How to Tell Your Employees What’s Changing for 2015

By Aja Thibodeaux / November 18, 2014 / Uncategorized No Comments

If you’re making changes to your company’s employee benefits for 2015, you’ll also need to make sure you’re effectively communicating those changes to your employees.  Employee education is key to ensuring employees appreciate and understand your company’s benefits package and make decisions that best suit their needs.  It has also been shown that the level of employee benefits education correlates to employee satisfaction.

Unum’s fifth annual Employee Education and Enrollment Survey, which surveyed 1,890 working adults across the nation with access to a variety insurance offerings through various providers, found “81 percent of employees who rated their benefits education highly also gave high marks to their employers, versus only 23 percent who did so when their benefits education was not rated highly — a 58-point difference.”  Employees clearly place value not only on their employer’s benefit offerings but also the employer’s efforts to effectively communicate those offerings and any upcoming changes to them.

Here’s some advice on how to communicate any plan changes or new benefits thoroughly so your employees understand what’s changing and why.

Consider the Employee’s Perspective

Change can be confusing and can introduce uncertainty, says Tim O’Brien, founder of O’Brien Communications. Remember change can make employees nervous or even lose trust in your organization. They may assume the worst if costs are going up or favorite benefits are trimmed back.

“While each organization is different, introducing significant change to the total compensation package, health care insurance in particular, often requires the same communications approach as any change-management situation, from a merger or acquisition, to a downsizing or organizational restructuring,” O’Brien says.

Establish a Communications Strategy

Companies understand the importance of communicating benefits information to their employees, but the Unum study found that while more than 80 percent of large companies feel it’s important for employees to fully understand their benefits, it’s estimated that only 58 percent of employees do. A benefits strategy can help remedy this situation.

Identify your objectives, tactics, target audiences and key messages, O’Brien says. “While some employers may have a clear sense of what they hope to achieve and what they can achieve with their workforce, others may need to step back. In all cases, the organization should know what employees know and don’t know about changes to health care and how they might feel about that.” Identify key communications challenges, such as a workforce spread across several locations or describing different benefits packages that apply to different groups of employees.

Help employees navigate these changes by talking about the new benefits’ value and the reasons for the changes, so everyone knows what’s going on, understands the change in benefits and value, and has ways to adapt, advises Deborah Teplow, CEO and co-founder of the Institute of Wellness Education. Illustrate how new benefits align with the organization’s values, for example, and find ways to show how changes to benefits will help the company and employees in the long run.

Time Communications Carefully

Before open enrollment, ensure everyone gets the information they need to make informed decisions about their new benefit options, O’Brien says. Give employees a heads-up about changes, so they can examine their options and decide which work best for them. Don’t wait until open enrollment to let people know things are changing.

Unum’s research has indicated that employees need a minimum of three communications and three weeks to review them to make good decisions at enrollment time.

According to the 2014 Aflac WorkForces Report, more than 6 out of 10 workers (64 percent) sometimes, rarely or never understand changes in their coverage. And maybe more disturbing, 41 percent of employees spent 15 minutes or less researching their benefit options during the 2013 open enrollment season; and nearly a quarter (24 percent) spent five minutes or less. Ninety percent of employees are simply keeping their same elections from year to year, whether they understand their benefits or not.

Stay Engaged All Year

Many companies focus on employee communications before open enrollment, but year-round communication can ensure better understanding. The majority of employees report that their employers don’t do that: About two-thirds of employees in the Aflac study said their employer communicated about the company’s benefits offerings only two or fewer times in the past year.

“The key to long-term effectiveness and greater employee understanding and comfort level is to operate under the assumption that employers should stay engaged with employees on the issue of health insurance after the enrollment period ends,” O’Brien says. This includes building a long-term communications program that offers resources to help employees stay up-to-date on their benefits and access the information they need when they need it.

Need help with employee benefits communications? Contact us to see how our team of experts can lend a hand.

HR Solutions is a human resources outsourcing firm based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We eliminate human resources headaches for businesses with 10 to 1,000 employees by handling their payroll, employee benefits, regulatory compliance and other staffing needs. Contact us to learn how we can streamline your company’s human resources function to save money and reduce risk.

---