Employee benefits are crucial in your business model.
The right benefits can ensure that you attract the best, most qualified and experienced workers to your business.
It can also be part of your office culture and ensure that employees feel comfortable and satisfied in their position. Ultimately, by providing employee benefits, you will be able to reduce the level of employee turnover.
One of the issues that employers often run into is that teams don’t know or understand what employee benefits you’re providing.
They are completely unaware that you have childcare options or dental. This is typically due to a poor level of communication or not using the appropriate tactics to get the key information across.
Read on…
For some of the best options for communicating employee benefits to your workforce
Triggered Communication of Employee Benefits
One research study revealed that 44% of people are completely happy with providing personal information to their employers. That’s great news because it then means that you can use the information they provide to effectively communicate worker benefits.
For instance, you might have an employee on maternity leave.
In this situation if you have relevant personal information such as their phone and email address, it is possible to complete a triggered communication event.
A triggered communication is responding to a specific scenario with a communication tactic.
In this case, you would be using the email to remind the worker that there is something such as a childcare scheme available from your company. Immediately, you are going to be able to deliver the information that these employees need and may not be aware of. A phone call would also work in this situation but may be considered more intrusive by the recipient.
Communicate Employee Benefits through Pay Slips
Of course, other workers may not be particularly happy about sharing information. If you don’t have their personal email or home address, then it’s probable that you won’t be able to communicate benefits with them in this way.
But what about using something else that they will always be provided with?
You could think about communicating benefits using their pay slip as a medium. Whilst not all employees will read a pay slip a lot of them will. That means that you can get the word out about available benefits to large portion of workers who will in turn notify those who don’t look at their pay slips. Attaching benefit information on an important document like a pay slip does provide a strong chance that it won’t be skimmed over.
Of course, if you are putting it on the pay slip, then you do need to make sure that it is clear. Ensure the key points are highlighted and that it doesn’t get overlooked in what can seem like irrelevant employment and legal information.
Social Media
A key thing to remember when communicating with employees is that it’s not just about providing them with the information. You need to make sure that you are engaging with them, similar to how you would perhaps engage with a customer.
Your employees will be on everything from Facebook to Twitter.
You can use social media platforms to create groups and then encourage your employees to join. Through these groups it becomes possible to share information on the benefits you offer directly to employees. Or, if you want to build positive buzz around your business at the same time, share it on Twitter. The benefit of social media is that as well as sharing the information, employees can quickly and easily ask questions or engage in discussions. By doing this, you can make sure that messages are clear and understood.
If you choose to share these benefits on a social media public feed as well it may aid recruitment due to prospective employees being attracted to certain benefits you offer. All too often potential hires look beyond simple pay scales to other pros, and this can be an easy and effective way to convey the options.
Use Video
It is predicted that in the next ten years, eighty percent of content online will be video. This should tell you how important this particular form of media is. There are a lot of advantages to video content. It’s far easier to understand than text and people are more likely to watch a video rather than reading a complicated and dry document.
Video is also a great way to engage with chosen demographics due to it being a more immersive and dynamic form of communication. That’s exactly what you want. You want something where you can quickly deliver the key information and get the message across. It’s also more likely that using video you’ll be able to reach the entire workforce. Many of the options we have already discussed will only allow you to hit a core part of your staff. Video content will typically be seen by virtually everyone.
Work Place Notice Boards
You might think that notice boards are completely ignored by employees around your business. However, this is not the case at all! Instead, it’s true to say that people do read these noticeboards. Again, this is about making sure that the content that you produce hits the right mark. With the noticeboard, you’re going to be using printed content. Accordingly, this needs to be eye-catching and exciting. The good news is that these noticeboards are used for information that employees do want to learn about like staff socials. So, as long as you put information about benefits up, there’s a good chance that it will be read.
If you want to reach the largest audience for the information you put up on the noticeboard, placement is crucial. We recommend setting up the noticeboard in the kitchen area. This is the place where all employees will end up on their break for a cup of tea/coffee or a snack. Having a colorful or attractive piece of printed content will guarantee employees will notice this information.
We hope you find this advice useful when looking for great ways to communicate employee benefits. Remember, you will likely need to utilize a few of these options to ensure that all members of your team get the message and understand what benefits are available to them from your company.
Putting these employee benefits tips into practice…
Before you start looking at tactics, you need to make sure that you understand what benefits you are offering and why they matter to your employees.
By understanding the employee perspective on benefits, you’ll know the right way to approach, promote and communicate them successfully.
Essentially, you’ll be aware of what matters most to your employees. This is all about opening up a dialogue and discovering their point of view.
The key thing to remember here is that communication isn’t a one-way street. You need to build a structure where employees can engage with you as much as you can with them.
Learn more
For further employee benefit reading, here is our blog ‘The Difference Between Employee Benefits and Employee Perks‘
For advice and support on employee benefits and implementing them in your business, drop us an email: info@petaurumhr.co.uk