Your company offers a wide variety of employee benefits that are designed to help increase employee satisfaction, improve their working conditions, and raise their quality of life. Benefits aid both you and your employees: when you have happy, satisfied employees, they’re more likely to be engaged at work, to remain with your company longer, and to go the extra mile for your business. Unfortunately, those benefits are of little use if your employees don’t know anything about them! While including a list of benefits in the employee handbook during training is great, many employees will skip over that information on the assumption that they’ll have a chance to look it over later. Then, as work takes over, “later” never comes and those programs fall into disuse. Using your intranet to capture employees’ attention and share information about those critical benefits, on the other hand, will help improve employees’ knowledge about those critical benefits and improve the odds that they’ll make the most of them.
Highlight Benefits in Your Blog
Your company blog is one of your most effective tools for communicating with your employees and highlighting little-known company benefits. Chances are, everyone knows about the company health insurance policy. Not only have they filled out paperwork on it each year, but they’ve also probably taken advantage of many of those benefits throughout the year especially if they have families. There may be other benefits, however, that aren’t as well-known. Do you offer a company wellness program that not many of your employees use to full advantage? What about discounts, not just to your company, but to other area attractions: zoos, theme parks, or even vacation destinations? If your employees don’t know about these benefits, they can’t take advantage of them–so pick one to highlight in each issue of your company newsletter. Make your highlights as timely as possible: if you offer discounted season passes to a local theme park, for example, the best time of year to share that information is shortly after the park opens for the season.
Offer Time Tracking Abilities
When it comes to benefits, there are two that employees are going to track most religiously: vacation time and sick leave. Knowing how much they have available allows them to plan family trips, decide when to make critical appointments, and choose whether or not they’re going to come into the office in spite of a minor illness that is preventing them from giving their day their all. You can allow your employees to track this information on their own or, more likely, go running to HR every time they need to know the answers to those important questions or you can offer an app that allows each employee to track how much paid time off they’ve been granted, how much they’ve used, and how much time they still have off. You can also include a specific place for employees to request time off, report an illness that has caused them to miss work, or schedule vacation time.
Provide Educational Benefits Documents
Companies that offer compensation for employee education are among the highest in demand for rising young talent in any field. This key benefit is one of the best ways to attract and keep the most talented employees: not only does it draw in young people who are still interested in improving their skills, it offers the opportunity for you to improve on your existing talent by growing their knowledge and increasing their competency in their field. Knowing that you offer educational compensation, however, isn’t enough. There are several questions that your employees are going to want to be answered before they dive into pursuing further education, whether it’s taking a class, continuing to pursue an advanced degree, or going after a much-coveted certification.
How often will you pay for classes or certifications? If the company covers one class or certification per year, your employees will need to plan out their path carefully. Make sure that it’s very clear how often the company will compensate employees, including what that compensation includes. Is it just one class at a time, or will the company help cover the cost of a degree? The clearer your information is, the easier it will be for employees to take advantage of it.
Does the company pay up front or after the class or certification has been completed? In many cases, employees may not be able to afford the certification or class up-front, especially in an expensive technical field with high-dollar certifications. Make sure that employees know from the beginning whether they will be compensated for the class or test before they go after it so that there won’t be unpleasant surprises later.
What does the compensation include? Sure, you’ll pay for employees to further their education, but does it have to be in a field that’s relevant to your company? What about employees who work for your company in a nontraditional way: for example, an IT professional working in a healthcare setting. These employees are equally vital to your organization, but they don’t use the same skill sets as other employees. You should also be clear about how many of the costs associated with getting an advanced degree will be covered.
There are several ways to highlight information about employee educational benefits. A month or two before the start of term for your local universities, you can write a quick piece on your blog or offer information in the company newsletter, both of which are a great way to increase employee incentive and push them to make those educational decisions. The information, however, should always be available to employees, so make sure that it’s contained in the documents stored on your intranet at all times. Double check common search terms like “educational benefits” and “education compensation” to make sure the right information comes up when employees use the intranet search function, especially when they’re using mobile devices.
Use Forms to Your Advantage
If your company offers vital benefits, for example, health insurance and an employee chooses not to take advantage of them, you want to know that it’s not going to come back around on you later. In addition to providing employees with vital information, your intranet can be used to track employee interest in and knowledge about important programs. If you offer an employee wellness program that encourages gym time, offers health information at fairs and other events, and provides healthy snacks and foods in vending machines and cafeterias throughout your facility, employees can still choose whether or not to take advantage of it. Your goal, however, is to ensure that if they choose not to take part, they can’t blame it on you! Having each employee fill out a form within the intranet will show that they had ample opportunity to learn more about the program and take advantage of it regardless of whether or not they ultimately decided in favor of the program. You can also use this form to gain feedback from employees on how the program is working, what benefits are most important to them, and what benefits they use most often.
If you’re ready to use your intranet to highlight employee benefits, capture employees’ attention, and make the most of your employee wellness program, contact us! We’ll help you develop an intranet that is devoted to your employees, including making sure they have access to all that important benefit information. The more your employees know, the more they can use their benefits.