Communicating Benefits During a Crisis

When there is a crisis that affects a large portion of your workforce, be it a pandemic, natural disaster, or other force majeure that alters the daily operations of your company, it’s important to be sensitive to the immediate needs of your employees. One way to show your support as an employer, or even as a benefits broker assisting clients, is by continuing to provide key information about how the crisis may affect employee benefits.

If you’re not sure how to go about effectively communicating benefits information during a crisis, we’ve compiled some of our go-to tips to help employers and benefits brokers be supportive and successful while conveying important updates.

If benefits partners are sending out information regarding service updates related to the crisis, use it! We recommend checking what information they offer about adjustments or changes to benefits and passing that information directly to employees. For example, if you receive information from your commuter benefits provider, why not pass that on directly to employees or clients, so they hear the updates directly from the experts?

If you choose to re-purpose that information to create your own communication, be sure to stick closely to the regulations detailed in their messaging to avoid inadvertently generating more confusion. Keep in mind that benefits providers for specific employee benefits specialize in that field and should be trustworthy resources for the most current information on what employees should do in a time of crisis.

To continue the commuter benefits example, employees who are required to work from home during a pandemic emergency or because of building damage from a natural disaster will likely want to know if they can get a refund for parking or transportation funds they allocated and cannot use. In this situation, it will be to an employer or broker’s advantage to lean on their commuter benefits provider to give accurate information regarding potential refunds, credits, changes, and other related information. (Psst, you can check out some of our commuter FAQs here, while we’re on the topic).

It is likely that during a crisis, employees may be flooded with information from all different sources and may be more distracted than usual. Repeat key benefits information regularly to ensure that it is not lost in the deluge of communications employees may be receiving. For example, if there is a benefits deadline approaching, it may help to send out more than one reminder a day leading up to it, so people can’t miss it.

When something happens that impacts the professional and personal lives of many people, their ability to focus may be affected, and that’s okay! Be empathetic towards your employees or clients and patiently repeat the important information they need. Keep these reminders short and succinct, so the key message comes through loud and clear.

As we mentioned in a past blog about effectively communicating benefits year-round, you should vary the channels of communication you use for important benefits messages. If you want your benefits message to reach all employees or clients, you may need to use e-mail, text, webinars, phone calls, and any other means of communication that will ensure everyone receives the important information.

Some people may tune out emails during a stressful time, but a text message could grab their attention. Other individuals may want to see a human face—even virtually—to hear about important deadlines and benefits updates, so offer a webinar or video-conference call to answer questions and provide information. If you have the means, you could reach out by phone to employees or clients to field any questions, individually, in case some people need that one-on-one attention to fully understand what they need to do. Post videos on social media or use any other channel of communication that you think employees or clients will respond to best during a crisis.

If a lot of people are asking similar questions, or if you anticipate that many people will have questions about the same issues, be proactive and create a resource to address them in advance. Show your employees or clients that you are thinking about their needs by preemptively answering questions about benefits that may be affected by the crisis. An answer to a question could even be redirecting them to your benefits provider’s information (as we mentioned above as a great option).

You can create an email blast with FAQs or post an article on your employee or client-facing website or portal. You could also create a video or webinar that addresses these FAQs that people can watch for updated information. (This doesn’t have to be a high-cost production! Just recording a video on your phone to answer common questions can go a long way.) This can be helpful for people to have a resource that directly responds to their concerns or even provides information about benefits that they had not considered.