How to maintain engagement with an employee benefits platform
This is a message that we push often, outlined by our managing director Catherine Bennett: “Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how good your benefits package is if your employees don’t know about it.”
It’s important, therefore, to ask the question “is our employee benefits offering still engaging employees post-launch?” If the answer is no, here are some things companies can do to solve the problem.
Incorporate company information
Using your employee benefits platform to host company information is a great way to encourage employees to access your employee benefits platform. Companies can include important health and safety information, training material, payslips and important business news and updates. This really helps to increase the amount of times your employees access your platform.
Improve communication
The best benefits platforms will include built-in messaging tools, newsfeeds and integrated social media links to keep staff updated with company news and benefits launches.
In a typical office environment, your employees spend most of their time at their desk or in front of a device through which they can access their email. Therefore, as a channel to communicate with your employees, email is one of the most useful. Emailing your employees to update them on new offerings or to encourage them to access your employee benefits platform is one of the most effective ways to increase employee engagement.
Don’t forget offline communication
Posters, leaflets, flyers etc are still very useful forms of communication and are usually standard with the launch of a benefits platform. It’s a good idea to update these regularly and refresh them so they don’t always look the same. Think about where you position them too. Bathroom bulletins and posters in break rooms work really well.
Statistics and the importance of data
Any benefits platform worth its salt will give you invaluable management information on what benefits your employees access regularly. Reviewing stats on the pages that are visited most or least will give you a useful picture showing what’s hot and what’s not among your employees.
Some platforms point towards the importance of communicating your benefits to your employees. For example:
- 41 per cent of employees are said to be concerned about infrequent communication about benefits, according to Health Advocate’s white paper: Striking a balance (2017).
- Securian’s Benefits Survey (2017) indicated that 40 per cent of employees fear that their employer may not provide sufficient information or guidance about available benefits options.
Employee surveys are a great tool to find out more about what your employees value the most. Collecting data can either be done electronically through your platform or through a simple survey. Feedback from employees on your platform will be invaluable. Often firms will only send these out once a year, however sending them out a little more frequently can only serve to help you optimise your platform more effectively.
Consider carefully what you include in your survey and whether there is a particular area of the platform you’d like to consider. Also, make it clear to employees why you are conducting it. Let them know that you’re conducting a survey to make their experience better when using your employee benefits platform.
Benefits all round
Taking post-launch engagement into consideration can benefit both the company and its employees. Taking a new approach to communicating benefits post-launch can almost be treated as a relaunch to give that bit more of a boost. Companies can also maximise impact by letting employees know why they are optimising the platform and the way its benefits are communicated.
Ultimately, by informing and educating employees about the benefits available, the company is helping its employees.
This article was provided by Caboodle.
In partnership with Caboodle
Caboodle is one of the UK's leading employee benefits companies.
