A Failure to Communicate?

They’re spending time and some are spending money, but fewer than one in five employers believe their employees have a high level of understanding of their benefits. That same survey finds that 57.2% of employers surveyed said that their workers had a medium level of understanding of those benefits. Organizations most commonly communicate to their employees about retirement (74%), health care (74%) and wellness/mental health (72%). That said, and while educating employees about their benefits is a high priority for 65% of surveyed organizations, fewer than two in five organizations have budgets specifically devoted to benefits communication, though 25% are planning to increase those budgets in 2016, according to a survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Benefits. However, the survey found that while 56.2% of corporate plans had no budget for communications, that was true for just 39.7% of public sector employers. Reasons for not Understanding On the other hand, the reason employers say benefits understanding is so low is because:

• Most participants do not open/read materials (80%)
• Workers don't understand the materials (48.7%)
• Participants do not perceive value in their benefits (though perhaps that has something to do with the lack of reading/understanding the materials explaining their benefits) (30.5%)

To better promote benefits education within their organization, employers are examining different delivery methods for communication materials and finding the highest success rates with:

• Communicating by life stage (parental leave, retirement planning, etc.) (81% success)
• Year-round communication (79% success)
• Leveraging word of mouth by relying on their own employees to help spread the word (75% success)
• Communicating in multiple languages (74% success)
• Simplifying complicated benefits content (72% success)

Communication Platforms The survey found that employers are using various communication platforms to get the word out including:

• Educational materials printed and mailed to homes (89%)
• Email (73%)
• Printed and distributed on site (69%)
• Internal websites (66%)
• External websites (58%)

Not surprisingly, fewer than half of the organizations use nontraditional communication platforms like video (29%), social media (23%), texts (10%), robocalls (9%) or games (7%). Survey responses were received from 341 members. Of the total, 264 or 77% of responses were from U.S. organizations (23% were Canadian). Surveys were received from multiemployer benefit plans (42%), single-employers/corporations (35%) and public/governmental plans (23%).