The enrollment window has officially passed, employees are set up with their benefits, and your clients can finally breathe.
Or can they? While the sprint to the finish of enrollment is tough enough, the marathon effort of keeping employees informed about — and engaged with — their benefits can be just as tricky.
Fortunately, benefits consultants can play a huge role in sustaining and improving engagement for clients. But what will truly determine your unique value as a benefits partner is how strategic and proactive your communications are.
Many employers often send out one-and-done communications explaining workplace benefits without having a strategy in place to maintain engagement.
But as playwright George Bernard Shaw once explained, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
As Gallup revealed on the topic of workplace rumors, “ … a mere 13% of employees strongly agree that the leaders in their organization communicate effectively with the rest of the organization. The remaining 87% leaves a lot of room for misinformation to spread.”
Communicating in the workplace is hard enough, especially when teams are spread out across the world. Anybody who’s worked in a collaborative environment can attest to how easy it is for people to misinterpret or overlook what’s really being said.
But if information isn’t conveyed strategically or via the right channel, it’s a lost opportunity.
And in order for messaging to resonate effectively with clients, it must be personalized and adjusted for organizational complexities. For instance, negotiations with health plan providers regarding unique health care needs often get lost in translation when adjustments are relayed to employees, according to Courtney Schroeder, MS, WellRight’s Wellbeing Strategy Consultant.
In either case, the results are the same—lower engagement, mass confusion, and results that fall far short of your goals.
By helping your clients develop a solid, clear, and powerful benefits communication strategy, you can maximize the results of what you’ve worked so hard to plan, while also positioning yourself as a proactive and integral partner to your clients.
We talked about your client’s branding, but there’s another brand to mention. Yours.
The benefits consultant space is highly competitive, but you now have something other consultants don’t.
Not only can you offer a custom-tailored benefits program to your clients, but you can help them create a memorable, engaging communications strategy that will get everyone on the same page and excited to improve their wellbeing.
Practice some active listening around your own wellbeing and take time this holiday season to recharge your batteries and look forward to a successful year to come.