5 steps to help employees understand and use their benefits

Employee benefits can act as a powerful tool for businesses to support the health, wellbeing and financial resilience of their workforce. However, when benefits are not communicated clearly, employees can easily overlook support available to them.

A great deal of time and money can be spent putting the right benefits package in place – from pensions and health insurance to wellbeing and lifestyle benefits – but if employees aren’t sure what’s available, or how a benefit could help them, it can fall flat.

Everywhen research found that only 39% of employers say their workforce has a good understanding of the full range of benefits provided. It also found that 38% agree home or hybrid working has made it more difficult to communicate support, while 43% find it difficult to ensure communications are always relevant to different employee groups.

Here are five practical steps to help employees understand their benefits:

1. Make benefits feel more valuable

For many employees, benefits can feel like a list of disparate services. Effective communication can show them how their whole package fits together.

One way to do this is through total reward statements, which offer a clear picture of everything employees receive beyond their salary, from employer pension contributions and paid leave to health benefits, training and other support.

When budgets are tight, this can prove a useful way to demonstrate the wider support a business provides for its people.

Data insights can also help employers to see where messages are landing and where communications need to improve.

2. Understanding is the first step to engagement

Benefits that employees only look at when a specific need arises often provide other services that can be missed. For example, income protection policies also provide rehabilitation services, and employee assistance programmes often include 24/7 virtual GP access.

Before offering any new benefits, it’s worth taking the time to fully explore what your employees already have access to and how they can use them.

If you’re unsure about what is being used and what is needed, a simple audit can be a useful starting point. Employers can look at which benefits are being talked about, which are promoted regularly and whether it’s clear when they might be used in real life.

To help your workplace understand what is available, it can be helpful to clarify the additional services within a plan.

3. One-off messages rarely change behaviour

All too often benefits will be communicated just once or twice a year, usually when employees join a business, for example, at enrolment and then at renewal.

Employees are unlikely to remember every benefit from a one-off email, PDF or reference in a handbook. They’ll often need frequent reminders, along with simple explanations and practical examples of how they can be used.

Pension contributions, for instance, might be linked to financial wellbeing while a health cash plan could be explained as a way to help with routine costs, such as dental treatment or physiotherapy.

4. Make benefits easier to access

A modern benefits platform can also play an important role in improving engagement throughout the year, rather than simply acting as a place to access information.

By bringing benefits, total reward information, wellbeing resources, recognition and communications together in one place, it can create a more personalised experience. Employees can access the support most relevant to them, when they need it, helping to make benefits feel more visible, relevant and valuable in everyday life.

This can be particularly important for hybrid and geographically dispersed workforces, where employees may otherwise miss important communications or opportunities to engage with available support.

For employers, the value extends beyond convenience. A benefits platform can provide valuable management information and insight into employee engagement, helping organisations understand which benefits are being used, where communication initiatives are working effectively and where additional support may be needed.

5. Listen before you communicate

A blanket message to the whole of a workforce will generally have limited value.

What employees care about tends to vary from person to person, depending on what’s happening in their work and personal lives.

For one employee, family support may be the thing that matters most while for another, it could be access to healthcare or pensions education.

Employers should “listen” to what employees need and understand where they may lack awareness. This could be through the use of pulse surveys, focus groups, absence trends or engagement and benefit take-up figures.

Making benefits communication work harder

Benefits can play an important role in supporting employees and strengthening recruitment and retention, but their success depends on whether they’re understood and used.

Clear, regular communication can help employers make better use of the support available and gives employees a clearer understanding of how their benefits can help in everyday life.