Digital Benefits Engagement

Introduction

This edition of The Pulse challenges traditional views on employee benefits, arguing that it's not just about the specific offerings but how they make employees feel. Author, Amy Nelli, emphasizes the importance of:

• Easy access and understanding: Employees shouldn't struggle to learn about or use their benefits.
• Holistic well-being: Benefits should go beyond just health insurance and consider financial, emotional, and personal growth needs.
• Work-life integration: True balance may be unrealistic, but companies should prioritize flexibility and support for employees' personal lives.
• Effective communication: Regular, clear communication in multiple channels is crucial.
• Positive experience: Benefits shouldn't be a source of stress. The author suggests fun ideas to create a more engaging enrollment process.

I’m excited to introduce this edition’s contributor, Amy Nelli, co-founder of Rock Enrollment. Amy, over to you!

Hi, my name is Amy. I have spent my entire career exploring the multifaceted world of employee benefits!

After receiving a rejection letter from my “dream job” at Nike, I landed a super fun role at one of Nike’s most significant clients in my hometown of Birmingham, Ala.

As a recruiter for this thriving retail startup hyper-focused on customer experiences, we hired hundreds of people a month and sometimes a week. In that role, I traveled a ton, shuffling health insurance forms back to our growing HR department. Our team was also responsible for a significant part of our new hire orientation experience at our corporate university. I worked closely with our ad agency to place ads in the jobs section of major newspapers (dating myself, I know) across the U.S., mainly promoting the fact that we offered health insurance.

That role led to leading benefits strategy for a very established employee benefits brokerage in the Southeast, followed by leading distribution for a start-up in the enrollment space, founding my first start-up in benefits technology, and working in collaboration with all the largest brokers in the world and a very diverse set of clients!

Twenty-five years later, I am still pushing the envelope to create a better experience for the entire benefits ecosystem.

With all the business experience I accumulated over the years, including in-depth strategies for self-funded health plans, fantastic business partners, and misaligned business partners, I finally landed on a simple truth that trumps any knowledge I acquired. Maya Angelou said it best:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, what you did, but never how you made them feel.”

So, I am here to tell you, it’s a new day in benefits.

“Your workforce will forget what you said, your workforce will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

I am living proof!

Are you ready for it?

Let’s get started with scoring the current pulse of your level of workforce care. 

But first, take out a pen and paper and answer this question:

Why, as an organization, do we offer benefits?

There is no right or wrong answer, but if you don’t know the reason behind it without a shadow of a doubt, work with your team on that answer and then come back to the rest of the article. One place many begin thinking about is motivating and engaging their workforce. Gallup found in their 2023 State of the Workplace research that that a lack of motivation at work is causing an $8.9 trillion problem for the global economy. Is your company part of that? (Also, feel free to connect with our exciting new REfresh HR SLACK channel, It’s complimentary. Check out our channels to see how the team can discuss that question with you in depth.)

OK, so here we go. 

1. General Access: (Maximum Points: 15)

• Employee Access (10 points available): Once, I helped a group of 17,000 employees with benefits education, and the employees had no idea how to find out about their benefits. I don’t care how great your benefits are if your employees struggle to learn about them. Are they difficult for employees to access, and are you fielding multiple questions frequently? One point. Do your employees access, understand, and navigate the portal seamlessly? Ten.  
• HR Access (5 points available): Recently, an employer asked us to take over admin on their carrier portal to get a feel for what they were dealing with. The pain of adding an admin was ridiculous! And it had nothing to do with HIPAA or security reasons. What is your pain level around accessing employee data? 1 being easy, 5 being painful.
  
  This won’t be a popular opinion for some, but many of you may have sacrificed your second-largest expense and possibly lost employees in the pursuit of technology efficiency! Most human resource information systems do not promote employee engagement or personal growth, and the impact is evident. The fight for benefits engagement to be on top of an employer’s HR tech stack is one I will stand up for until the end! (Grab a time on our calendar at rockenrollment.com for more ways to see how committed to this our team is.)

2. Support of Overall Health and Wellness: (Maximum Points: 15)

Do your benefits give employees the impression you want to support the whole health of your employees? I have seen too many companies with insurance-heavy benefits packages! Look at your benefits and gauge the percentage of insurance vs. noninsurance benefits. If it’s more than two-thirds insurance products, I would not score more than 10 points in this category. How would I know? While I grew up in the industry and am a big proponent of a blend of insurance, sometimes it screams that HR has been sold a bill of goods and lacks education on selecting a beneficial broker or consultant. There are so many great ones out there that you don’t need to settle for second best!

If you want to explore how you can support all areas of health (emotional, spiritual, financial, familial, etc.) as a broker or employer, learn more about our REstore through our complimentary and incredibly inspiring “Leaving a Legacy HR Vision Boarding Workshop” at www.rockenrollment.com.

3. Work/Life Integration: (Maximum Points: 10)

This may be controversial, but a perfect work/life balance is impossible. Just last week, I was supposed to hop on a SHRM Labs podcast, but storms took out my power and internet. There is no way any of us could have “balanced” that! So, we pivoted to accommodate the situation at hand. For me, outcomes always trump time, and while there are workforces for which the clock matters, companies that create backups and redundancies will win in this new era of workforce care. And let’s go back to Maya’s quote: Regardless of your work/life policy, how do your employees feel about whether you care about what works best for their life situation?

So, for a score here—what flexibility do your employees feel they have?

4. Financial and Retirement: (Maximum Points: 15)

With 66% of bankruptcies in the U.S. related to medical debt, it’s sad to say that some employer health plans are perpetuating financial stress! One of the critical components of modern employee benefits is a strong emphasis on financial well-being. It’s interesting to note that some people don’t believe in retirement or may never be able to. This means that your organization could be investing in programs and plans that don’t reflect the reality of people’s lives. However, by helping them reduce debt or plan to start a family, you can truly stand out and show your employees that you care. This is probably the most sensitive topic, but it presents the most incredible opportunity to demonstrate your concern for your employees! I would argue that most insurance products are financial, so don’t leave those out of the equation. The best way to start with this category is to ask yourself: Do we have a pulse on offering the financial products our employees need and want? If you can confidently say “yes,” give yourself a 15 and tell us how you did it by sending our inhouse joy officer an email at cindicohn@rockenrollment.com with the subject line “SHRM LABS ROCK ENROLLMENT” for a free trucker hat!

5. Professional and Personal Development: (Maximum Points: 10)

People crave growth, which is a basic human need. And as an employee, it’s incredible to know that your employers are investing in your future. With ample experience in early-stage companies, I have found it easier to support our workforce in personal growth in their work life and outside of work than to navigate the nuances of certain insurance benefits until we reach a specific size that was more attractive to insure. It’s all about empowering the workforce to grow and creating a culture of care and abundance. One example is that I am very aware of side gigs for my employees: From running lacrosse camps to virtual communities to custom embroidery Etsy stores—I want them to live a fulfilled life. Supporting them across different facets of life improves their experience within Rock Enrollment, likely leading to a longer tenure and, ultimately, to a fulfilled career in which we played a meaningful part.

After all, the gurus say that you become an average of the five people you are around, so I only want to foster a team of people who know and feel their self-worth! I believe we do a pretty great job of this at Rock Enrollment, but I believe there is so much more we can do. So, I would still give us a 7.5. I hope you will be gracious and honest with yourself when you give this score. You may do things unknowingly that make a significant difference, so give yourself time to reflect. Just today, an employee texted me thanking me for a spiritual health benefit we offer that I had forgotten about.

6. Employee Experience: (Maximum Points: 35)

• Communication (15 points available): This is a huge consideration when measuring the effectiveness of your workforce care program. Subfactors in this category we consider when helping employers:
  • Modes of Communication (5 points available): Do you offer your workforce outsourced engagement with easy access and multiple channels with benefits experts? Or does your HR team consist of benefits experts?
  • Language Barriers (5 points available): Have you created a path for inclusion and diversity in your communications? We have some fantastic partners who keep us on point regarding this topic. It takes a lot of thought leadership.
  • Frequency (5 points available): Do you wait until one time a year and throw a bunch of stuff on people at once, or do you create bite-size chunks throughout the year so employees can absorb it over time? Or somewhere in between?
• Understanding (10 points available): One of the pillars of Rock Enrollment is based on this phrase (that I recommend benefits leaders adopt): “We can’t value what we don’t understand!” If employees don’t understand what they are participating in, one of two things will happen:
  • They will resent the payroll deduction for a benefit they are paying for that they do not understand how to leverage when something happens!
  • They will ignore the call to action to participate, and when a situation arises that would be relevant to that benefit, they will regret not understanding they had the option.
• Overall vibe and energy (10 points available): Benefits can be highly overwhelming, but they don’t have to be! Does your HR dread open enrollment? If so, your employees will, too! Here are a few fun things I recommend:
  • Pick a theme song for your team or entire organization leading up to open enrollment!
  • Post your behind-the-scenes process on LinkedIn and tag @rockenrollment or just some other industry friends.
  • Consider partnering with us to coordinate a “Benefits Date Night”! Our team is a massive believer in including the family in the benefits discussion!

Are your benefits encouraging personal growth and interest, or are they unexciting?

Go ahead. Add it up! How did you do?

Total Pulse Score: ___ / 100

Conclusion

Does your score reflect what you hope for your organization and open enrollment experience? There’s likely some opportunity, and you now have specific areas to focus on with the most room for improvement. Take this quiz as a resource to work with your partners for improvement. Whether with Rock Enrollment or elsewhere, we highly encourage you to leverage this content and follow us on LinkedIn to stay inspired about how to build a culture of care in your organization. HR is the catalyst to influence a new era of workforce care! And, whether you realize it or not, your contribution to the workforce is creating a part of your workforce legacy! It’s highly rewarding to get a testimonial from an employee who has had to use a benefit in a crisis, so make sure you put yourself in a position to benefit from all your great offers! 

Be well, be blessed, and Rock On!

References and Further Reading

Thanks for joining us for this edition of the SHRM Labs WorkplaceTech Pulse and thank you to Amy for her incredible insights on how to influence a new era of workforce care. Please visit Rock Enrollment’s website to learn more. We will see you next time!