Inspire and Engage Your People with Communications That Work
Looking for inspiration as you plan for the year ahead? While it can be easy to stick with what works well, there are many different ways you can change things up to capture people’s attention. This can include creative campaign taglines and visuals, effective information design, gamification and other tactics inspired by behavioral science, personas, brand, and unexpected formats and communication channels. Whatever the subject of your communications, spend time thinking about your people—what they’re going through right now and how they approach information. Lastly, don’t be afraid to experiment. It will teach you a lot about the best ways to engage your people.
Bold Headlines and Visuals Engage People in a New Health Plan
This university system used bold headlines and visuals to help people understand that they needed to take action after the university made major changes to their health plan design. The results were as compelling as the creative approach taken: 97% of employees actively enrolled during OE, and nearly 15% of eligible employees enrolled in the new medical plan.
Strong Information Design Clarifies a Confusing Leave Policy
For years, employees at Lam Research struggled to understand how their leave programs worked to provide them job protection and income. Strong information design helped employees make sense of their leave-of-absence policy and reduced the number of questions to the benefits team.
Developing Personas Can Illuminate Employees’ Concerns and Questions
Before communicating a change to their time-off policy, this organization examined the different ways employees might be affected, as well as questions and concerns they might have about the announcement. The information gathered through this process informed their key messages and the specific materials aimed at supporting managers whose buy-in was key to ensuring a successful program rollout.
A Unified Brand Creates a Consistent and Unified Employee Experience
This professional services firm’s HR team operated as 9 separate groups that worked independently from one another. A more cohesive strategy, signaled by a singular HR brand, allowed them to harness the power of their external brand and made it easy for employees to quickly recognize any HR and benefits communications.
Fun Taglines Bring Attention to Lesser-Known Benefits
Borrowing tactics from consumer marketing, Lenovo’s #lifehacks campaign put a fresh spin on showing employees how benefits can help solve everyday challenges. The impact was immediate. Employees flocked to their benefits site to learn more about how their benefits could address their needs. It also created a unified and holistic entryway into the breadth and depth of Lenovo’s resources.
Clever Use of Gamification Helps Simplify Complex Retirement Features
Synopsys wanted to educate employees about the features of their 401(k) plan, including complex topics like Roth conversions. Gamification enticed their people to test their knowledge and play to win. Along the way, employees learned more about how to make their retirement plan work best for them.
Unexpected Channels Drive Enrollment in New Benefits
The global pandemic has caused everyone to rethink how to reach and engage people. Several years ago, NVIDIA incorporated new and creative tactics to create buzz and excite employees to engage. The results proved the effort was well worth the investment and time: Participation in their HDHPs increased, more employees actively enrolled in their health benefits, traffic increased to their benefits website, and questions to the call centers were reduced.
Whatever communications channel, tactic, headline, or visual approach you use, keep your communications interesting to help ensure that the attention goes where it should—your amazing benefits!
Megan Yost, SVP Engagement Strategist, is a recognized thought leader in benefits communications, particularly in the areas of retirement, financial wellness, and employee engagement.
