4 Ways to Avoid Employee Meltdowns Over Benefits Changes This Year
Are you a Human Resources professional, or more specifically a Benefits Director? If yes, that means that you spend the greater part of each year planning and making adjustments to your company’s benefit offerings.
For those with a fall open enrollment period, decisions about benefit plan changes are at least borderline final by late summer. Perhaps you have leadership approval and the vendor negotiation or selection process is wrapping up.
At that point, inevitably, thoughts turn to — how are we going to tell employees about this? And the mad scramble begins. (Note: if you offer mid-year enrollments, your timeframes will differ.)
Being responsible for employee experience via impactful communication, my team is often called in to help employees’ understand the changes and take appropriate action. We focus first on identifying the key messages. Changes to benefits impact employees’ families, and ultimately their physical and financial health. If the messaging isn’t right, it will be significantly more difficult to maintain employee engagement.
Here’s are four tips to help you get it right, offering the best experience possible for employees – and you.
1. Ensure that benefit changes and communication align with your benefits philosophy
A Benefits Philosophy describes the mission you have for your Benefits Program and how it ties into the employment deal. Some questions a Benefits Philosophy would answer include:
- What are your benefit offerings attempting to do for employees: Offer choice? Value? Best-in-class resources? Self-care options?
- How do your benefit offerings tie into your company philosophy? Your values? Your future?
- What promise was made to employees during the recruiting and onboarding process regarding benefits? Does that hold true with the plan you currently have or plan for the future?
If you don’t currently have a Benefits Philosophy, write one now.
If you have one, review it and ensure that all your key messages about benefits enrollment or changes you intend to make tie back to that philosophy.
Just like company values, a Benefits Philosophy should not change often. Plan to review it each year to help you plan and communicate changes.
2. Be as transparent as possible
Share a rationale for the changes. Let’s be honest – sometimes changes are made to save money, not necessarily to further benefits for employees. In those cases, be prepared to explain how the cost changes still impact employees. Would jobs have been cut if the changes weren’t made? Were you able to save a benefit that employees really appreciated? Did the cost savings make room for you to invest in other benefits?
While benefit plans might seem straightforward to the uninformed, your task of constant review and tweaking of plans serves two purposes:
- To benefit the employees: Whether in search of ever-illusive employee engagement or adjusting to match the changing benefits landscape, taking action on your benefit plans can help you make sure they remain appealing to employees. Reviewing plans yearly and modifying them to account for changing employee needs and preferences and to offer greater value and choice.
- To benefit the company: The investment in employee benefits can be one of the most substantial items on the company’s balance sheet. As needs and costs change, your goals can be driven toward attempting to save costs, shift more costs to employees, improve relationships with existing plan administrators through negotiations or choosing new plan administrators an attempt to get the best quality or service in the marketplace.
Explain what you set out to accomplish in terms of this – and don’t forget tip #1 – tie it to a Benefits Philosophy and position that as your guiding force.
3. Involve employee experience and employee engagement resources as early as possible
How do you communicate about benefits to your employees? Whether you use HR or internal communicators, change management resources or others to engage employees in their employment deal, be sure to invite them to have a seat at your planning table as early as possible.
With their set of responsibilities, they will be familiar with plans and messages that other departments are communicating and how employees may respond as a result. They are also privy to the corporate calendar and help you determine timing. Because they will be tasked with communicating the change, they have a knack for noticing plans that will be difficult to explain to employees. They can even weigh in on user-experience issues because of their experience rolling out other plans, what’s worked and hasn’t worked.
During the planning stage, it’s easier to address those concerns than waiting until the plan is being implemented.
4. Use a multi-year strategy to roll out major changes
If you plan to eliminate a certain plan type the following year, you don’t want to communicate that for the first time just a few months before it goes into effect. That is, unless you’d actually prefer a mass employee exodus.
Make incremental changes that give employees an opportunity to adjust to the new reality. If changes will be considered take-aways, do a multi-year strategy, if possible.
There are a number of reasons why a new reality may take a while for employee to adjust to:
- Messages require repetition to reach every audience
- Certain plans like health insurance can be intimidating and confusing. As a result, people tend to ignore the topic.
- Many people don’t use their benefits frequently so it takes some for reality to sink in.
This also helps it seem like a strategic and not an impulsive decision.