Employers go to great lengths to offer wellness benefits to their employees. But according to a recent survey, almost half of employees don’t understand their benefits material. Making benefits more engaging can help bridge that gap.
As benefits get more sophisticated and personal, many employers are struggling to keep up. When employees use their benefits, employers save money.
Below, we take a look at how they can make smarter choices about benefits they offer and employee engagement tools.
Assessing Progress and Giving Feedback
One of the best ways to keep employees motivated is to provide benchmarks. Assessments can help employees see how they’re progressing. When employees can see progress, they’re motivated to keep learning.
On Edukate, a user’s’ first impression of the platform is an on-boarding assessment. It assesses how they feel about their current financial status.
We use playful characters and elements to guide users through a short questionnaire. We ask questions about savings and retirement goals.
It helps us recommend content to address areas of financial stress. Then, it gives employees an anonymous metric of how they compare to their peers.
A second, more in-depth, financial assessment is available on users’ dashboards called the Kate tool. This assessment targets a person’s spending habits. Then, it helps them create savings plans to achieve their retirement and budgeting goals.
This assessment also shows employees how they stack up against their peers. It gives us an opportunity to “check-in” with an employee’s progress over time.
Both of these assessments have shown an increase in total signups and overall engagement and retention rates across the platform.
Employers should not only focus on offering benefits platforms that give a unique and engaging first-impression, but also on how finding ways to engage employees throughout the year so that they continue utilizing benefits offerings.
The gamification of wellness benefits
In a survey conducted by LearningLMS, 80% of respondents said that they’d be more engaged with an application or platform if its content was more like a game. Among the most engaging gamification features were leaderboards, progress bars, real-time feedback, and progressing between levels.
Gamification and health benefits
Traditionally, gamification of things like health benefits have been in the form of weight-loss or healthy-eating challenges.
Modern health benefits plans take a more sophisticated approach. Technologies like Fitbit and diet-tracking apps are all examples of gamification in other areas of the benefits industry.
Contests and leaderboards
Another successful example of gamification in the wellness benefit space are contests and leaderboards. The use of points or contests within a platform can increase engagement rates.
Contests can be as simple or as sophisticated as an employer would like. Traditionally, benefits platforms will award points for completing learning modules or tasks. As employees earn points, they can move up a leaderboard. Prizes are offered to incentivize employees to participate in these contests.
A simple contest can be seen in some financial and health wellness platforms where educational content is available. When employees learn about their health or finances, they’ll earn points. These points will help them move up the leaderboard.
Benefits offerings with gamification boosts success rates.
Peer recommendations
Finally, one of the principal factors affecting participation rates in benefits are how their peers feel about benefits offerings. If an employee hasn’t tried a wellness program but one of their coworkers has, coworker opinions may shift usage. Their thoughts about the program will influence how other employees feel. Then, adoption and usage rates will be affected in the rest of the company
As an employer, you should focus on choosing benefits that create a good first impression and that shape opinions long-term. By showing early adopters a good experience, they can impact how others view the benefit too.
Have you tried gamification to roll out your HR efforts? If so, what works and what doesn’t? We know that gamification is popular and we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Let us know. Leave a comment down below.