5 great ways to get and keep employees focused on benefits

Your organization invests a lot of time and money in medical coverage, retirement funds and wellness programs, but it’s wasted if staffers don’t tap those resources. Try these tactics.

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You sent a companywide email about benefits; that doesn’t mean employees got the message.

In today’s information-overloaded workplace, it’s a challenge to reach employees with vital communication about HR issues. You must break through the clutter to get their attention.

Here are fresh approaches to reaching employees so they’ll understand and act on benefits options.

1. Write for seventh-graders.

Most Americans read at the ninth-grade level. So, if your content is written at the 13th-grade level, you’ve got a problem––too much jargon, too many long words and complex sentences.

Although a corporate style of writing might help you sound like an expert to your boss, it won’t gain your audience’s attention or trust.

Try this: Analyze your writing with the Flesch Reading Ease Score or the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score, using tools built into Microsoft platforms.

To simplify your message, write for the seventh-grade level. How do you accomplish that? Here are five ways:

2. Do something unexpected.

Gaming is ingrained in our lives. Whether we spend time playing games on our phone, with friends or on a gaming console, “play” is an experience we value and often expect.

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