On average, employees only spend 15 minutes choosing their benefits during enrollment. Additionally, most employers also face underutilization of the benefits they offer and as a result, disengaged employees can cost companies as much as $450 billion.

85% of adults have a smart phone and 98% of text messages are read within 3 minutes of being received, yet employers still overwhelmingly rely on email as their primary communication channel.

The fact is too many employees are disengaged and not just when it comes to benefits – many HR leaders struggle to drive engagement to other initiatives as well. It’s imperative that employers keep up with evolving technology and consider implementing an engagement platform. We sat down with PlanSource’s own Cat Miller and Bradley Taylor to see how employee engagement can be improved in today’s information age.

Employees get bombarded with benefits and company initiatives throughout the year leading to burnout, unread company communications, and questions down the line. Most employees don’t even know where to go for company information when they need it, making it difficult to drive engagement.

With 85% of adults having a smartphone, that’s where we go for resources to help us, like using a maps app to locate a nearby gas station or restaurant. But there is no map or other convenient solution for all the benefits and initiatives offered to employees over the course of a year.

Instead, most plans and benefit options are spread across intranets and other platforms, and instructions for which are buried in a company email that most of employees don’t even read.

Give employees autonomy: Autonomy is critical in making sure employees feel taken care of and have a balance between work and personal life. This can mean having flexible hours, remote or hybrid options and providing an array of benefits that let employees decide which option is best for them. It can also mean letting employees set their own deadlines, design their own work processes (if possible) and asking what they need to be successful.

Get to know your workforce: Communicating openly with your workforce can nurture positive responses. Be transparent by delivering news employees need to hear, good or bad, and by avoiding uncertainty at all costs. Organize pulse surveys to get employee feedback and act accordingly. Establish shared goals, think in advance of key messages and create opportunities for employees to interact with key leaders. It’s important to ensure employees feel heard and leaders listen.

Invest in your employee’s growth: Be very intentional in supporting employees’ continued education by paying for related courses, hosting or sending employees to conferences to learn, network, and collaborate, and host lunch and learns with industry speakers. Celebrate employee wins with real-time feedback and create opportunities for employees to network.

Invest in the right technology: The shopping experience at open enrollment is generally for plans that need a decision made; you must pick something, you have to make a contribution, you need to choose your life insurance. It’s not been “we’re offering this benefit; here’s how you use it.” Transitioning to the right technology to include the non-traditional plans that are so prominent today in the enrollment experience ensures the employee knows about them.

Many benefits require employees to download different apps or create new accounts, the instructions to which are often buried in all the other company emails. The Source solves for this and has been designed to centralize benefit utilization along with company communications via:

• An employer branded platform with push notifications to alert the employee of new initiatives, open enrollment and other communications
• Consolidated company messaging in a concise “Inbox” tab where it’s easy to find news and initiatives.
• Ability for employees to upload and store their ID cards in one spot

While The Source simplifies decision support, open enrollment and benefits utilization, it also hones in on employee engagement by driving convenience right from the palm of your employees hands. 

We have a comprehensive roadmap of future features that will be released into the new year. The Source will continue to evolve as new benefits and technologies become relevant. Clients wanting to become early adopters will be able to leverage this to communicate this year’s open enrollment.

Watch our on-demand webinar to learn more about improving employee engagement and how The Source can help. Additionally, check out The Source product sheet and sign up for a live demo today