform Benefits Education with Video.

Taken in December 2010 following last year’s annual enrollment period, the UNUM study finds that effective benefits education enables employees to make better choices, can increase employee loyalty and improves how employees rate their benefits packages.

They’ve wrapped up their findings in a catchy 3+3 slogan: three weeks plus three types of education methods = a better benefits education. This reflects the findings that apparently half of the employees surveyed had less than three weeks to review their benefits.

It’s not what’s on offer that counts as much as how it’s presented
Interestingly, employers don’t have to offer a particularly good benefits package to achieve high employee satisfaction.

• 85 percent of employees who rated their benefits education as excellent or very good also rated their benefits package as excellent or very good
• 80 percent of employees who rated their benefits education highly also rated the employer as an excellent/very good place to work

“When employees have adequate time and the right tools to understand and choose their benefits, the payoff is powerful,” said Bill Dalicandro, vice president at Unum. “The research shows that employees with an effective benefits education have higher levels of engagement, morale and loyalty.”

Cultivate a benefits consumer culture through education
Are you trying to encourage a culture of benefits consumers but reducing your benefits communication spending (and there’s not much to reduce!) at the same time? If so, the success–and ROI–of your new benefits offerings may be at risk. A little money spent here can go a long way.

Findings from the 2011 Aflac WorkForces Report highlighted the discrepancy between how companies and their workers view benefits communications:

• 85% of employers believe their HR departments are effective at benefits communication
• 27% of employees say their HR communications are not very/not at all effective
• 39% say the efforts are somewhat effective

And yet everyone agrees there is much needed improvement:

• 8% of employees say they are fully engaged in making benefits decisions
• 63% of companies say their workers need to be more engaged

What’s at stake? Not surprisingly, workers who are unprepared and under-protected against an accident or illness are highly vulnerable to the financial implications of an unexpected health event.

As more and more organizations realize, the health and financial wellness of an employee has a direct effect on the company’s productivity and retention levels.

• Companies are paying three times as much as last year in health premiums
• Most employers think their benefits communication is effective but few employees feel well informed
• Under-educated employees are making expensive decisions

Surely there are more options for proactive organizations than just waiting for the US Congress to work together to uncover ways to reduce both the country’s budget deficit and soaring health care costs. At the recent 24th Annual Benefits Forum and Expo in Dallas, two industry experts highlighted some key ways to reverse these trends.

Repeat after me: Improve Benefits Communication
Benefits Communication expert, Jennifer Benz, spoke about the need to simplify benefits for employees. According to her, benefits managers have an opportunity to solve one of the country’s biggest problems just by improving benefits communication.

Put benefits information online, outside the firewall. Establish a year-round dialog with employees through social media. Use public health services and other existing resources to promote benefits.

Balance Health and Financial Wellness
Ron Leopold, Vice President and National Medical Director of MetLife U.S. Business and industry thought leader, advises organizations to focus on helping employees find physical and fiscal success.

“There is a yin-yang relationship between health and financial,” Leopold said. “People who are financially secure are in a better position to maintain better health and people who are not financially secure face greater obstacles in terms of getting healthy and getting health care coverage.”

So there you have it. Improve benefits communications and invest in all-around wellness. Problem solved! If only getting Congress to work together was so easy…

GuideSpark, delivering the latest web solutions for HR communications and training, introduces a video white paper to aid HR organizations in the development and launch of their own, customized benefits communication videos.

GuideSpark’s instructional video white paper provides HR organizations with a simple step-by-step process to create and launch customized employee benefits videos. By incorporating video into benefits education, HR organizations can engage employees and increase benefits adoption during open enrollment while saving time and resources. According to GuideSpark’s customer surveys, using rich video content typically garners an overall 98 percent satisfaction rate among employees who praise the “easy to follow,” “convenient” and cost-effective benefits communication videos.

“Across the board, we find HR organizations are juggling the dual goals of enabling employee self-service while driving toward a culture of well-informed benefits consumers,” said Joe Larocque, Director, Content Development, GuideSpark. “Without exception, they’ve seen great success using video to achieve both objectives through a deeper level of employee engagement.”

The video white paper provides information on:

• how to use video for quick wins during open enrollment
• which benefit programs gain the most from video education
• how to decide what to cover
• how to keep the video content simple and engaging

FORTUNE 100 Best Places to Work companies—Adobe Systems and Meridian Health—and other top organizations, currently use videos to improve engagement in benefits education.

Watch the complimentary video white paper “Transform Benefits Education with On-Demand Video”.

Employees seek retirement advice from their employers

A majority of people have agreed they would like more guidance from their employer about how to achieve retirement goals according to the 11^th Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey.

Perhaps not surprisingly, employees with a higher overall education level are more likely to be financially well in retirement. Only 63% of employees with only a high school diploma participated in a retirement plan, as opposed to 84% of those with a college degree.

But all education levels showed a desire for direction from their employers.

More than half of all surveyed, agreed that they would like more information and advice from their employer about how to reach retirement goals. In fact, employees surveyed indicated that “educational materials that are easier to understand” is the second biggest motivator in getting an employee to learn more about saving and investing for retirement (behind tax breaks/incentives).

Investing in better retirement education for employees is a cost-effective way to motivate employees to save for their retirement and ensure their financial wellness.

Here are some highlights from the study:

• “What you say” is as important as “what you do.”When it comes to workplace satisfaction, the way that you communicate benefits may be just as important as the benefits themselves. In fact, those employers with poor quality benefits packages were able to improve workplace satisfaction ratings by 32 points with highly rated benefits education.
• Benefits Changes on the Rise; Quality of Benefits Education on the Decline. Roughly half (45%) of employees surveyed reported that they had seen changes in their benefits packages in 2009. And yet, the quality of benefits education declined sharply as 29% of workers gave their benefits education positive ratings in 2009 vs. 39% in 2008.
• Accommodate various learning styles. 70% of employees surveyed use web-based materials when available. Online videos and interactive tools are a great way to satisfy all three learning styles – visual, auditory and “hands on.”
• Effective benefits education helps retain talented employees.  In fact, 77% of employees who believed their company had good benefits education said they would stay with their employer even if they were offered the same pay and benefits elsewhere. As the job market improves, employees feel more comfortable looking elsewhere, so communicating the value of benefits is important.

Benefits education proven effective for increasing employee satisfaction

Investments in benefits education can be a low-cost, high-impact way to affect worker satisfaction.  Even when paired with a below par benefits package, effective benefits education can be a cheap means to dramatically improve job satisfaction, employee engagement, loyalty and productivity.  Unlock the value of your benefits package with benefits education.