There are many ways that companies can encourage employees to fully utilize their workplace benefits. However, a lot of the tactics that are commonly used fall short-- leaving many fringe benefits unused.
In order to avoid this, it is important that companies explore every way they can communicate benefits to their employees. One way to do so is through spousal benefits. Rather than showering your own employees with benefits communications, engage with their significant others and help everyone in the family understand your support for them.
25 percent of employers use a spousal surcharge within their benefits package. They can be a very valuable component of communicating benefits. Here are some reasons why you should communicate benefits to employee spouses.
One of the most obvious reasons why someone would want to communicate benefits to spouses is because the employees are often not making decisions alone. Things like healthcare coverage, dental care, and other wellness benefits often necessitate personal, thoughtful decisions - if the employee has a spouse, chances are they will play a major role in the process.
Because of this, communications should reach the spouse with just as much efficiency as they reach the employee. After all, if you were trying to share information with one of your teams at work, you would never share that information with only one of the team members. You would naturally loop in everyone on the team so that they are kept up-to-date on everything that is going on. So why wouldn't you do the same when it comes to employees and their available benefits?
When someone is forced to hear something second hand, it is never going to be as accurate or effective as if they had heard it directly from the source. Therefore, relying on your employees to go home and tell their spouses about all their available benefits is not an ideal situation. Instead, you need to make sure that your employees’ partners are properly informed of all the possible benefits that are available to the both of them.
One of the best ways to do this is by hosting an informational session for both employees and their spouses. To boost employee experience, you should turn these informational sessions into a full inclusive program where both employees and spouses are fully engaged and feel encouraged to ask questions regarding the employee benefits.
When benefits are communicated effectively to spouses, it enables another set of eyes to see the benefits options. Doing this increases the chances that the employees household, as a whole, will understand their benefits and utilize them to their full capacity.
If you want as many of your employees to take full advantage of their benefits as possible, then you need to make sure that you are communicating these benefits to their spouses as well. To help improve the communication of workplace benefits in other ways, contact us today.
For more posts on effective benefits communication