Blog: Is communication the key?
Recently, I spotted a question on LinkedIn: “What would you consider to be the most important factor when putting in place employee voluntary benefits?” and the feedback all pointed to communication.
How do you communicate employee benefits in the most effective way? It’s old verses new these days, do you go down the old fashioned paper based route or do you go for social media and technology?
Social media can be very powerful, just ask Mr Thomas Cook. Mr Cook has the same name as the travel giant Thomas Cook. Thanks to the common name Mr Cook has been the subject of ridicule for years. So by way of compensation he decided to post on Thomas Cook’s Facebook page asking for a free weekend in Paris. Lowcostholidays.com decided to step in and sent Mr Cook to Paris for a week!
The amount of coverage lowcostholidays.com received from this would have completely outweighed the cost of the trip to Paris for Mr Cook. It attracted a lot of interest and highlighted the power of social media, and I’ll bet it prompted a lot of companies to look at their communication strategy.
Can we communicate employee benefits via social media – yes we can, but are you addressing the right audience? If you are engaging with people who are happy to use social media then you are talking to a very responsive, tech-savvy audience. But what if they are not? You need to be in a position to respond. Also is this the best way to engage with all of your employees?
Chances are there is a mixed demographic for you to reach when it comes to communicating benefits. If your staff don’t have internet access during the day then a well-crafted email could be wasted as you are missing a large part of your required audience. A simple poster campaign on a well located notice board may work better.
However it is always hard to beat face-to-face communication, yes it is old fashioned but it gets results. You can’t make eye contact with a Facebook update, equally a Facebook update can’t explain exactly what that benefit will mean to you and your family.
There may be a wealth of forms of communication available to use these days but it doesn’t mean we have to use all of them. Get to know your employees and how they like to be communicated to, tailor your strategy around that and you can’t go far wrong. A cross channel approach will give you most traction as you will be appealing to the widest audience possible.
There is no point having an amazing benefits package if no one is using it, getting your communication right is a point that is often overlooked. Otherwise you might as well send out a message in a bottle.
This article was supplied by David Walker, chief commercial officer, Personal Group
In partnership with Personal Group
Personal Group provides the latest employee benefits and wellbeing products.
