Voluntary benefits matter to employees. Studies have shown that employees believe voluntary benefits are an important part of their total compensation package. Additional benefits such as critical illness coverage, identity theft protection, and financial counseling provide some peace-of-mind for some of our current climate’s most pressing concerns.
Offering the right voluntary benefits, helping employees learn about their options, and ultimately getting them signed up: those are the tricky parts that you, the HR professional, have to deal with. Let’s look at some ways to simplify your voluntary benefits strategy.
Choosing the Right Voluntary Benefits
While they’re not one-size-fits-all, just selecting a huge array of voluntary benefits isn’t the best way to satisfy your entire employee body. Present employees with a massive menu of choices, and chances are they’ll click right past benefits which could ultimately matter to them.
Instead, take a moment to reflect on your company’s demographics, as well as its challenges. What do your employees need? Help buying their first house, or long-term investment consulting? Pet and renter’s insurance, or additional medical and life insurance benefits? Age, income, marital status, employee turnover, wages, and even geography: all of this plays into finding voluntary benefits which will really benefit your employees.
Even better, find ways for voluntary benefits to complement your basic healthcare offerings. Showcasing benefits which can upgrade or supplement regular health insurance provide employees the opportunity to customize their care and coverage, which is increasingly important to younger generations. You might even want to poll your employees to learn if they perceive gaps in their coverage. Then, you can look for benefits programs which fill these holes.
Communicating About Voluntary Benefits
Without proper communication, a voluntary benefits menu can look like an extra hurdle employees must navigate on their way through the benefits enrollment process. It’s important to frame the conversation ahead of time so that your employees understand the purpose of voluntary benefits, the care your team has taken to select the right options, and the value provided to the employees when they elect an option.
Your employees look to you as trusted advisors on their benefits journey. It’s up to you as an HR professional to show them you’ve put care, thought, and time into finding the right voluntary benefits for them. When you take the time to share your process and provide background on the choices you’re offering, your employees will listen.
Making Voluntary Benefits Easy to Choose
Once enrollment time arrives, you want to make that process as easy as possible for your employees. Is your website complicated, or does benefits election involve bouncing around to multiple sites for different programs? Take a look at the WBD supersite and see how it could make your company’s benefits enrollment as simple as shopping at Amazon.
With a site custom-designed for your employees’ needs, all of your hard work on selecting and sharing the best voluntary benefits for your company won’t be wasted with a difficult enrollment process. Click to learn more, or ask how we can help you streamline your benefits process.