Open enrollment is usually a great time for a company’s human resource department to shine. Unfortunately, open enrollment is also usually one of the primary (if not worse — the only) times for HR teams to engage with associates. This is especially problematic when one takes the increasingly remote workforce into account. As more and more people work from home, their chances to communicate with human resources seem to dwindle. The good news is that HR teams can create an employee benefits marketing plan that includes strategies to increase employee engagement year-round. Here are three ways that a digital benefits toolkit like the Benefits Zone app can help make it happen.
Provide a Resource Hub
Medical benefits are a significant part of most employers’ benefits offerings, but there are likely other resources that associates need to access throughout the year.
The Benefits Zone app acts as a resource hub. When you include important links, forms, and benefits overviews in a centralized and easy-to-access application or tool, you help make it easier for employees to use a virtual engagement tool outside of the open enrollment period.
Providing a “one-stop-shop” for all of your benefits information facilitates more employee use. Plus, it grants HR teams valuable insight into how they can better support their employees.
Integrate Text Messaging Into Employee Benefits Marketing
Research within the marketing industry illustrates that text message open rates are significantly higher than email open rates. It’s reasonable to assume that those statistics hold true in the workplace, too. It’s not uncommon to see “per my last email” attached to a response to a coworker.
A digital benefits platform allows you to take advantage of this trend. The Benefits Zone app makes it possible to communicate with employees via text messaging.
While these texts may initially center around open enrollment information, training, deadlines, and reminders, companies can use these texts outside of open enrollment to text company-related information. It’s easy to coordinate bulk texting to distribute reminder texts for company events, company announcements about policy changes, or even inclement weather warnings.
Welcome Engagement for Employee Benefits Marketing
Employee engagement is a two-way street. That’s why it’s important to ensure that HR contact information is readily available on your digital benefits resource.
General knowledge suggests that you can benefit from identifying the specific area of expertise for each HR contact in your benefits resource. This proves especially helpful when employees are trying to navigate through benefits.
You should highlight your HR experts (payroll, medical claims, FMLA, etc.) so that it’s easy to route employee requests to the best party to help. This streamlines whatever process the employee is engaged in and shortens response times.
It’s also a good idea to include request forms in your digital benefits tool. This is another way to streamline communication, and it also makes tracking employee engagement much easier.
Reinforce Engagement By Driving Activity to Your Digital Resource
Ultimately, your virtual engagement tool should support employees. The easier you make it to contact HR, find answers, and access crucial resources, the more employees will engage.
You should work with managers and key stakeholders to promote your digital benefits tools. Use it when you answer employee questions; make it a practice to show them the answers to questions in the digital benefits tool. This all reinforces the value of the tool. Be sure to evaluate it consistently, too, so that you can pinpoint areas for improvement or unmet needs.
If you’re interested in learning more about how you can implement a Virtual Engagement Solution for Open Enrollment and beyond, let us know! Our team can answer your questions and help you move towards a more engaged workplace.
