How to use technology to showcase your benefits and strengthen EVP

Employers today are facing the incredible challenge of standing out as an employer of choice in a tight talent market, and are continually finding new ways to attract, engage and retain their employees. Developing a well-rounded Employee Value Proposition (EVP) has become a top priority, and offering employees competitive benefits to support various aspects of their lives is essential.

While many organizations have great benefits in place, employees often aren’t aware of all the benefits available to them. Gaining buy-in from employees is even more difficult with evolving work conditions, as many employees are dispersed, offline or remote, so employers have to find creative ways to reach employees where they are.

Technology plays a key role in driving benefits uptake and achieving long-term success, and will help you maintain engagement with your benefits even as your business grows and changes. Centralizing your benefits will also help you increase awareness of benefits and drive higher benefits uptake, as employees can view and access all benefits in a single location.

Let’s dive into four ways you can use technology to boost benefits awareness at your organization:

1. Blog about them

If you already have an internal blog in place, then you’re one step ahead. Using an employee communications platform is a great way to showcase new and existing benefits, particularly if you already have high engagement on your blog. You can use your main blog to talk about benefits while directing people to a dedicated benefits page on your platform.

Your benefits page should act as a single source of truth where employees can find everything they need to know about your benefits, and give employees a place to ask questions that others might have, too. 

Our communications solution allows employees to comment on and react to blog posts, and also shows how many people have viewed a certain post. This gives bloggers the chance to respond to any comments or questions publicly, and also take a pulse on engagement with the blog. 

Consistent and frequent communication is key to improving benefits uptake, so plan ahead and figure out a schedule that works for your business. Whether this is a weekly spotlight on a specific benefit or a monthly roundup on several benefits, consistency is key. 

2. Launch a themed campaign to spark interest

A great way to engage employees with your benefits is through a creative campaign with a catchy theme – holidays or seasonal events work especially well. Tying your campaign to something that’s already happening in employees’ lives will make it easier for them to engage with it. Who doesn’t love a little seasonal fun? 

For Valentine’s Day, unveil a new or existing benefit with engaging messaging like ‘a gift from your secret admirer,’ or for St. Patrick’s Day you can gift employees ‘a little pot of benefits.’

At Reward Gateway, we launched an internal campaign called "The Twelve Days of Benefits" during the holiday season. Each day, employees "unwrapped" a benefit through a digital advent-style calendar on boom!, our employee engagement platform, to find either a new or existing benefit available to them at RG. This was a great way to highlight benefits that employees might have forgotten about, and a great way to showcase new benefits that were revealed at the same time.

These benefits were featured both on the homepage of the platform and in accompanying blogs that went into more detail on each benefit, giving employees the opportunity to see their benefits at a glance and to take a deeper dive into each benefit on the blog.

3. Build them into your onboarding strategy

One key way to improve benefits uptake is to shine a spotlight on them when onboarding new employees. As employees are taking in new information about your company – from training to values and policies – make sure to include a thorough overview of everything you offer, and try to make it fun so employees will remember.

A great example of how to incorporate company benefits into your onboarding strategy comes from Reward Gateway client Laminex, an Australian manufacturer with more than 500 dispersed employees. During the pandemic, Laminex employees began working remotely, so the company needed a central place to keep all employees connected to the business. Laminex also wanted to deliver relevant benefits to boost disposable income and provide additional support during challenging times.

The company launched its employee engagement platform, "Experience by Laminex," which hosts all communications, reward and recognition, discounts, a Wellbeing Center and other employee benefits. Experience by Laminex has added to the company’s overall Employee Value Proposition and has improved the employee experience. While Laminex has seen high adoption rates among existing employees, the company wanted to maintain these rates and ensure that new hires were aware of all the platform had to offer.

Laminex found a creative solution to get new starters excited about the platform and all of the benefits it offered. The company decided to send Welcome Packs to the homes of new employees that included a week-long HelloFresh voucher as well as instant access to the platform, so that employees could access discounts and other benefits before their official start date. This was a successful way to generate excitement and gain buy-in from new starters from the beginning, and will help Laminex achieve long-term engagement with its benefits.

4. Gather feedback from employees

No matter where you are in your employee benefits journey, employee feedback is always important. Whether you’re struggling with benefits uptake, or whether employees are using all of your benefits, the only way to really make sure you’re hitting the mark is to ask your employees.

Plan a bi-annual, company-wide survey to ask employees which benefits they’re using, which ones they aren’t and which ones could be improved upon. You might discover that employees love a certain benefit, but are finding it difficult to access it which is resulting in low usage. 

In addition to a bi-annual survey, make sure to survey employees shortly after a new benefit is released to gauge their sentiment. Were they excited about this benefit? Is this something they want to see more of? Did it not feel relevant to them? Finding the answers to these questions up front will make it easier for you when launching your next benefit.

Consider providing a space where employees can submit their own feedback throughout the year, and encourage them to do so. The faster employees can provide feedback, the more quickly you can evolve your benefits strategy to ensure it’s hitting the mark with your people.

Ensuring that your benefits meet your entire workforce's needs and hit the mark every time can be a challenge, but using technology to your advantage will make this easier and help you stand out as an employer of choice. If you're interested in learning more about how our solutions can support your benefits journey, reach out to us and a member of our team can walk you through how our platform can centralize benefits to increase uptake.