Helping Employees Understand and Access their Benefit Options

CHALLENGE
For many people, employee benefits seem like they are written in a foreign language. A global financial services company was facing this challenge, receiving increasing complaints from their employees regarding their employee benefits division.

SOLUTION
SBR had a hunch that the communication problems may be as much a problem of automation as it was complex communications, but we had to uncover actual data to support this hypothesis. We immediately conducted a workflow process review, watching the process from communicating with new and current employees. We also investigated a number of interconnected elements within the employee benefits divisions:

HELPING EMPLOYEES…

• Automation tools and their relative ease of use
• Training models and programs
• Call guide standards and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
• Workflow processes
• Written communications to employees including benefit information
• Average speed to answer calls, unanswered calls and dropped calls

This analysis quickly showed that our hunch was correct. Despite heavy automation systems, 85% of the department’s activities were manual, requiring laborious entry of data that created a backlog in handling benefit needs. Because of this, the company had no ability to decipher trends and staff accordingly.

SBR designed a new workflow system that included a simplified method of automating many of the manual functions, revising communications (including simplifying benefits “jargon”) and tracking results to course-correct as needed.

RESULTS
Armed with factual information and raw data regarding the department’s staffing and automation needs, the company was able to shift the way in which their employees understood and made decisions regarding their benefit options, reducing complaints and increasing satisfaction rates.