Five Ways to Better Communicate Your Employee Benefits

Employee benefits are a great way for businesses to keep employees both engaged and loyal to their employer. If they don’t get used, however, then it’s the employer who is losing out. To help fix that, Russell Davidson, MD of Davidson Asset Management sets out five ways in which employers can effectively communicate their employee benefits packages to staff.

1. Make the most of social media

There is no escaping the power of social media in 2014. Almost everything a business does is played out on social media and your employee benefits shouldn’t be any different. If your employees are already on Facebook, for example, then you as an employer should be there too. Creating Facebook groups and inviting your employees to participate does not mean that you have to add them as friends, but you will be able to transmit your company’s messages directly to your staff via their Facebook notifications.

A dedicated Facebook group for your employee benefits will let you explain your company’s employee benefits and link to articles or other online resources which may further help your staff to understand what’s available to them.

2. Letters with payslips

Your employee benefits package may come with helpful leaflets and guides, yet getting these to each employee can prove a mighty challenge. Make the most, therefore, of one of the most regular method of communication you already have in place – the payslip.

Admittedly not all employees actually read their payslip, but for those that do it is well worth putting some employee benefits resources alongside it.

3. People actually notice those notice boards

Believe it or not, but notice boards can be a great method of communication with your employees.

In larger offices it’s quite likely that your staff are organising all those nights out that you and those higher up in the hierarchy aren’t invited to! That means, therefore, that your staff do actually bother to check what’s new on the notice board.

If the notice board is hung up in the kitchen – which is probably the best place for it - then it can become brilliant reading material during the wait for the kettle to boil and any information you want your staff to know about your employee benefits should be on there.

4. Email is easy

Email should be a very simple way to communicate employee benefits as the information you include in that email will go directly to each member of staff and given that you already have their company email addresses, it should be very simple!

Even if not all employees at your business have a corporate email address, you should try to gather their personal emails and send your information out this way.

5. Video

Videos are becoming much more common, but are still different enough to catch employees’ attention.

Although some people will be happy reading a leaflet, others would rather watch and listen to a video to take in information. By explaining your employee benefits through this method as well as the others you’ll be more likely to reach your entire workforce.

None of these methods of communication is perfect on its own. Together, however, these 5 ways of communicating with your staff should lead to a much greater understanding – and therefore take-up - of the employee benefits you offer.

Davidson Asset Management is an employee benefits adviser based in Glasgow and London which offers advice on corporate pensions, group risk, flexible benefits and more.

W: www.damgoodpensions.com
T: 0141 222 2045
Twitter: @Russell_DAM