How to Encourage Employees to Use Their Workplace Benefits
Our research revealed that, on average, only 40% of employee benefits are used. Despite many businesses putting considerable financial investment into their employee benefits and rewards programmes, this surprising statistic highlights that the majority of employees aren’t getting value out of them. Because of this, many businesses won’t be experiencing the full impact of their programme and are, in effect, wasting precious resources on something that simply isn’t making a difference to employees or the business.
Investing in employee benefits simply isn’t enough. To truly drive employee motivation, retention and engagement, individuals need to actively use their benefits regularly. The act of engaging with employee benefits should be habitual and form part of individuals’ everyday routines, in and out of work. Why? In short, so that they can be boosted by them!
Addressing the problem of low employee benefits usage is therefore critical to ensuring that every employee can feel valued, supported and uplifted by their employer. In this blog, we’ll run through key ways to encourage your employees to use their company benefits and demonstrate how we can support you with this.
How do benefits boost employees?
Employee benefits have the power to make a tangible difference to the lives of individuals and reward them in ways that salary simply cannot.
Take employee discounts, for example. Discounts at hundreds of brands help employees spend less, stretch their salary further and enjoy life more. That could look like Kate from IT being able to save £250 on a holiday to Spain – something she was considering not booking at all because of the cost. Wellbeing benefits like an Employee Assistance Programme give individuals the tools and resources to get through challenging life events. This might be Alex, an Engineer, being able to tackle his anxiety and finally start sleeping again.
Whatever employee benefits your business has, they have the potential to have a real, lasting impact on individuals, when used. The positive impact is tied to your business and gives employees a sense of appreciation, support and respect that stays with them and will naturally shape how they feel about you as an employer and their job overall. Plus, some employee benefits can actually help people become better at their jobs!
Some of the benefits of employee benefits include:
- Boosted motivation and morale
- Enhanced job satisfaction
- Increased loyalty and retention
- Improved productivity and performance
10 strategies to get employees to use their workplace benefits
So, how on earth do you drive employee benefits usage in your business? Well, first off, let’s address the elephant in the room. It’s going to take time and effort. It won’t happen overnight. But, with the right approach, some commitment and the support of your benefits provider(s), you can make a tangible difference to engagement with your benefits.
1. Effective communication
Lack of engagement is often a result of lack of awareness and information. With a staggering 91% of employees wanting to receive more personalised communications about their rewards, sharing regular, informative updates about your employee benefits programme has to be part of your strategy to drive engagement.
Employees simply won’t use their benefits if they don’t know what they have access to and how to access them. On top of that, they need to understand why their benefits are valuable. You have to sell it to employees – you can’t just expect them to simply engage because the benefits are there.
Effective communication means utilising the best channels for your business. This requires you to understand how different employees receive or access company info. For example: a warehouse operative might keep tabs on leaflets in the canteen; a teacher might interact with a poster in the staffroom; a project manager may be best reached via email. It isn’t an easy task, we get it! That’s why working with a benefits provider that understands these challenges is important.
At Boostworks, our expert team create and deliver regular engagement-boosting comms to employees including emails, push notifications and in-app banners. We also make it easy for our clients to promote their benefits too. We provide a whole host of branded comms resources, updated every month and available on demand, for our clients to weave into their internal comms plan and even build their own campaigns. It’s a team effort!
2. Offer training and support
Your team understanding how your employee benefits work is critical to ensuring that they’re well-utilised. Having regular training sessions available to employees will help with this. Outside of training, you can put together useful assets that include key info, how-tos and FAQs to give employees on-demand support.
Training for managers is especially vital. They have a direct line of communication with their team members so it’s essential that they’re clued up on all of your employee benefits so they can freely share this information in team catch-ups and 1:1s.
We support our clients by hosting webinars for employees, dedicated to driving awareness and education. In these sessions, a member of our team walks through the platform, explains key features, access info and answers employee questions. On top of that, we attend in-person roadshows all over the country to promote your benefits platform further. We love talking to the people that use our service, so just send us an invite, and we’ll be there!
3. Make benefits easily accessible
For employees to use their benefits habitually, without even really having to think about it (or be pushed to use them), you need them to be easily accessible. And that doesn’t just mean hosting your benefits online. It means having all benefits in one place, and on a mobile app so individuals can seamlessly get to their benefits whenever, wherever.
Think about how much time you spend on your phone (it’s probably best not to think about it toooo much). Well, it makes absolute sense for your employee benefits programme to be one tap away on the device that goes everywhere with them, right?
Our entire service is accessible from the Boostworks mobile app. One app. One access point. One tap. A touch of a screen unlocks employee benefits, discounts, recognition, rewards, wellbeing and more. Whatever service you pick from us, it’ll be available in the app for your employees. Naturally, we find that our app users do more when it comes to engaging with their employee benefits. And it’s no surprise, really. It takes zero effort for them to access and enjoy their benefits from the sofa, gym, while out shopping or on holiday – literally wherever.
4. Understand your employees
In many instances, there’s a gap in what employees want and the benefits they have access to, resulting in poor uptake. In fact, 65% of employees believe that improvements are needed to their current benefits programme, with 47% stating that leaders don’t truly understand what the workforce wants. To avoid this happening in your business, take the time to understand the wants and needs of your employees. Surveys and focus groups will allow you to understand the types of perks your workforce cares about – the benefits that’ll actually get used and enjoyed. That way, you can avoid your business wasting money on the wrong benefits and resources pushing employees to perks they don’t want. The critical part of this process is continuing to check in with team members as needs and interests naturally change.
5. Utilise feedback
Do you know how your colleagues feel about your business’ current employee benefits? Employee feedback is a critical step in improving benefits usage to ensure you’re evolving your programme around the ever-changing needs of employees. Your benefits programme should be fluid and never fixed. You can’t expect the benefits that were well-used last year to continue to be popular now. Our research shows that less than half of employees agree that it’s easy to request specific rewards. So, capture feedback! Aim to get a thorough gauge of how well your perks meet existing needs with regular surveys and ratings as well as an in-depth annual review. Getting an initial sentiment check and suggestions from employees will identify some immediate areas of improvement that’ll give you opportunities to boost engagement.
6. Recruit employee benefit champions
Having genuine examples of how your employee benefits are helping existing team members will massively help your engagement drive. Of those individuals that you know are using their employee benefits regularly, try and get some volunteer benefit champions. You could incentivise this to make the role more appealing, or you may find that employees are willing to do their bit to promote your benefits to simply help out their colleagues. Benefit champions can play a part in your communications and generally spread positive, authentic messages about your benefits amongst their team. What’ll truly make a difference is the personal stories and real-life examples that will resonate with other employees and highlight what they’re missing out on.
7. Gamify your benefits
Gamification is big in employee benefits and rewards and relates to adding game-like elements to benefits platforms to boost engagement. This could look like points, badges, leaderboards and prize draws, all driven by behaviours related to engaging with your benefits platform. Introducing gamification gives your employees fun and exciting incentives that help drive behaviour change which will ultimately benefit them long-term. Plus, game-like elements as well as tactical incentives add a new level of energy and dynamism to your platform, keeping the experience of interacting with employee benefits interesting and engaging. This is especially important for employees that have been with your business for years and are familiar with the benefits they have access to.
8. Prioritise relevance
Employee benefits need to be relevant for individuals to want to connect with them. If they have a use for a benefit, they’ll be more inclined to use it! We know that there’s no-one-size-fits all approach, but there are employee benefits that have wide appeal like shopping discounts. I mean, we all spend so who wouldn’t love the chance to save some money? Other widely relevant employee benefits include wellbeing support tools and services like Health Cash Plans and Employee Assistance Programmes. Beyond that though, strive to make your benefits as personalised as possible, so perks match individuals’ life stage, preferences and needs.
9. Consolidate your benefits
Over the years, many businesses have built out their employee value propositions and as a result accumulated an array of benefits. While it’s valuable to have a rich and varied offering, the problem is that with different providers and access points, the route to these benefits can be unclear, complicated or even unknown to employees. To resolve this, lean into simplification by bringing all of your benefits together! Consolidate your perks into one platform to reduce noise, remove barriers and boost engagement.
We’re all about simplification here at Boostworks. With our benefits solution, we easily integrate your existing benefits into your branded version of our platform, alongside any other elements of our service you choose for quick, easy and simple access for employees.
10. Measure success
This point could’ve come first or last as, really, the process of driving engagement with your benefits starts and ends with measuring success. It’s important to capture where you are today and document key metrics that tell you how many employees are engaging with your benefits at the moment. This enables you to set some realistic KPIs, identify the immediate areas of opportunity and build out your strategy from there. Depending on what your results tell you, you may decide to focus on only a few of the ideas mentioned in this blog (or something else!). The key is to collectively agree the focus and the core measurables, so you have a true understanding of how your efforts have moved the dial when you check back in.
Data is truly powerful, which is why Boostworks clients get on-demand access monthly reports that provide a helpful summary of how employees are engaging with the platform. Beyond that, a live snapshot of usage data is available through the Boost Admin Centre too, empowering clients to measure success and collaborate with us to drive engagement further.
How Boostworks can help you succeed
We’re all about the benefit of the benefit here at Boostworks – the real, lasting impact our service has on individuals. Because of this, we’re truly driven to ensure that as many people as possible utilise their benefits. But beyond that, we understand the importance of getting a return on investment for businesses. You want your benefits to actually result in higher employee retention and better performance. If employees aren’t using their benefits, that’s unlikely to happen.
That’s why our approach to collaborating with UK businesses goes beyond just the tech we build and the programmes we deliver. We provide real, human support from our expert team, with experienced account managers that are here to understand your challenges and help you get as many people enjoying your benefits as possible, whether that’s through webinars, incentives or roadshows. On top of that, our in-house communications team continually drive engagement through creative resources, campaigns and competitions, all driven by us to give your platform the best chance of success.
So, if you’re tired of people not using your business’ employee benefits, why not see how we can help? Schedule a chat with a member of our expert team, and let’s go from there!
Book a DemoBack to blog
