Communicating benefits through the traditional art of storytelling

Consider Bill Marriott, president and CEO of Marriott International. He’s been a corporate blogger since 2007, telling stories about how his parents started in business 83 years ago with a root beer stand, offering what he has learned over his 50-plus years in the global hotel business and providing updates on recent activities. In the process, he engages employees and customers.

General Motors (GM), when planning its 100th anniversary, also had to cope with soaring gas prices, the collapse of Wall Street, a public relations automotive bailout disaster, bankruptcy and recovery—all within a two and a half year time frame. To make it through, GM relied on a mix of high and low technology (such as video broadcasts, an internal blog, town hall meetings) to keep employees informed, engaged and loyal.

Can the same communications strategy apply to benefits plans?

Telling the Story
Yes, according to James Lukaszewski, CEO of The Lukaszewski Group, a communications consulting firm in Mount Kisco, N.Y. Lukaszewski believes it’s the story that is remembered by an employee, and it can certainly be delivered via the latest and greatest tech channel. When interviewed specifically on the subject of benefits communications, Lukaszewski said, “Storytelling is a crucial ingredient for successfully conveying a message. People learn more—and are persuaded more—from stories, and it is one of the most powerful ways to be memorable.”

By stories, Lukaszewski is referring to animated, plain-language, people-oriented brief messages. For example, in our benefits world, that may mean the following:

1. A manager, when explaining benefits terms such as coordination of benefits, uses a real example.

2. The HR department posts a short video, webcast and/or podcast on a company intranet wherein employees talk about various benefits issues (e.g., “When I became ill last year, I was relieved by the knowledge that most of my drug costs were covered by my plan” or “When I had a baby, I practically called HR from the delivery room to provide details so I could ensure my new baby would be covered”).

And, of course, telling these stories through any low-tech channel—an employee-written article or testimonial—works, too.

Executing the Idea
Sun Life Financial was an early adopter of this synthesized approach when it recently refocused its plan member communications strategy. Paul Ovcacik, director of online benefits and plan member engagement, and Marie Foggetti, director, member education services—both in Sun Life’s group benefits and retirement services in Toronto—understand that benefits communication is challenging at the best of times.

Therefore, to better penetrate communication barriers, they chose to focus on the storytelling aspect of plan member communications through new channels. These include engaging website users through dialogue delivered by “real people,” enabling audio delivery of benefits stories experienced by employees and reprinting these testimonials in communication materials. According to Ovcacik and Foggetti, “Our research indicated that plain text and content alone don’t always work. To engage members, we needed to make media more interactive and dynamic. Since we also knew members wanted to hear from one another, we ensured our education and communications programs articulated messages from a member’s point of view. And, we created further relevance by reflecting life stages in the messaging.”

At the time of writing, about eight weeks since Sun Life launched these stories on its website, the provider has had approximately 50,000 visits by roughly 42,000 members, with an average visit
time of almost six minutes.

Using the Traditional
It would be easy to assume that in an age-diverse audience, older employees want to receive information through traditional channels, younger ones through modern techniques. It is true there are some age-related preferences. But despite this era of constant technological evolution, it is wrong to stereotype based on age, so hang on to your newsletters and employee letters for a while.

Ensure your communications tool kit contains a blend of new and traditional strategies so you can communicate to your diverse employee audience about the value of a benefits program, its place within total compensation and details requiring action (i.e., enrollment or retirement program decisions).

Communicating Face to Face
Regardless of age, face-to-face communications is still the king of effective communication methods.

Therefore, organizations should round out their technology methods of benefits messaging through personal delivery of information. And those messages must be endorsed and regularly delivered by leadership. Consider the following examples:

1. When company leadership meets with employee groups for general town hall meetings, benefits should be on the agenda and messages and stories should be reinforced. Benefits endorsement must be loud and clear with reinforcement through other channels.

2. Managers can become benefits communicators. With the right coaching and when provided with resources (talking points, slides, training), managers can strengthen their companies’ benefits stories at team meetings and discussions.

3. When a language other than English is dominant, appoint an employee resource who can help communicate in that language.
Integrating the Methods

Benefits represent a significant company investment. To maximize the value of this investment, benefits information needs to be frequently communicated and turned into stories that will be remembered. Obviously, when communicating how to enrol or other necessary administrative details, it is hard to create a testimonial or story out of that—and not necessarily essential. But when the stories about the benefits program’s value have already engaged the employee audience elsewhere, interest in the details should follow.

Connect the communication channels so you can create multiple paths to one key message. Printed materials should refer to online and audio resources, and those resources should let people know whom they can talk to for more information. Social media can include links to benefits details posted online, to the CEO’s blog where he or she talks about the value of the benefits program and to where people share their personal testimonials (through print, audio or video) of how the benefits and retirement program helped them.

Remember the CAP Guidelines
If you provide employees with a capital accumulation plan (CAP), you must strive to comply with the CAP Guidelines, including requirements around regular plan member communication. It is very important to mitigate the possibility of any future complaints due to “lack of knowledge or awareness,” and a well-rounded retirement communications plan should include both traditional and new methods.

In fact, one of the great retirement benefits challenges—trying to get the younger generation to pay attention to the need for retirement planning—may be well served by putting those messages into podcasts and webcasts.

PepsiCo has had success in the last couple of years with its internal podcasts. As reported on the corporate communications site Ragan.com, in June 2010, PepsiCo employees regularly download—either at their computers at work or on their iPods—seven-minute podcasts of four to five interesting questions and answers addressed by company leaders or topic experts. Ninety-one percent of employees said they find these podcasts useful.

This is something you may wish to consider when trying to break through communication barriers to successfully disseminate your retirement benefits story to employees.

Whatever channel you use, you need an open dialogue with employees so you will know if the lessons of your benefits stories resonate. Do your stories get retold again and again? When people see you coming, do they expect to hear useful stories and lessons? Employee engagement is linked to retention and successful business indicators. Benefits can be the platform upon which that engagement is both achieved and maintained. BC

Esther Huberman is a communications consultant with Pal Benefits Inc.
ehuberman@palbenefits.com

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© Copyright 2010 Rogers Publishing Ltd. This article first appeared in the September 2010 edition of BENEFITS CANADA magazine.