Inflation is cooling; unemployment levels are back to pre-pandemic levels, and organizations are re-evaluating how their employee experience impacted employee behaviors during The Great Resignation. This year’s benefits enrollment season gives employers opportunities to enhance the employee experience and to maximize the ROI of their programs by leveraging technology.
Here are three ways to impact the employee experience through the use of digital tools:
01
Employee needs have changed dramatically over the past few years. What was important last year might not be as important now.
Survey your employees to find out what’s important to your unique workforce today, tomorrow and in the future and use those insights to update your overall benefits experience. Start by gaining an understanding of what total rewards programs they value most and which ones are valued less.
Sophisticated software helps automate this process and identify how employers can best maximize their overall benefits spend. Armed with this data, employers know exactly which programs will be valued the most against its overall cost to the company.
If you’re not listening to your employees about what benefits they value the most, you could easily be spending money on programs and resources they’re not interested in.
02
As a surprise to no one after what we all endured during the height of the pandemic, mental health ranks as the top condition by incidence and cost (source: 2024 Global Medical Trends Survey).
When you combine that with the fact that only 40% of organizations report being effective in helping their employees understand their benefits (source 2023 Benefits Trends Survey), offering wellbeing resources provides a significant opportunity to help your employees.
Simply adding point solutions like a new mental health third party vendor won’t drive results. Links and connections to the tools and resources that employees have access to need to be highlighted throughout the employee experience.
This could include advertisements on digital signage, traditional print communications or a digital communication platform pushing messages to employees during their regular course of work. This provides easy access to all of the available wellbeing tools without having to go to three or four different point solutions.
This might also include integrating voluntary benefit programs that employees purchase directly into the employee experience. While benefits like prepaid legal services or critical care insurance might not provide short-term wellbeing effects, the peace of mind knowing that you have coverage in times of need certainly can reduce the stress of your employees.
03
We rely on technology more than ever, due in part to the explosion of apps, online services and specialty vendors that help improve our lives.
As the number of systems and resources continues to multiply, the business case for an employee experience platform grows across many organizations. Creating one digital hub to consolidate information and resources outside of a traditional intranet helps employees (and their families) get the most out of their benefits.
Once employees have a single source of truth for all their benefits information, employers can then use targeted and personalized content to highlight programs important to an individual employee. A personalized digital hub is an ideal way to simplify the employee experience by presenting content and information only relevant to each employee’s unique situations.
Let’s look at an example of how this comes to life for an employee who may be struggling and could use wellbeing resources:
Imagine an employee who is a single parent with two teenage dependents going into open enrollment this year. By combining dependent demographic data with the employee’s pay information, a personalized digital experience could surface targeted communications that present compelling prompts to save in a 529 college savings account plus provide references to the EAP and counseling resources that are available as we know that either the parent or the children could potentially benefit from talking to a qualified counselor from time to time.
From the employee’s perspective, a consolidated personalized experience offers a quick and easy way to find the information they came for, plus finding the information that they might not need right away but now have comfort knowing where to come when one of those moments that matter comes knocking on their door.
This year is the year to reevaluate the benefits enrollment and overall employee experience to ensure that you are getting the maximum return on your investment. To truly empower your employees, improve your experience by listening to your employees, integrating wellbeing resources and simplifying your employee experience.
We work shoulder to shoulder with you, bringing diverse points of view and a deep commitment to your success.
