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How Many of You Wrote Your Open Enrollment Materials in Plain English This Year?
Oct 23I saw a really cool open enrollment kit a couple of weeks ago that was written in plain English. How cool is that? Material that can be as dry as toast spiced up with a some tangy language marmalade.
Don’t be afraid to talk to your employees about their benefits in language that they understand. If your materials were written in legalese or by a frustrated English major toss them out and start over. It doesn’t take that long to write in plan English, but it takes forever to decipher turbid English.
(And if your employees can’t read English I’d recommend writing in the language they do understand. Just a thought for the foreign audience of KnowHR.)
About the Author
Frank Roche
Frank started IFRACTAL over 7 years ago with Sarah Chambers. Together, they've created HR communications and HR software for some of the world's leading companies. Frank is also studying Flamenco guitar and origami.
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We have taken a strong position on drafting our employee compensation and benefit information in plain english. We use short sentences and common words. We did not however, dumb down the document. We simply say it in a way that “normal people” would discuss the matter at their kitchen table. We make it clear that there are important details that are in plan documents which are in fact, harder to read.
The payoff is that 87% of our workforce (of almost 90,000 people) rate our benefit plans as 4 or 5 on a 5 point scale (5 is good). Our survey vendor tells us that the score is at the 99th percentile of employee satisfaction.
People like to be treated as the grown ups they are, even while they acknowledge that they are ERISA lawyers.
JT, that’s a post in its own right. You have the magic sauce…if others wanted to examine best practices, that’s the model. Hey, how about creating a parallel award system to Best Places to Work, only just for the HR part? Baldrige has some elements of HR in their system. It would be interesting to have an award for HR practices where people who get 99th percentile ratings create the rules. Best Practices in Solid HR.