How to Communicate Your Employee Benefits More Effectively

Seeking better pay or benefits is the top reason people look for new jobs, according to one survey. That means offering a comprehensive benefits package that meets the needs of a variety of employees is important. But it’s also important that your employees understand the benefits being offered to them, especially when the percentage of workers leaving their jobs is at its highest level in more than 20 years. Here are a few tips to help you ensure you communicate the savings potential of your benefits to your employees. 

Provide examples of savings

Contribution limits. Documentation. Substantiation. There are many terms your employees might be introduced to for the first time when learning about their benefits options. However, rather than getting too “in the weeds” right away, position your communication by using a “What’s in it for me?” approach.

One of the best ways to illustrate your plans’ savings potential is with real-life examples for your employees to see. For example, if you offer health savings accounts (HSA) or flexible spending accounts (FSA), provide dollar figures on what they could save in taxes if they contributed the IRS maximum to the account. Our HSA calculator and FSA calculator will also help them see the potential savings. 

Go visual

How you present information about your plans is just as important as the information itself. Since we’re in a digital age, your employees are likely used to seeing more information now than ever before. You need to make information easy to read, scan, and digest. 

Use visuals whenever possible to show stats, tables and graphs related to your plans. And, when you do provide information, do so with quick-hitting blocks of text or bulleted lists rather than long narratives.

Share easy-to-use tools

Even if an employee has determined an HSA or FSA or commuter benefits plan is right for them, the next step is determining how much to contribute for the plan year. They’ll want to consider a variety of factors regarding their expected eligible expenses for each benefit they enroll in. Providing access to planning tools with help them appropriately budget for the upcoming plan year. To give you some ideas, a few examples of the tools WEX provides are:

• My HSA Planner, which will help employees see how much they can save with an HSA.
• My Commuter Planner, which lets employees see how much they can expect to incur in commuter benefits costs on their commute.
• Our benefits toolkit, which has HSA/FSA calculators, an eligible expense list, our blog, and more to support employees in their decision making.

Use a variety of platforms

Mobile devices have transformed the way many of your employees consume information. How they engage in information depends largely on the technology they’re comfortable with and choose to use. Your approach should be multi-pronged to ensure you effectively reach all of your employee audiences.

Emails, meetings, videos, and handouts are all ways you can reach your employees with information about your plans. With these options (and so many more), focus on:

• Consistency. No matter how you communicate with your employees, make sure the messaging is the same across all platforms and resources.
• Creativity. Grab their attention with electronic or TV displays, posters and other visuals in high-traffic areas of your workplace.

Focus on open enrollment

A year-round engagement strategy keeps your benefits top of mind for your employees. But the most important time you need their attention is during open enrollment. That’s when they’ll be deciding what plans to enroll in and making other financial and healthcare decisions, such as what health plans to enroll in or whether they should contribute to a 401(k). Develop a strategy that specifically focuses on what and when to communicate leading up to open enrollment.

Encourage questions

One survey found that nearly three-quarters of employees thought HSAs were pretty much the same as FSAs, despite the two types of accounts being very different. Encourage your employees to ask questions so they can have the confidence to learn the facts and make informed decisions.

Our employee resource center provides educational resources to help answer questions through a variety of media. And check out our knowledgebase, where we’ve compiled help articles on some of the most popular topics and questions related to benefits plans and COBRA coverage.

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The information in this blog post is for educational purposes only. It is not legal or tax advice. For legal or tax advice, you should consult your own counsel.