‘Benefits are crucial for talent retainment‘ – is a well-known fact that we repeatedly see in articles and reports. The reason is simple: benefits support our lives outside office walls and create opportunities for personal growth and comfort. That’s why 57% of employees are ready to accept a lower salary position, but with a better benefits offering. However, without clear and effective communication with workers, any benefits strategy will fail and result in capital loss.
In the article, we look into the best ways to improve the link between employees and employers in talking about benefits.
Advantages of effective communication
The importance of benefits is evident in theory – they cover health insurances, help improve one’s qualification, and save hundreds of dollars for much more valuable spendings. And yet, without the key to using them, every possibility to preserve funds and improve oneself is wasted. Ensured understanding of the benefits politics by employees has two significant advantages for a company:
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Raise in productivity
Happiness lets us work better. The research at the University of Warwick proved this idea by examining more than 700 participants after positive and negative stimuli. Companies such as Google invest in creating a healthy emotional environment in the workplace to boost productivity. Another way to do it is to provide protection and support to employees outside the workplace by benefits strategy. Health care and opportunities for professional development pave a happy worldview that results in high-quality results in work.
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Control of costs
Obviously, benefits policy strengthens the team, which results in greater productivity and higher profit for a company. However, such non-wages compensations are even more significant for employees. 42% of workers think they lose more than 700$ yearly because of the mistakes made while designing a plan of benefits insurance. Apart from missed opportunities, people tend to blame the company for inefficient communication, resulting in the break of trust.
Several steps to reach an employee
A communication link requires planning and design apart from the benefits strategy. It’s a challenge for the HR team to talk explicitly and check whether the informational campaign bears its fruits. Here we list six directions to implement in the current communication strategy.
1) Training on benefits
The sphere of non-wages compensations is tangled with legal requirements and yearly changing offers. Each member of the company’s crew has their job to do, and diving into the details of benefits is a tedious burden. That’s why an HR team should be responsible for an easy-to-comprehend education on the benefits plan. The best way is to organize introductory lectures on benefits and further time-to-time workshops to work on their current benefits plans. Moreover, such training will empower employees to work independently with digital resources like Benefits.gov.
2) Regular communication
Benefits planning has numerous pitfalls. Strict deadlines, changeable conditions, and various options from discounts on food to dental insurance confuse and complicate the planning process. That’s why the communication about benefits shouldn’t be given at one time, but rather regularly, revealing different aspects of such compensations. Moreover, a monthly digest from the HR team with recent news and opportunities is a good idea for fostering employees’ activity in working with benefits plans.
3) Human-to-human contact
With a lot of information to take in, employees prefer to seek advice from a real person. Without a response from their company, people turn to bloggers on social media for answers and start to think about changing the working place. The solution is to create a mentoring program where a particular HR professional will monitor benefits plans for colleges and discuss appropriate opportunities for each case. Such measures will show care and support from the employer and create working benefits plans.
4) React to current issues
Only an up-to-date benefits strategy will be profitable. Apart from conventional and legally mandatory benefits, companies can offer various new opportunities that answer today’s challenges. Such innovation is telehealth that appeared nearly a decade ago but gained extreme popularity during the pandemia. In particular, it provides solutions for health issues that don’t require direct physical contact, like mental counseling.
5) Creative approach
Take this task as any working project that requires visual representation. Trying to sell a product, you create a pleasing covering and unfold an informational campaign with advertising and promotion from influencers. It would help if you tried the same with benefits planning, particularly making an infographic about current trends and disseminating posters around the working environment. Furthermore, you may include optional benefits like pet caring or discounts for sports activities to catch interest.
6) One place for information
Transparent and explicit communication will be possible only when all information is kept in one place. To ease access to personal benefits plans, you can create shared folders in Google drive or use a cloud platform for managing benefits effectively. Moreover, such digital platforms allow employees to independently change their benefits plans, giving the HR team more time to work on other tasks.
In conclusion – never stop communicating
It’s a company’s responsibility to create a straightforward way to communicate with employees. Additionally, a successful case in the benefits administration will give experience for other challenges concerning higher management and executants’ connection.
Here are quick revision tips. Your current benefits strategy is efficient if you:
- Educate employees on their rights and possibilities.
- Update the benefits offering to face today’s challenges.
- Create a transparent way to design benefits plans.
Another solution for managing an extensive team is to keep the data on a digital platform. Tabulera cloud-based software solution is perfect for visualizing changes in benefits strategy and letting employees work with their plans individually.