2/1/2009
|Organizations and their HR departments are going to be faced with tough benefits decisions in 2009 and beyond. As the economic crisis continues, increasing communication about employer-provided benefits tops the list of the most common HR changes expected over the next 12 months. Being transparent with employees about the reasons behind these changes — and then measuring, monitoring and engaging employees in a dialogue about them — presents an important opportunity for HR professionals to impact the organization’s performance.

The big unknown, however, for many organizations is: Does all of this communication really make any difference? Here are a couple of examples that demonstrate clearly how it might, as shared by Angela Sinickas, president of Sinickas Communications, who has been measuring the effectiveness of employee communications since 1981.

• A manufacturer provided speaker packets and videotapes to site managers to introduce a new 401(k) plan but did not require them to hold employee meetings. There were significantly higher levels of participation and contributions at sites that held meetings. Sadly, the company later failed to pass its 401(k) anti-discrimination testing because of the overall low level of employee participation in the plan, a situation officials believed could have been averted had these meetings been required.
   
•  An aerospace company wanted to examine where employees were choosing to place their retirement funds. After some analysis, they found that employees over 55 had a significant amount of their contributions going into company stock — even though the company felt it had communicated adequately to employees the importance of diversification. Further examination found that these employees had survived bad times with the company and were expressing their loyalty by continuing to invest in company stock.

When employees fail to make the right decisions about selecting options and maximizing the value of those choices, no one wins. Employers lose when workers fail to recognize the worth of their benefits, and workers lose when they leave real value on the table.

Traditional Communication Might Be Wasted

The way in which benefits messages are shared with employees is critical to ensuring understanding and action, says William Smith, vice president of marketing, sales and business development with Benefit Software.

“Transparency is important,” says Smith. “When organizations share data and share their concerns — and explain to employees the difficult decisions that they have to make — it leads to improved morale and greater productivity,” he says.

The problem, adds Jodi Ordioni, president of employee communications firm BRANDEMiX, is that data can be overwhelming. “The way benefits are communicated to employees often involves very complex charts, spreadsheets and numbers,” says Ordioni. “The more you can use warm, friendly and fuzzy things, the easier time people will have navigating through all of this.”

Jim Mooradian agrees. Mooradian is principal of Jim Mooradian and Associates, an insurance brokerage firm that strives to communicate “empathetic messages” to employees. “People make decisions emotionally, yet everybody markets [their messages] intellectually,” notes Mooradian.

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Connect with employees emotionally, using
empathetic messages, not just charts and data.
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There is much wrong with traditional benefits communication, adds Mooradian, who says that traditional benefits statements are virtually “worthless.” Why? Because their focus is on the employer and its costs rather than focusing on what the benefits mean from the employees’ point of view.

Traditional communication methods might miss the mark because the messages are never received, Mooradian notes. Even e-mailed or web-based communications might not be achieving the hoped-for effectiveness. “We have unbelievable access to information like never before, yet satisfaction is at all-time lows, misunderstanding is at all-time highs and HR is increasingly frustrated,” he says.

Encouraging and Measuring Involvement

All companies communicate about their benefits options, but few take actionable steps to measure the effectiveness of their communications. Unfortunately, even if HR professionals understand the value of measuring the impact of their efforts, they might face resistance from senior management.

“I’ve had clients who say ‘we just don’t want to spend money on research; we want every dollar for the communication materials,’ ” says Sinickas. However ill-advised that position might be, it is sometimes the reality that HR professionals face. When they do, there are alternatives to costly research, she suggests.

“It’s easier than you think; it doesn’t have to be a big survey,” Sinickas says. Doing a small pilot project that targets some parts of the organization in specific ways, but not in others, and then comparing the results can yield valuable information, she advises.

Surveys can provide additional value, says Smith, since they “allow you to track employee responses over time and give organizations the opportunity to evaluate and react to the feedback that they’re getting.” Some examples:

• “I feel that my medical and dental plan benefits options give me the flexibility to select the appropriate level of coverage for me and my family” — 93.5 percent strongly or somewhat agreed. (“If you’re an employer, you could take that to mean you're on the right track,” says Smith.)
   
•  “The new benefits DVD was a valuable resource to help me understand my benefits options” — 5.5 percent agreed. (“If I were an employer I would say: ‘OK, that just simply didn’t work,’ ” and rethink the approach, Smith notes.)

Armed with this information, employers are able to make informed decisions about changes not only to their communication efforts, but also to their benefits options. “Getting feedback from employees might help an employer make a decision to invest in benefits that cost less but still result in a higher level of employee satisfaction,” Smith points out.

Case in Point: Focus Group Feedback

“A couple of informal focus groups can help you learn so much and make a big difference in the outcomes you’re looking for,” says Angela Sinickas, president of Sinickas Communications. She tells of a company preparing to introduce a new pension plan. Current employees faced a choice: They could stay with the existing plan (which in some respects favored longtime workers) or shift to the new "cash balance" option (which was arguably more generous to younger workers). All new employees would be enrolled in the new plan automatically. An e-mail was prepared, but before it was sent a focus group was organized to get employees' input.

Based on this feedback, more than 20 changes were made to the e-mail message, says Sinickas. For instance, a too-long subject line was changed to immediately target the intended audience. The original: “New pension plan for new hires — current employees have a choice,” was truncated in the subject field of employees' incoming e-mail, so current employees couldn't immediately recognize that the message was for them, too.

The changes, in total, had a significant measurable impact for the organization, Sinickas recalls. After prior communications, the HR call center would receive literally hundreds of inquiries. This time, they received three.

 
Lin Grensing-Pophal, SPHR, is a Wisconsin-based business journalist with HR consulting experience in employee communication, training and management issues. She is the author of Human Resource Essentials: Your Guide to Starting and Running the HR Function (SHRM, 2002).