Are your benefits really engaging your employees?

Once you have your benefits package sorted, now it’s time to put them through some rigorous road testing.

You’ve dedicated time to getting your company benefits just right - researching, defining and integrating them into a package you believe offers a good mix with enough appeal to please a broad range of employees.

You’ve communicated the specifics to stakeholders but now you’re waiting and wondering if all the effort was worth it.

Will your employees use them? Do they feel there’s enough variety? Is the package good enough to become one of the reasons people stay with your business?

Clearly, finding answers to these questions is crucial to evolving your benefits strategy going forward.

Here are a few ideas on how to get them:

Metrics matter

One of the best ways to find out if your benefits package is on point is to simply ask your employees what they think.

Surveys: you could distribute an all-company survey via email with some pertinent questions to gauge the overall feeling about the benefits package and collect opinions about specific elements of your compensation offering.
Polls: similar to a survey but usually quicker to complete, email a few multiple-choice questions to discover more about your employee’s opinions on their benefits.
Interviews: conduct one-on-one interviews to find out what elements of your package individual employees are truly finding most useful, and those that are getting a more ho-hum reaction.
Focus groups: gather a few employees - no more than five at a time - and ask for their collective and individual thoughts on their benefits.

Whichever approach you take, the questions you ask should be geared towards finding out how happy employees are with their current benefits - what’s working for them and what’s not.

Their responses should help you assess the impact your benefits offering is having on employee engagement, retention and loyalty.

You should also be able to identify areas that need improving and if the package has the kind of variety, accessibility and flexibility employees want.

Take a look around

Looking at what competitors are doing is something we try to do subtly in business, but it can be helpful to see how your benefits package shapes-up in comparison.

We all know the battle for talent can get brutal and often the little details make a big difference.

Knowing what your competitor’s benefits offering looks like can help you make changes if you need to, giving employees good reasons to stay without you having to resort to salary rises.

If a competitor’s package is inferior, you can also let employees know that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

How’s your take-up?

Another simple, but often overlooked way to measure the popularity of your benefits, is to check how many employees are signing up for services or using their perks.

For example, you might offer healthcare benefits that require employees to register with a third party to gain access.

How many employees are actually doing this? Could the process be simplified? Are some benefits simply being ignored?

Every benefit in your package should be worthy of its place and contribute to making the lives of your employees better in some way.

Better lives = happier employees = greater productivity at work.

And when you consider the productivity of happy employees could be as much as 20% higher, according to an article on 2021 Forbes Coaches Council, it makes good business sense.

Monitor your comms

Promoting your benefits effectively is important, so employees are kept up to date with any new elements added to the package as well as being reminded of specific perks every now and then.

It’s best to send these promotional messages via email so you can monitor click-through rates to see which benefits are engaging employees the most.

If some of your comms aren’t resonating, try using different, promotional messaging to see if that results in an uptick in engagement.

Think carefully about when you send comms as the ‘right message, right time’ ethos we talked about in our last article is vital.

It’s worth bearing in mind that if no amount of messaging changes or different delivery dates boost engagement, it's likely the benefit you’re offering isn’t what your employees want or need.

Always-on awareness

The compensation landscape is ever-changing, with employee expectations constantly fluctuating and competitors rarely standing still.

Regularly reviewing your metrics, seeking out your employees’ opinions and sending out a steady stream of timely employee communications that keep benefits front-of-mind will ensure you’re always ‘in the know’ about how your people really feel about your benefits.