How to Effectively Communicate Your Employee Benefits Plan

Employers offer employee benefits for a number of reasons like attracting talent, retaining employees, motivating staff, and increasing performance. However, if your employees don’t know what their benefits are or how to use them, they will be essentially useless.

Consider these four tactics to ensure that employees are taking full advantage of their benefits plan.

1. Make Information Easily Accessible

If your employees don’t know what is included in their benefits plan, it is therefore less likely that they will use it. This is especially true for services beyond traditional benefits such as Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) or wellness programs. 

One of the most effective ways to ensure your employees get the information they need is by providing them with an employee booklet. Employee booklets are printed booklets or PDFs containing all the information about a specific employee’s benefit plan. Employees in different classes may have different booklets based on their coverage levels. Each employee should always have access to one of these booklets whether it’s printed physically or available digitally. 

One downside to booklets is that they can be quite lengthy and it may be difficult to find the desired information. But, a solution to this is to provide a cheat sheet or a quick reference guide that employees can use to find out the high-level details of their coverage. 

2. Use a Digital Platform for Benefits Management

Technology can make our lives easier in so many ways, why not use it for employee benefits? Using a digital platform for employee benefits is a great way to encourage benefits usage among your employees. Digital platforms can provide services like claim submission, coverage lookup, or usage trackers. These features will make your employees want to use their benefits, instead of dreading the paperwork that comes with it. Because let’s face it, nobody gets excited about submitting claims.

3. Send Internal Communications Featuring Less Used Benefits 

Even if employees have information about their plan available at their fingertips, that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll study it intensely. There will be parts of the plan that many employees don’t take advantage of that you may want to promote, for example, an Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Non-traditional services like these are less likely to be used and known by your employees. 

It’s a good idea to plan to send out some internal communications that highlight specific parts of your plan. You can do this via email, or mention it in a meeting. Your employees will appreciate you taking the time to let them know about services they may be missing out on. 

4. Ask for Feedback 

Finally, asking for feedback is a great way to gauge how effectively your benefits plan has been communicated. Scheduling this feedback around the time that you will be renewing your plan, in particular, is critical to determine whether or not changes need to be made to the plan.

How Simply Benefits Can Help

Simply Benefits has worked hard to make plan information accessible anytime, anywhere. Offering three digital portals, one for advisors, employers, and employees, benefits plan management has been made simple. Employees can take advantage of digital claims submission and reimbursement in 48 hours, benefits usage tracking, and an AI keyword lookup to learn about their coverage.

About Simply Benefits

Simply Benefits is a Third Party Payor (TPP) that provides Employee Health Benefits 100% digitally through our Canadian Advisor partners. Our all-in-one digital solution provides three portals that enable Benefits Advisors to digitally manage all client plans online, Employers to efficiently administer employee coverage, and Employees to view, update and use their benefits 24/7 via desktop or smartphone app.

We help ENGAGE Employees Anytime, Anywhere, SIMPLIFY the Benefits Experience, and EVOLVE an Advisor's Benefits Business.

Connect with us at simplybenefits.ca or on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Employee Benefits Made Simple.