How to make sure your global benefits messages hit the target
There are so many things competing for employees’ attention today that it’s never been more important for employer communications to be easy to understand, engaging, and effective.
In a global organisation, it’s not possible to personally connect every individual in every country – so it’s even more important that your communications do.
Communications are how you reach people with the important messages at the right time. They’re how you make everyone feel part of your mission and, crucially, how you drive employee engagement with your reward and benefits programme.
That’s a lot to do, and when you throw international locations, languages, and cultures into the mix, it can feel like an impossible task to reach every employee in a meaningful way.
Make it personal
Employees don’t want generic benefits experiences – they want a personalised experience that reflects the standard of their favourite consumer brands.
Our research shows that one of the top five ways employees feel their benefits can be improved is by ensuring they’re more relevant and personalised. And this applies to benefits communications too – 84% of global employees want more regular and engaging benefits communications.
To deliver on employees’ growing expectations and cut through a busy inbox with impact, your benefits messages need to be personalised, relevant and timely. A global communications strategy is about much more than just translations.
Think globally, act locally
When undertaking a global benefits roll-out, your key goals are to deliver:
- A consistent experience for employees across the globe
- An efficient communication experience for your global and local HR and benefits teams
- Enough flexibility to meet local needs while delivering global strategic priorities
To provide an equal benefits experience to all employees, no matter where they are in the world, it’s important to define global requirements and work with local teams to adapt this strategy to their needs.
Think about your different audiences and the varying approaches they may need to receive the same experience. For example, you might need to use more digital channels to reach a group of remote working employees, or provide tailored information on how to access benefits in different regions.
The first step is to create an overarching brand identity and communications toolkit that can be used globally, and then focus on creating additional communications that are personalised to the local audience and reflect their culture, needs and specific benefits experience.
Create a global benefits brand
Creating an impactful visual identity for your global benefits programme is a big part of what will ensure your campaigns get the attention they deserve. While your communications themselves may differ from country to country, your brand shouldn’t.
A visual identity that pulls together all corners of your employee base can help you achieve a truly global framework, wherein cultural and country variations can be tailored to and catered for. An established and engaging brand – whether specifically for your reward and benefits scheme, or a more general workplace brand – is an essential differentiator, helping to support recruitment and retention.
A less tangible but equally important element is how your brand helps you make a real, authentic connection with your people. A global brand helps you to talk to everyone equally and align your values, and your messaging, across your whole workforce.
When creating a global benefits brand, gather feedback from stakeholders across the globe. Being specific in the input you’re looking for is crucial to ensure that you don’t end up ‘designing by committee' but instead create a visual identity that will connect with all your employees.
The need for a global communications toolkit
Ensuring you have a suite of communications that can be used across a variety of channels, all while staying on-brand, and on-message, is no mean feat. This is where your global communications toolkit comes into play; it's the foundation of your communication strategy and ensures all benefits teams are aligned.
The toolkit is made up of a collection of templates and messaging that can be customised to support campaigns to employees. It contains the core messages you’d like to share with employees based on your goals and makes clear which parts of the content can be customised – and which should stay consistent for all regions.
As well as providing an overview of the top-level messaging, a toolkit should link to the supporting resources (such as emails, guides or leaflets) so that everything is accessible to benefits teams.
Learn to succeed
To learn more about how to create a benefits brand and communication toolkit that maximises engagement, take a look at our new guide to benefits communications. In it, we reflect on our learnings from working with some of the largest global businesses, uncover four key considerations for building your communications toolkit, and share real examples of global benefits brands.
In partnership with Benefex
The home of award-winning employee benefits, reward, recognition, & communications.
