In many aspects of our lives, we are conditioned to no longer settle for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Spotify will send you personalised music recommendations, Netflix will show you what series you’re missing out on – even your latté to-go has your name on it (however incorrectly it may have been spelt).
Our expectations as consumers are being moulded by this new era of tailored targeting and, as benefits technology catches up with the wider technology market, it’s safe to assume that your people could also look for this level of personalisation to be applied to their employee benefits.
In this article, we’ll explore what a benefits platform can add to your overall employee benefits strategy, as well as outlining some key aspects of this additional technology that can help to enhance the benefits experience of your people and encourage them to engage more with the benefits you offer.
Full control of your employer and benefits branding
One of the fundamental areas to your employee benefits technology is visual consistency. Implementing a platform that aligns with your organisation’s brand (or benefits brand) can often be key to your reward and benefits programme being a success.
Benefits technology can allow you to keep elements like colours, fonts and tone of voice consistent with your existing branding, which can support your people to know what to expect at every stage of the user experience and help your platform to be more intuitive. Branding and messaging consistency can also help to create an all-encompassing feel when it comes to your benefits scheme, driving home the value of your organisation and building your reputation as a caring company.
Benefits technology can also accommodate for adaptivity, so you can keep it feeling modern. Whether you want to slightly change the theme or feel of your platform to align with a campaign you have running, or whether you just want to update the branding to give it a fresher look, it can help to reassure your people that your business is staying current and not being left behind.
Content personal to your people
As modern consumers, we often expect the technology we interact with to be learning from – and reacting to – us, our behaviour and our personal preferences. Technology can help you to deliver the same experience to your people in relation to their employee benefits.
Rather than sending blanket emails that may not be relevant to many of the recipients, a benefits platform can enable you to target certain groups, or even personalise messages to specific individuals. Not only can it be confusing for employees when they receive a reminder email for something that they have already actioned, it can also communicate a lack of effort or care on your part for not taking the time to ensure that communications only go to the relevant people.
Targeted communication can also help you to run campaigns that draw attention to a specific benefit among employees that meet certain criteria, for example, offering retirement benefits to your employees approaching retirement. Communications should encourage your workforce to engage with their benefits, and a platform that personalises its messaging can equip you with the ability to achieve just this.
Keeping benefits relevant and inclusive
Just as you don’t want your people to be shown benefits that are irrelevant to them, you also don’t want any person or group within your workforce to feel they are being excluded. Almost 80% of employees value working for an organisation that promotes diversity (Zest Benefits), so using technology to help create an inclusive benefits strategy can support you to attract and retain the best talent.
An effective employee benefits platform can help you to build a more diverse team, by:
- Easily delivering a diverse range of benefits: A benefit programme that offers something relevant to each individual. Employers can incorporate a diversity of benefits from different suppliers, making it easier to ensure there’s something for everyone.
- Monitoring engagement: Data enables employers to closely monitor engagement with benefits. HR teams can check how popular different benefits are and who is using them, making it easier to map trends and tailor their benefits strategy accordingly.
- Adapting benefits quickly: Should you discover that a particular group of people are not engaging with the current programme, you can quickly add in new, more relevant benefits to help employees feel they are not being overlooked or ignored.
- Personalising communications: Benefits platforms allow you to personalise communication to individual team members, drawing their attention to the benefits and rewards that are likely to be relevant to them.
- Recognising achievement: Employers should recognise and celebrate the achievements of a wide variety of their staff.