Better Communication = Better Employee Benefits
Employee communication is challenging. It takes time, effort and collaboration to create a clear, unified message. And that’s just the beginning of the process.
Once you’ve crafted your message, you have to figure out how to make sure everyone sees it, hears it, and understands it.
This is true across the board, including when it comes to employee benefits.
Can communication affect benefits?
You bet it can. Many companies spend a tremendous amount of money on health benefits, only to spend very little time communicating about them. With some very real consequences. This lack of information transfer can actually increase the cost and decrease the value of your plan and affect your bottom line.
As a business, you want to provide employee benefits that are cost effective and a great incentive to recruit and retain top talent. But if employees don’t know how to use their benefits, they can’t use them wisely. And if they don’t understand what they are being offered, they can’t fully appreciate the value.
Both of these things run counter to what you are trying to accomplish.
Make benefits communication a priority
It’s tempting to put most of your focus into shopping for and securing the policy. But having a policy in place doesn’t help you out much if no one knows how it works. And skimping on communication will only lead to employee confusion and HR headaches.
No one has a bunch of empty time blocks floating around on the calendar. Many days, it feels like a struggle just to check off the basics. But slowing down and taking the time to build better communication practices can actually help you move faster. How? By helping you avoid the all too common side effects of poor employee benefits communication.
When you fail to communicate clearly, you can very easily end up with:
- Managers repeatedly needing to explain plan details and enrollment processes
- Employees seeking management time to ask questions and clarify procedures
- Co-workers frequently discussing their frustrations and confusion
- Loss of trust due to lack of transparency and clarity
- Lower levels of employee engagement
If this sounds less than ideal, don’t worry. There are ways you can start improving employee communication today. Here’s one quick idea:
Hold regular team meetings to share company goals and updates, benefits information, client success stories, employee kudos, etc.
- Make sure your meetings are short, specific, and a good use of time
- Keep them moving with a variety of interesting and educational information
- Send the agenda in advance so people can come prepared to participate
- End each meeting by confirming what everyone should take away and what follow up is needed
Take some positive steps to improve employee communication, and see how far you can go!
Having trouble with employee communications? We can help with that. There’s so much more to employee benefits than policies and premiums. A great benefits broker will help make sure you, your employees, and your business are all healthy and productive. Get in touch with Sonus to see how we can help your organization become a local employer of choice.
