What benefits truly matter to your people?

Offering the right company benefits is essential. Better benefits lead to a happier workforce, which in turn boosts productivity.

However, getting your benefits offering right and ensuring they appeal to a diverse audience takes a lot of work. After spending a significant amount of time researching, defining, and integrating them into a package and communicating details to stakeholders, you’re probably left wondering whether it was all worth it? 

Here’s some useful ways to find out whether your benefits have landed well with your people. 

Metrics matter

One of the best ways to find out if your benefits package is on point is to simply ask your people what they think. 

Run regular surveys

Distribute regular all company surveys via email to establish which existing benefits your people value most and which ones they value least. 

Ask questions around which alternative benefits your workforce would like to see offered. You could also ask how they feel your benefit package compares to their previous employers, whether they have a good understanding of the benefits, which options they feel support their wellbeing the most and much more. 

Conduct in-person interviews and focus groups 

Conducting interviews and focus groups is another great way to assess how well your benefits package is performing.

You may find this method of gathering information more useful as interviews allow your people to provide more detailed insights which could potentially be missed out on a survey. You'll have the opportunity to ask follow-up questions, clarify their points, and gain a better understanding of their true feelings by observing their tone and body language.

Benchmark against competitors 

Ensure you assess how your benefits package compares to that of your competitors. People are willing to change jobs for better benefits and often the little details make a big difference. 

Knowing what your competitor’s benefits offering looks like can help you make changes if you need to, giving employees good reasons to stay.

How are your engagement levels?

Another simple but often overlooked way to measure the popularity of your benefits is to check how many people are signing up for services or using their perks. For example, you might offer healthcare benefits that require people to register with a third party to gain access - how many are doing this? You may have sent a promotional email around company benefits – how many people have opened the email, and clicked through to the links included? 

If you have low email engagement rates, it may just be that your communications aren’t resonating and you need to send your comms at a different time or through a different channel, like a face-to-face webinar rather than a written email for example. On the other hand, it could mean that your benefits aren’t resonating with your people.

Try using different promotional messaging and play around with sending at different times to see if that results in an uptick in engagement. If no amount of changes boost engagement, it's likely that the benefits you’re offering just aren’t what your people want or need.

Regularly review your benefits

Ensure you complete a holistic, comprehensive view of your benefits every five years. The benefits landscape and employee expectations are continuously changing. For example, with the cost-of-living crisis starting in 2021, financial-related benefits have become more appealing to employees -something that wasn’t as much of a priority five years ago.

Every benefit you offer should contribute to improving the lives of your employees in some way. It could be that some benefits originally fit with your workplace culture when they were originally introduced, but maybe now they aren’t delivering value.

Assessing your engagement levels and metrics will give you a good idea on what benefits are performing well and which ones aren’t.

How we can help

At DrumRoll, we can help you design and deliver innovative solutions to enhance employee benefits communication and engagement. From managing change programs to advising CEOs and HR teams, we ensure employees understand and value their benefits, driving higher engagement, greater satisfaction and retention.