As an insurance broker, it’s your job to act as an intermediary between an insurance company, such as our team at SBMA Benefits, and the companies offering benefits to their employers. The goal of most insurance brokers is to improve and increase employee engagement.
Employee engagement refers to the number of employees that opt-in to receive benefits through your offerings, but you know all of this. One of the greatest questions that many brokers face often, however, is how to get employer groups to engage.
Improving levels of employee engagement starts with the employers they work for. Employers serve as your gateway to their teams. While this is a benefit to brokers in that it’s not your responsibility to go directly to the employees, it’s also a challenge because you don’t have the luxury to go directly to employees.
In many cases, increasing enrollment in benefits isn’t at the forefront of employers’ minds. Their responsibility is to ensure that their employees have access to the benefits they need, not to push them to enroll in them. In some cases, pushing enrollment may not be on the agenda of business owners because depending on their plan type, more enrollees may hold them accountable for paying higher employee premiums and enrollment fees.
Each business is slightly different and should be approached as such. While some businesses may only pay the administration fees and not cover any amount of the cost of coverage for their employees, others may offer to pay a certain percentage of their employees’ monthly benefit costs.
In the event that your employer contacts are not interested or willing to dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to increasing employee benefits enrollment, we’re providing a few simple tips to increase enrollment with as little challenge as possible. Check them out below.
Every employee looks forward to the magical envelope that they receive weekly or bi-weekly… Yes, we’re talking about their paychecks! With every paycheck comes a pay stub that details the amount they’re being paid, how their pay is taxed, and any deductions that are removed. Pay stubs are distributed to employees regardless of whether they are sent physically or electronically.
Since all employees receive a weekly or bi-weekly paycheck and therefore pay stubs, sharing information within a pay stub is an ideal platform for communication—as it’s guaranteed all employees will receive it. Additionally, by communicating information about benefits options within their pay stubs, their financial information is already right in front of them as they consider the affordability of available benefit options.
One-pagers are a great opportunity to share information with employees as well. Simplifying information into a consolidated single page allows ease of understanding and direction for how to proceed. Distributing such materials is an effective way to share a significant amount of information and answer initial questions employees may have.
Including a simple call to action, such as the broker’s contact information, provides a clear direction of how they can address additional questions and express their interest without the employer being directly involved.
Another option to spread the word to employees to increase engagement and enrollment is by running a text campaign. The benefit of working with an employer directly is that you don’t have to fight to find contact information for leads. Your leads are directly in front of you and some employers may be willing to share their contact information with you.
It may not always be the case that employers are willing or able to share employee contact information with you, but in the event that they are, a text campaign is an excellent way to make contact with potential beneficiaries. Unlike in the case with email marketing, discussed below, text messaging is a much less saturated communication platform. Because personal cell phone numbers are often more challenging to get a hold of than email addresses, you may likely be successful in breaking through the noise with a text message.
Similar to text campaigns, as mentioned above, email campaigns are a great way to get in contact with employees if their employer is willing and able to share their information. One benefit of email campaigns over text messages is that email enables you to send more information, and include calls to action and images, etc. That being said, a downside of email campaigns is that for many people, email inboxes are cramped and cluttered with other messaging that may prevent your message from being viewed.
While increasing employer and employee engagement and enrollment is an ongoing challenge of the job, these tips and strategies may be just the ticket you need to make a difference in your successes. For more information and support as a broker offering SBMA Benefits, contact us today.
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