With any marketing campaign, a great product means little if the intended audience is unaware of its existence or unconvinced of its quality.

With the majority of employees spending mere minutes making benefits decisions, perhaps employers should examine the advertising styles of the infomercial sensation ShamWow® for tips on successful communication?

Although tempting, employers don't need to hire a benefits pitchman. However, benefits professionals can take a few cues from product marketers - conducting surveys and even focus groups to determine what employees want from their benefits package and how they want benefits information presented.

"[Typically, employers] don't start where marketing companies start - with the consumer," observes Deb Leon, president of Health Contact Partners.

The Chamber of Commerce reports that although employers spend up to 40% of payroll on employee benefits, only a small fraction of employees understands and appreciates them.

According to Colonial Life, while 90% of employers believe that it's important to their business that employees understand and appreciate their benefits, only 21% believe their employees actually have a good understanding of their benefits. Further, about 5% think their employees know nothing at all.

"Because [employees] don't understand how to work the system, their perception is that they're not getting good coverage, that they don't have a good benefit plan," explains Leon. "If we don't give them support and guidance, the frustration levels increase. Giving them support and guidance is the missing link."

FILLING IN THE BLANKS

Benefits communication is even more important now, as the recession has employees carefully considering every penny they spend.

Kathryn Yates, the global head of communication consulting at Watson Wyatt, warns that "if you're not going to talk with them about the current economy and its impact, your employees are going to speculate."

"This is a really fertile time to take the opportunity to make the connection to explain where the business is going and what its impact is on the individual," she says. "So this is an opportune moment, a teachable moment."

Doug Mantz, vice president of sales at The Farmington Company, seconds Yates' observation.

"It's important to remind [workers] of all the things that they do have," he says.

FACE-TO-FACE

Mantz goes on to recommend that employers communicate with multiple touch points, which especially include face-to-face communication, the most effective method.

"The value in face-to-face [engagement] is that it's a directed communication of the benefits that are underutilized, underappreciated or misunderstood," he says.

That's why Jan Blair, vice president of HR for Allegiance Health Care in Jackson Mich., insists that the company's 2,900 benefit-eligible employees receive a personalized approach with its total rewards program.

"One size does not fit all in the benefits world," she says.

For this reason, individual meetings with retirement representatives and health care benefit consultants are available onsite.

Though the meetings are not mandatory, 80% of workers opt to have that face-to-face encounter.

"Convenience," says Blair, "is the biggest incentive. To the 'T,' everyone has said that they value that opportunity to discuss their benefits options because it was an area that they were not comfortable with."

When Blair first arrived at Allegiance, the company was handing out a benefits communication package that most employees ignored, with many simply defaulting to elections they already had, she says.

MORE CHOICE, MORE EDUCATION

But as the company expanded its offerings in number and complexity, the one-time booklet was no longer cutting it.

"The trend is that employers are offering more choices [of benefit offerings]. But with more choice comes an obligation to provide more education for employees," Blair says.

Allegiance's new personal touch appears to have paid off. Now, only 20% of its workforce sleepwalks through enrollment, defaulting to their current elections.

"When you sit down and explain to people how a health plan works, and you give them some context to the decision, and you personalize it to their family situation, you can see the light go on in their head," says Blair.

A Colonial Life survey backs up her claims, with 90% of employers saying that having one-on-one meetings significantly improves employees' understanding of their benefits.

In the last year, Allegiance Health Care has more than tripled its employee satisfaction rating, culminating in an average rating of 3.46 out of 5 this year.

Blair concedes there is still work to be done, but with the incredible strides the company has already made, she's confident the organization is on the right track.

"Eventually we'll get employees to understand that this total rewards package is a very valuable part of their compensation package," she says. "That deserves to be communicated, because it's a significant investment - not an expense, an investment."

COMMUNICATING OVER BROADBAND

Americans are used to sound bites - in fact, they're quite comfortable with them. Keith Kitani, CEO of ThriveOn, thinks he's found a way to harness this truncated turn at communication with a new Web 2.0 platform.

The first lesson in communication is how to say more with less, he says.

One way to do this is to allow employees to filter their own information by choosing when and how to absorb information about their benefits.

"People are getting used to accessing information in a variety of different learning styles - from highly structured to informal. With the Web, they can get information the way [and the order in which] they want to. They can control the learning experience," says Kitani.

He suggests using video portals that can be searched and skipped in any order the employee or their spouse desires, and allowing workers to ask questions via e-mail or phone through a call center.

"Most employees get over 50% of their health and financial services from their company now. It's important for people to start thinking about it across both. The 401(k) vendor and the health care vendor have education, but they tend to be more focused around their piece," says Kitani. "Nobody starts to take a look at education holistically in a very comfortable format, and that's what we're trying to provide for companies."

USING SOCIAL MEDIA

Employers also can reach their employees through social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

According to Yates, social media can be terrific for reinforcing presentations of benefits and creating a community around benefits information and offerings.

For example, Twitter can be a good way to keep employees apprised of rolling benefit information.

A CEO blog, meanwhile, can be a good way to stress that the company cares that employees elect the right coverage for them and can also serve to keep employees engaged with wellness communication or supplemental benefits throughout the year.

Further, organizations can use social media in the same way they use one-to-one communication, by tailoring the communication to employees.

"From the employee perspective, they want more personalized and relevant communication," says Dana Burnette, director of benefits communication and education at Colonial Life. "They crave that 'what does this mean to me' kind of message."

If a plan sponsor can present that message in a manner that is convenient and engaging, the company has a swinging chance that the benefits information will stick and satisfy.

COMMUNICATION COUP:

Reminder program sparks mammography rates

A reminder program that combined postcards, automated voice messages and personal phone calls stimulated breast cancer screening tests by more than 17 percentage points, finds a new study by Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research.

The program utilized an electronic health records database to identify women (aged 50-59) who hadn't had a mammogram for 20 months.

Within 10 months of their first reminder, more than 75% of these women had completed mammograms, as compared to only 63.4% before the program started.

After the second year of study, 80.6% of women had gone in for a mammogram.

"We know mammograms are effective, but too many women put them off, even when they have health insurance," says lead author Adrianne Feldstein, MD, MS, an investigator at Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., and a practicing physician.

"This study is the first to show that these reminder programs can be effective in such a large group of women," says Feldstein. "If we could improve the country's mammography rate by the same amount, we could detect as many as 25,000 additional cases of breast cancer each year.

"Starting in January 2006, the program dispensed postcards to the 35,000 Kaiser Permanente members, reminding these women that they were soon due for another mammogram. If they didn't schedule an appointment within a month, they received their first automated reminder call.

If they still neglected to make an appointment after another month, a second automated phone call was placed, and a month later, a third call was placed.

At that point, if there was still no sign of an appointment, the women received a personal phone call from a clerk in the radiology department.

While past studies had focused on mail or personal phone calls, this study is unique in that it took a three-pronged approach that included automated telephone calls.

Employers can take note of the study and implement such tactics in their own benefit communication campaigns.

VISIONARY COMMUNICATION

One topic that employers tend to skim over when communicating benefits is vision care.

Nearly four in 10 HR professionals say they never discuss vision benefits with their workers.

Unfortunately, employers may be missing an opportunity to encourage employees to keep up with their vision health, which could help identify serious eye diseases at an early stage, as well as detect early signifiers of several chronic conditions, including hypertension and diabetes.

Of those who actively educate their employees of the importance of visiting their eye care specialist on a regular basis, 67% of HR professionals rated "Did You Know?" fact sheets as one of the top three methods to inform employees.

According to the 2007 online survey conducted by HR.com on behalf of Transitions Optical, 64% of employers considered electronic newsletters as the most effective way to engage employees with their vision health.

Web sites that can be shared with employees were cited by 62% of employers as another effective way to engage employees, and 62% cited print information in enrolment packages as an effective communication method.

Nearly half (45%) elected presentations delivered during staff meetings as the best method while, 42% chose individual meetings with employees.

After this article was written, ThriveOn changed their name to GuideSpark.