Employee benefits are one of the largest line items on any organisation’s balance sheet. In the UK, organisations spend up to £15 billion a year on workplace benefits their people never use.
It’s not because of the benefits on offer. It’s an engagement failure.
Most HR and reward teams focus on building a competitive package. But benefits are launched and then forgotten. And enrolment only comes around once a year.
Only 23% of employees receive regular communication about their benefits throughout the year. The consequences are predictable: a workforce that is broadly unaware of what it’s been given – 67% of UK employees don’t know what’s included in their benefits package.
The cost is bigger than most organisations realise
When benefits go uncommunicated, the consequences extend beyond low utilisation rates. They show up in the talent pipeline, in absence figures, in the credibility of the employer brand, and ultimately – in the bottom line.
Three costs in particular are consistently underestimated:
The hidden pay cheque disappears. Total reward, salary plus benefits, is the true value of employment. But if an employee doesn’t understand what’s in their package, they are effectively underpaid in their own minds, regardless of what the organisation is actually spending.
Turnover rises. 78% of employees say benefits are very or extremely important when deciding whether to accept or stay in a role. Replacing a single employee costs between £11,200 and £74,900 depending on seniority, with UK attrition currently running at 19%.
Mental health costs mount. Poor mental health is already costing UK employers £51 billion a year. Yet only 53% of employees know how to access mental health support through their employer. Employers are funding a provision that employees cannot find.
The measurement gap
Underlying all of this is a failure to measure. Most organisations are operating blind with 73% of organisations not measuring the engagement rate of their benefits at all.
Closing the engagement gap requires a fundamentally different model. Not better copywriting on the same intranet page. A different approach to how benefit communications are designed, targeted, timed, and measured.
That starts with insight. It is the foundation of a communication strategy that actually works:
Insight-led communication is the way forward. Once you understand employee behaviours and engagement patterns, communications can be designed for the reality of your people.
Segmentation is needed because your workforce is not homogeneous. It spans different life stages, financial situations, caring responsibilities, and working patterns.
Engagement at meaningful touchpoints because benefit communications should align to the real life moments when a benefit becomes reality, not just at launch or enrolment. Return from parental leave. First mortgage. Bereavement. Countdown to retirement.
Different employee groups respond to different formats and channels sowhat lands for a desk-based employee in an office may not reach a field worker or a shift-pattern employee. Omnichannel, multi-format delivery is a basic condition of reach.
Beyond the Broadcast: creative benefits communications strategies
Closing this gap requires moving beyond the broadcast model of internal comms.
We believe that the solution lies in a unique approach to communicating benefits – matching behavioural insights with unexpected, memorable activation.
The trick to striking benefits communications is about unravelling the complex.
Whether it’s gamifying a pension rollout to double engagement (as we did for the John Lewis Partnership), using distinctive visual mechanism to drive engagement with the entire benefits package for a global audience through a virtual benefits fair (as we did for BNP Paribas), the goal is to illuminate the benefits on offer and inspire your people to take advantage of them.
‘The organisations with the most successful benefits are not necessarily focusing on more or better benefits. They are focusing on intelligent, insight-led communication. The result is not just higher utilisation but it is a workforce that feels valued, that understands what their employer is investing in them, and that ultimately stays,” says Fran Elliott, Account Director and Strategist, at Blue Goose.
‘Many organisations assume that awareness is enough. Launch it, announce it, and move on. But employees typically won’t engage with something they don’t believe is relevant to them. That’s not apathy. That’s a communication failure and it sits entirely within the organisation’s control to close it.’
Auditing Resonance: improving ROI on benefits
The question for leadership should no longer be ‘How much are we spending on benefits?’ but rather: ‘How much of that spend is actually being felt by our people?’
If your benefits are invisible, they are effectively non-existent. It’s time to stop auditing the providers and start auditing the resonance.
Until you apply the same level of creative rigor to your internal engagement as you do to your external brand, your benefits offer will remain a costly silhouette.
If you want help reinvigorating your benefits engagement, contact Blue Goose today.
Image by: Printablue
