Educating Staff about Employee Benefits – Columbia MO
The Society of Human Resource Management states that the second most important component of job satisfaction is the employee benefits package. (Job security takes the number one spot.) There’s strong evidence that your staff’s awareness of all of the employee benefits you offer, is key to whether they feel valued at work. To get the most positive impact of your benefits package, you need to have a locally-competitive benefits package and make it a point to keep your team informed about the benefits. As with the nation, this is equally important when offering employee benefits in Columbia, MO. Benefits offered by a company or companies in Columbia, MO can make sure their list of benefits reflect what the city offers and the unique make-up of your staff (age, family status, kind of interests).
Many employees have come to expect some kind of health care benefits, as well as a 401K. But, just because your benefits are listed on a flyer in a drawer, it doesn’t mean each of your employees are aware of them and could rattle them off. Nor does it mean they know how best to utilize the benefits package. Many of today’s benefits should be seen by you, as the business owner, as ways to retain your staff and improve their productivity by avoiding time lost due to illness and injury.
Take the following as a list of ideas for you to use to get back on track:
The key to getting the most out of the benefits you offer your team is based on how you communicate the offerings.
New Hire Packages and Training
Your new hires should receive benefits information in their physical packets. They should also receive training from your HR resources in a manner that talks about the various benefits and how they may apply to a normal employee. These initial training sessions are great times to have the employee sign up for the big benefits, like direct deposit, health care and 401K plans.
Seasonal Reviews of Benefits
Don’t rely on just your new-hire process. Can your employee of five years still remember all the benefits? Most training program research agrees that 80% of what was learned in a day of training will be forgotten within two weeks. This is why it’s critical to include a quarterly, or annual, review of the benefits package with staff. This is also the opportunity to reintroduce new benefits that were added during the year. If you’ve arranged for discounts to local seasonal attractions or seasonal events, it makes sense to review them mid year. Two examples might be if you’ve arranged for employee discounts to attend a homecoming celebration at a specific restaurant, or have arranged for staff to attend a movie during its release weekend. These are great ways to let employees know you’re thinking about them, and easy to set up with a couple phone calls.
Ongoing Communication and Resources
A great way to keep staff informed about benefits is to keep mentioning them in weekly team meetings and company internal newsletters. It’s even better if the newsletters come in the form of emails that have links to more details about the benefits package.
Be careful about how you talk about benefits
As with all corporate communications, remember not to design your training in a way that creates conversations with the employee about things that are illegal for HR to ask. For example, don’t talk about a program to quit addictive habits and then ask if they have ever smoked, or had a chemical addition. It’s best to talk about hypothetical examples of how a typical employee might utilize the benefit like, “This service could help if an employee needs help quitting smoking or quitting a chemical addition.”
As a business owner, a great place to start is to get a report about the number of employees that are using each benefit. You might be able to see areas where you’d like to promote a benefit to the staff. You might also realize that your staff really doesn’t care about certain benefits in the package. This could be a cost-saving opportunity for you.
As a business process outsource company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with workers’ human resource and benefits issues, along with our other core services.