Chief Engagement Officer, overseeing the full Human Resources Department and contributing to a high-performance culture @ Businessolver.
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Executive leaders and HR pros have long understood the importance of employee benefits. Given their ability to attract talent and drive retention, it’s no surprise benefits account for 30% to 38% of employers’ total compensation budgets.
Employees will tell you as much. In MetLife’s 2018 US Employee Benefit Trends Study (download required), a whopping 83% of employees said they would take a 3.6% pay cut for a better choice of benefits. Further, 73% of employees said they believe the right benefits increase loyalty to their employer.
But that was before the pandemic. Now, benefits have taken on a new kind of importance. As organizations and individuals desperately seek stability wherever they can find it, health and welfare benefits are a compelling demonstration of employer empathy — an embodiment of the inextricable link between organizations and their employees’ quality of life and sense of security.
Benefits Matter Now More Than Ever
Employees aren’t just anxious. Most also lack the benefits literacy necessary to navigate such a complex topic. In data my company gathered in 2019, we found that on average, 82% of employees are confused about benefits. This includes hospital indemnity, critical illness and other coverage options they may have never considered prior to the pandemic.
Clearly, 2020 has made a strong case for benefits education so employees can make optimal decisions for themselves and their covered dependents in the coming plan year — a year that will almost certainly be marked by a continued sense of uncertainty. Employers need to do everything they can to empower their employees and instill confidence in their benefits decisions.
But in a socially distanced world, that’s difficult. For most employers, a traditional in-person benefits fair is not an option this year. That’s why this year, employers should take the experience virtual.
Just like their face-to-face counterparts, virtual benefits fairs are an experience. The difference is that virtual events are made to meet employees (and their partners) where and when they like. As such, fairs can be delivered through a central digital hub, like a website, mobile app or a combination of both. They’re usually branded with a theme reflecting the organization’s shared values. They include content like videos, webinars, live chats, social channels and a link to the employer’s enrollment platform.
In leveraging our own virtual benefit fair for the first time this year, we’ve uncovered a few key strategies HR leaders should keep in mind as they consider their options for going virtual.
Establish SMART Objectives
As with many projects, including those in HR, success starts by establishing specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound (SMART) objectives. This allows for productive conversations with partners — IT department, participating carriers, team leaders, etc. — and decision-makers within your organization.
A SMART goal could look like: Within three days of launching the benefits fair, drive at least 460 unique site visits (25% of our employee population) to the digital hub online or through the mobile app. It can also look like: During the two-week AE period, reduce benefits-related calls to the service center by 3.5% over the previous year.
Plan And Pivot Around The Employee Journey
As you do for in-person benefits fairs, make the focus of your virtual event the people you serve — your employees. Think of the event as an employee journey and keep that in mind as you develop your SMART objectives discussed above.
To help you prioritize and schedule your activities before and during your event, ask yourself employee-centric questions like these:
- What are employees’ most consequential gaps in understanding and how can we address them?
- Which components of the event will be the most popular and how can I build excitement around them?
- Are employees paying attention to the right content? How can we reconfigure the event hub to drive desired behaviors?
- How many employees have yet to visit the hub, who are they and how do I drive them there?
Get Interactive
While carriers are likely to offer enhanced outreach and customer service options to your socially distanced workforce, certain interactive elements of a virtual benefits fair work just as well, if not better. These include:
Live webinars. In addition to asking your carriers to conduct a webinar introducing their offerings, your HR team should consider one as well. This can be especially important if you’re changing plan contributions, introducing an active (versus passive) enrollment or aiming to increase participation in employer-sponsored programs such as wellness challenges.
Social media forums. A survey of HR professionals in July revealed that 64% believe their employees would appreciate a social media channel — like Facebook or Instagram — to engage with one another. In the context of benefits fairs, this allows employees to speak directly to others like themselves and find out how their coworkers are approaching their benefits options.
Live chats with carriers or HR. Live chats offer employees an opportunity to efficiently ask carriers or HR representatives questions and get answers in real-time. Like the webinars mentioned above, scheduling these sessions in advance can create a sense of urgency.
Ensure You Have Strong Analytics And Reporting Tools.
A huge advantage of virtual benefits fairs over in-person events is data — lots of data. By keeping an eye on certain metrics during your fair, you can make small adjustments to ensure your employees are getting the right information in the right place, at the right time.
Metrics to watch include:
- Email opens and click rates
- Unique and total hub visits
- Average time spent on each page
- Video engagement metrics
- Webinar registration and attendee data
- Chat logs
- Social media engagement
During my company’s first virtual benefits fair, 58% of our employee population visited the hub. And 100% of employees impacted by major plan design changes completed their enrollment on time. With numbers like that, we’re likely to hold our benefits fair virtually next year as well.
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