Consumer-grade communication maximizes the employee experience during annual benefits enrollment
When it comes to communications, employees and consumers are one and the same. Thinking like advertisers and marketers when it comes to internal communications can elevate your campaigns to consumer grade and maximize the employee experience during annual benefits enrollment.
The goalposts of the employee experience have shifted considerably in recent years – catalyzed by COVID-19 and fast-evolving digital technology. This means your employees have also changed, and so too should the way you communicate with them.
Treat your employees like customers
Personalized information delivered on-demand is the expectation today. It’s the benchmark for effective and engaging communication across mobile apps, location-based marketing, and targeted ads on social media. More than anything, consumer-grade communication cuts through the noise precisely because it is personalized.
Making your content relevant to your audience grabs their attention by answering the most important question consumers ask – what’s in it for me? This enables you to meet them wherever they’re at in life, be that starting a family or approaching retirement, which means adapting benefits information in a way that keeps communications relevant.
You need to be succinct, too. Consider the volume of information we take in every day – we’re rarely away from our devices – yet the average attention span of today’s adult is little more than eight seconds. That’s your window for making an impact.
You could model advertising and marketing campaigns that push out short videos, SMS notifications and web banners. And make sure you give employees a variety of clearly signposted options when it comes to accessing more information, such as QR codes or web links.
Get close to your target audiences
Employee populations often comprise multiple audiences spanning different locations, job roles, lifestyles, wellness status and personal interests. Your communications need to speak to all of these, which requires you know your audiences.
Consider if your content is being presented in ways that are relevant to new starters, older employees, the LGBTQ+ community, military veterans, those whose first language isn’t English, or those with disabilities that might impair their interaction with certain channels. Reach out to your different audiences for guidance where possible and use feedback from existing channels.
Employee surveys and focus groups can also provide insight that helps you package benefits information in the right way. For example, you’re able to acknowledge and address specific pain points for target audiences, such as mental health or fertility support. And having the right tools in place to measure the impact of your campaigns is also critical. Bottom line, for any internal communication to be truly impactful and engaging, it needs to be two-way.
Let your employees choose how they want to engage
When it comes to annual benefits enrollment, convenience is critical to the election process. It’s not enough to just personalize information, it also needs to be delivered in a way that’s easy for everyone to access. With employees working from home or in offices, retail outlets, warehouses, manufacturing plants or from the road, it helps to consider preferred ways of engagement, from time of day to device and channel preference.
Not everyone is desk-based, yet even those on the shop floor, for example, will have access to a mobile device or a break area, which presents opportunities to push out notifications and display signage. When it comes to knowing which channel to use, it helps to have a channel strategy in place that outlines the purpose, impact and content of each.
And don’t forget that people are channels too, specifically managers and leaders. You can make it easy for them to cascade the right information in the right way by providing communications templates, talking points, benefits guidelines and presentations. Equip them with the tools and skills to fully support your campaign, and to stay on point with messaging.
Your channels and mediums may vary but your messaging must stay the same – consistency and repetition are key to getting your messages heard.
Reach out for support
Much of this – if not all of it – may feel like new or unknown territory. You might be overwhelmed by the volume of work that lies ahead and the time constraints in place, but you don’t have to tackle this alone. We can partner with you. Our expert team of communications consultants have extensive experience delivering creative, marketing-based solutions that can make the difference during annual benefits enrollment. Reach out today if you’d like to discuss your specific needs.
See how our internal communications consultants can help you today, and contact us to discuss the tangible differences we could make to your organization.