Tips to Fuel Benefits Engagement During New-Hire Onboarding

Nothing says, “We’re glad you’re here” like a tailored, friendly, and helpful new-hire orientation and onboarding experience. This start to every employee’s journey is your single chance to make a positive first—and lasting—impression.

All employees need and want their employers’ help in navigating complex health and financial systems, so they and their families are set up for success. And because they look to employers as a trusted source of information, you can use effective communications to build loyalty to your organization. Here’s what we recommend to engage and motivate your newest team members from day one.

Use Marketing Techniques to Engage Employees

As an employer, your mission in welcoming new employees is similar to your goal for building new customers. In both cases, you’re reaffirming that they’ve made the right decision by choosing you.

Since it’s basically all about marketing, look for lessons you can apply and tips and tricks you can transfer from the customer experience to the employee experience. By using modern marketing techniques, you can promote your benefits programs, engage your people, and deliver outcomes typically unachievable with traditional communications. A great place to start is by developing clear personas of whom you are talking to—asking yourself questions that go beyond the employee’s job title and geographic location, such as:

Who is your typical employee?
What is their family structure?
What are their passions?
What are their demands outside of work?
How do they like to receive information?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you should have a better idea of how you can tailor your
new-hire communications strategy to have the most meaningful effect.

Focus on Value, Not Logistics

New-hire information often focuses on the mechanics of enrolling in benefits during the first 30 days instead of focusing on connecting the value of benefits to the employee value proposition. Think of your new-hire orientation as a way to tell that bigger story—why do your benefits exist, and what do you expect of employees when it comes to using them?

One important aspect that’s often overlooked is culture training. Acclimating employees to the organization’s culture—goals, values, and politics—has a critical impact on satisfaction and turnover. That culture will even dictate the way an organization goes about incorporating culture training. Some examples include presentations and/or discussions led by members of the organization’s leadership around mission and values or pairing tenured colleagues with new hires for informal one-on-one discussions over coffee.

Target Your Benefits Information

Benefits matter. They can seal the deal when it comes to getting a prospective employee to accept a job offer. Benefits are also a big reason that employees choose to stay at a company. According to the Employees Speak Out: Benz–Quantum Health and Engagement Survey, employee satisfaction with health benefits is a major driver in employee engagement and retention, with 89% of respondents saying that health benefits play a part in why they stay with their current employer.

Different new-hire segments have different needs. Recent college grads, international hires who are relocating, and experienced employees have unique priorities and expectations. Take your recent grad new hires, for example. For many of them, this will be their introduction to the wide world of employer benefits. By arming them with the right information, you’re setting them up for success for their entire careers.

Think Beyond the First 30 Days

An employee’s first 90 days are critical. The more time that elapses, the more their priorities shift, and the more you risk losing their attention. What they learn in their early days will set the course for how they view you, as their employer, in years to come. New hires are a captive audience, ready to absorb information. Yet, most benefits information is crammed into the first day’s orientation (by the end of which, employees are suffering from information overload) or into a few checklists for employees to take away and review later.

A better way to grab (and hold!) the attention of your new hires is to expand your benefits orientation campaign to encompass the first 90 days—or even the first year—so you can go beyond enrolling people in health and insurance programs and get them to fully use all the resources available to them. By cascading information (through emails, live trainings, and/or webinars), you can feed new hires bite-sized, actionable, and timely benefits messages. This keeps the line of communication open and provides an opportunity to promote benefits that are not deadline driven.

Use a Multichannel Approach to Promote Resources

A multichannel communications approach is key to reaching employees at the right time. Make sure a big part of your training includes where employees can go to find answers to their questions and access the information they need, when they need it. While you don’t want to overwhelm them with information, you do want them to know that if questions arise, answers are available, either through a public benefits website (outside any firewall) and other communications resources or through subject matter experts who can give them personalized service.

Working closely with your employee resource groups (ERGs) can give you an additional boost to engage your people in the benefits and resources that matter to them.

Of course, employees will differ in their appetites for information and how they want to receive it. The key is to put the information out there in various formats so that it is easily accessible and can meet the needs of every type of employee.

We’re proud to work with organizations that value their people. If you want to learn more, we’d love to talk.