8 essentials to deliver a high engagement employee benefit initiative.Clare Nowell, Head of Employee Engagement

Many employers are disappointed in the engagement in their employee benefit initiatives.

This can be due to poor design, poor execution by the provider, or inadequate communications. Here are my top 8 communications tips.

Be an advocate for your initiative yourself. Use it religiously. Talk about it wherever you go. Get the rest of the HR team to promote it in their email footer. If you all love it, your staff will love it.

Think about the needs and preferences of your workforce - they might be different to your own.Focus on the offers and benefits that will really resonate with your workforce. There are often several groups with different needs.

Think about HR flash points in the year where the benefit initiative can help promote other employee initiatives.

Integrate the communications and plan it well ahead.

By dovetailing your initiatives together they will lend each other support and everything will look more integrated to employees.

Get your branding, internal communications or marketing department on board early.

You don’t want any nasty surprises or setbacks before launch.

Recruit Benefits Champions in as many departments, offices, locations, divisions as you can. Give them early access to your plan, train them, arm them with information and FAQ’s. Equip them with everything necessary to promote the initiative to their colleagues.

Use employee presentations to take the message face to face. Work with someone who can sign employees up on the spot to increase engagement.

Take advantage of every piece of communications and mail that goes to your employees.

Communicate via the back of letters, on the envelope itself, by including an extra insert into the envelope - absolutely anything you can find.

Above all, choose an amazing employee benefits, rewards, and perks provider that can do all of this for you and support you through the whole process.

“You’re at work for an awful lot of your life.

If you don’t love it, leave it!”

clare.nowell@rewardgateway.comhttp://about.me/clare_nowell