Getting the most out of your benefit dollars in 5 Simple Steps

Communicate – the best benefit plan in the world underperforms an average plan with effective and timely communication. Don’t assume that your employees understand all of the facets of the existing plan, nor the total costs.

It’s the Whole Enchilada – organizations who spend all of their time researching and focusing on the pay and benefits may be missing the big picture. The rapid acceleration of work-life balance is an important societal change. The softer “benefits” or indirect benefits may engage your staff equally to the harder more direct forms of compensation/”benefits”. It is important to understand where all of the compensation/”benefits” stack up within your workforce.

Clear Objectives – organizations that operate without a map of their destination may end up somewhere they did not want to go. As with the whole enchilada, the critical goal is alignment and engagement. Your benefit plan should reflect your corporate and cultural objectives, and fit with your evolving workforce. Not as much of a map, but a framework that allows fluid adjustment to ensure an ongoing fit with clear boundaries and milestones.

Measure, Measure, Measure – as with the clear objectives, without measurement, how do organizations know that they are delivering value to the workforce. By measurement, we mean benchmarking plans and cost, but more importantly, measuring the level of employee satisfaction. Measuring the performance of the provider(s), the level of communication, and the overall quality of the plan will help determine the value proposition of your plan.

Understand Your Audience – with the growing diversity of the workforce and the generational and gender differences we often see within industry studies, segmenting the results of sampling will provide greater clarity. Understanding the unique differences within your workforce better enables opportunity to engage your workers and align your stakeholders.