Bearers of good news: It's time to put HR in the spotlight

Human resources leaders, once relegated to the backstage of business, have begun to take center stage. Long seen as the behind-the-scenes "fixers" of workplace problems, the pandemic helped rewrite HR's role in the eyes of employees. 

Pre-pandemic employees heard from HR about things like performance reviews, open enrollment, new hire orientation, and if there was a problem. When the pandemic hit, employees were suddenly hungry for the kinds of benefits HR had been cultivating all along —  and employees were grateful that HR was out in front telling people about options for therapy, telehealth visits, nutrition coaching, diabetes management, etc. 

The challenge now is this: How do we avoid going back to a world where HR works tirelessly to procure benefits employees will seldom even find out about? 

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The power of sharing good news
Let's first address a common misconception — employees do want to hear about their benefits. They're part of total compensation, and if people don't know they exist, they'll think their compensation is lower than it actually is. 

And employees place a lot of value on benefits. According to a 2023 study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 88% of employers ranked health-related benefits as "very important" or "extremely important." It should go without saying that people want to hear about things that are important to them. 

So, step one in embracing a more proactive benefits conversation is normalizing the idea that the information HR holds is often precisely the kind of good news employees crave. 

Overcoming internal hurdles
The second step is navigating the web of internal stakeholders who tend to have influence — if not outright authority — over when and how HR communicates with employees. Communications teams play an important role in keeping employees in the loop — and it's understandable that they're often protective of employees' inboxes and mailboxes. 

Unfortunately, the way most companies communicate about benefits has led to a huge gap in knowledge — many if not most employees simply don't know what's available to them. Fortunately, this is a solvable problem. And it begins with increasing the frequency and transparency of benefits communications. 

How? It can help to show communications stakeholders that employees don't see communications from HR as spam. We can use data to demonstrate the value employees place on these messages — and internal stakeholders will appreciate it when HR folks use data to demonstrate a point. 

For example, looking at open rates of employee emails by type will quickly reveal whether employees welcome this information. Research shows that marketing emails generally see open rates of around 20%. You'll also want to look at click-through rates on the content of your emails to see whether recipients were inspired to take action by the email. You might also look at "unsubscribe" rates to see how many people you're actually bothering with your emails. Spoiler alert: it's usually very, very low (because, again, people value this info). 

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Think like a marketer
What if your open rates, click-through rates or unsubscribe are below benchmarks? That doesn't mean you should abandon the tactic. It probably just means you should adjust the message. You can borrow from marketing best practices and use conversational language, testimonials, and vivid (not the same ol' stock) imagery to engage your audience. 

Evolving tactics to match employee preferences
It's often easier to get approval to send a home mailer than an email. While direct mail is something employers are often more comfortable with, that doesn't mean it's better for employees. It's no secret that people rely more on digital communication than snail mail, and it's important to adapt our communication methods to modern behaviors. 

That's not to say that direct mail isn't a good tactic — it is. But it's costly, carries a heavy environmental impact, and is hard to repeat often enough to really get the word out. 

In addition to email, modern HR leaders should also consider SMS and digital ads as ways of spreading the good word of benefits to their employees — and their dependents. After all, seven of the top 10 ways today's consumers find out about new products and brands are online. It's worth asking how employees expect to find out about their benefits if no one is advertising them. 

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If a tree falls in the woods…
Just as with the age-old question of a tree falling in the woods with nobody around to hear it, how much does a certain benefit help employees if hardly anyone knows that benefit exists?

HR leaders rightly scrutinize every benefit for impact — will it deliver outcomes, cost savings, build employee morale, etc.? It's worth remembering that all those positive outcomes have a bigger impact the more people use the benefits. 

Reducing healthcare spend for 146 employees is good. Reducing healthcare spend for 1,973 of them is a whole lot better.  

The difference between high and low adoption is often as simple as whether or not employees know what benefits are even available to them. And if they don't, it's time to break out the megaphone and let them in on the good news.