With open enrollment season in the rear-view mirror, benefits often fade into the background for most employers until the next open enrollment period approaches. This means that efforts to promote and educate on benefit offerings tend to surge in the lead-up to the next open enrollment, which leaves a large gap in communication throughout the year. This approach falls short in ensuring that employees retain crucial benefits information.

We get it, everyone is busy. But there’s a staggering fact that about half of all employees don’t understand their benefits. Using effective communication year-round can help combat this statistic and improve job satisfaction. After all, if employees don't understand their benefits, how can they fully understand the value of what you're offering them for their work?

As an employer, what’s the big deal?

With the inundation of information employees receive about benefits in the period immediately leading up to and during open enrollment, it can be easy for the information to get lost or ignored. Practicing a more proactive strategy that spreads communications throughout the year can be a great way to educate and engage employees with their benefits beyond open enrollment season.

Promote financial wellbeing

With several years of economic uncertainty, led by the cost of nearly everything increasing, stock market volatility, and rising retirement concerns, many employees are stressed about their finances and employers are paying attention. According to the 2023 EBRI Financial Wellbeing Employer Survey, 39% of employers rate their employees’ financial wellbeing as a high concern, compared to 29% in 2023. Employers must find ways to show their employees that they care about this and offer benefits that help ease financial strain. After all, workers who feel financially healthy are 87% more likely to feel cared for at work, because they recognize their employer’s role in enabling them to live their life with less financial strain.

Improve engagement, loyalty, and productivity

A growing trend in workplace expectations is the desire among employees to be cared for by their employers. While there are many ways employers can and should demonstrate that they care, one crucial method is through the overall compensation and benefits package. Educating employees on the true value of their benefits can help them understand what their employers are contributing to support their financial wellbeing. Workers experiencing a sense of care in the workplace are significantly more inclined to be engaged, exhibit increased loyalty, and demonstrate higher levels of productivity.

Communication Strategies

1. Create monthly or seasonal email or intranet campaigns to bring timely topics to the forefront of your employees’ mind. These communications can cover important benefit basics, highlight how employees can take advantage of their benefits, and provide timely reminders.

For example, employers on a calendar year plan who offer a three-month runout period for their flexible spending account (FSA) are approaching the end of their runout period. Sending out an email or posting on the intranet in February gives participants time to find their receipts and submit their claims with ample time before the deadline.

Sharing timely eligible expenses is another great way to not only educate employees on eligible expenses for their benefit accounts, but also remind them to take advantage of their benefits and help support their health care costs. In the spring, employers may consider providing a message that reminds participants that allergy products are FSA, HSA, or HRA eligible. In the summer, promoting sun care products can be another great timely reminder.

2. Share educational materials from EBC’s toolkits to promote the value of benefits and provide specific plan details, such as eligible expenses. EBC developed and recently revamped our communication toolkits, which makes it easy to educate employees using email templates, presentation slides, webpages, flyers, and more! Our video library is another great resource that provides a ton of support and can be easily shared with employees. Using a multi-channel communication approach increases the chances of reaching all benefits-eligible employees.

3. Host dedicated office hours where employees can drop/call in to talk with HR representatives about their benefits or ask benefit questions. If there’s dedicated opportunities for employees to talk with the experts about their benefits, there’s a higher chance employees will think about their benefits and ask more proactive questions. When questions come up that your representatives don’t have answers to, EBC’s support teams are happy to assist clients and participants who have questions about their account-based benefits.

4. Set up an open survey where employees can submit questions or feedback on their benefits. Like with hosting office hours, periodically sending around a survey will help bring benefits top-of-mind. This way, there’s also an easily accessible open line of communication where employees don’t have to start the conversation themselves, and employers have the opportunity to learn what benefits their employees are interested in for the next plan year. Listening and acting upon employee opinions creates open communication that makes them feel heard and makes sure that employers are providing benefits their employees actually want.

5. Remind participants of their online account and EBCentral capabilities for easy benefit account management. At EBC, we try to make benefits as straightforward and accessible as possible. Through our online account and EBCentral, participants can view account details, including deposits, the date and status of submitted claims, set up direct deposit for quicker fund reimbursement, and more! EBC’s online account and mobile capabilities allow participants to easily self-service many aspects of their benefits, so encouraging them to utilize the available features helps streamline their benefits management.

6. Create a hub of benefit resources that makes important information easily accessible and removes barriers employees have in finding these details. This hub might be in an internal drive or on the intranet, and can include resources such as benefit forms, links to their online account login, educational resources, and more. The most important thing to remember when pulling together these resources is to make sure all benefits eligible employees know that it’s there and it’s in a location that they can easily access.

7. Work with your benefits consultant to send out total compensation statements, which helps demonstrate the total financial value an employer is providing. These statements can give information on their hourly pay/salary, time off, insurance, bonuses, retirement contributions, and more. The direct deposits or pay stubs employees see every other week do not account for anything other than their pay, so it can be easy for employees to lose sight of all the other contributions employers are making on their behalf. This is significant because 68% of employees rate their overall compensation as an important way employer cares about them.

Remember, your benefits are only as valuable as your employee’s see them. Using clear messaging that reminds employees of the money their benefits save them will make your benefit offering even more competitive. Consider using some of the above outlined ideas or come up with your own creative ways to reach your employees. Keep in mind that not all employees access information in the same way with hybrid and remote work environments, so using multiple communication channels will help make sure all employees receive the information.