Benefits Eduation - Are You Making The Mark?

by Michael Tabash

Think of your favorite shirt. It looks great, feels great and moves effortlessly in your body’s direction. Isn’t that what your company culture should do? Now think about your employee benefit program: Can it be like your favorite shirt?

When the average benefits broker renews a client or gains a new client, he or she spends between two and six hours of face-to-face time with you and your administration team. But after the decisions are made, that broker might spend a fraction of that time with your employees.

Why aren’t people doing more employee education? Many are starting to. But it takes time and planning. The good news, however, is that you may not need to change a bunch of things – just work on educating employees about the benefits you already have and then be open-minded.

Don’t be afraid to start small. Plan two employee education programs over the next year. Pick one topic for each session. Then give a small test to see how well the program worked, and make sure to get feedback on other topics employees would like to learn more about. These can be lunch-and-learns, separate group meetings or small team meetings.

Your benefits program can’t become that “favorite shirt” if time and time again your employees don’t know how to use what you are providing them. Employee benefits education can often become one of the greatest opportunities you have to improve the recruiting, rewarding, retaining and retirement of your employees.

Michael Tabash is a benefits adviser at MRCT with a long history of working with small- and mid-market employers.