The Benefits of Benefits and Some Thoughts on What Total Compensation Statements Should Say in this Bad Economy

Benefits have always been important, but now they’re taking on added importance in this down economy. Total comp statements are going to have to be retooled to decrease emphasis on wealth creation and pump up the volume on the value of benefits. Never before has having medical insurance looked so sweet.

Now’s the time for HR to rethink how they present the value of employment. Sure, you want to tout what you’re providing, but that’s a little like trying to make a person feel good about a purchase after they’ve made it. I’d recommend a two-part strategy:

  1. For Current Employees. The people who work for you now need to hear about employment stability as much as they do about C&B facts and figures. If you want to get the most out of your total comp statement this year, tell them a few stories about what your company is doing to make it in this economy. Let employees know that you’re working for them and that you’re planning to be in the race for the long run.
  2. For Prospective Employees. Employees are nervous. Petrified. And when they’re not frozen in place, they’re jumpy. The best employees have lots of options — the job market hasn’t dried up for great talent. And the good ones are paying attention to what’s going on in the market. Telling your total compensation message to them is more important now than ever. They want to hear that you’re going to be doing great tings — and that you’re standing firm while lesser companies quake.

I’ve been around long enough to see lots of things come and go. We’ll get through this. In fact, if HR is clever, it will recognize this as a time to redefine what’s important at their company and emphasize those things that will sustain them. Touting the benefit of benefits and using the total compensation statement as a real communication device is the way to go in early 2009.

How Many of You Wrote Your Open Enrollment Materials in Plain English This Year?

I 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.)

New Employee Orientation Comic Book

What happens when you combine employee orientation and a great cartoonist? You get a visual representation of the day.

Austin Kleon is a talented visual artist who’s started a new job and suffered through new employee orientation:

Today I started my new job (!!!) as Electronic Publishing Specialist for UT’s Law school. (That’s a fancy title for web designer.) It’s a great gig, everybody in the department is awesome, and I’m genuinely excited about it.[...]

The only bummer today was sitting through UT’s 4 hour orientation session. Like I told my new bosses, it was “15 minutes of readin’, 4 hours of sittin’.” Luckily, they provided free stationary.

Here’s the first panel of what he drew. Click on over to see the whole set. There’s some real learning there. New employee orientation comic book anyone?

New Employee Orientation

Final Voting for My Bad Boss

My Bad Boss Logo

I wake up every day and give thanks that I’m my own boss. I’m not really cut out to “work for” the glowing icons of The Peter Principle. (Someday I’ll write a story about when one said “You’re no D***ie Sl***y,” referring to a consultant in another region, to one of my top-performing colleagues when she was talking to him about billing and selling the most work in an entire consulting region. Brutal and Stupid. Not a great combo.)

The final voting for My Bad Boss runs from August 14-21. Here’s the story that’s in the lead:

Cancer Can’t Stop This Boss
My story starts with me being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. I am in my early thirties and have not worked since March of this year. I also have three young children under the age of 8, and a wife who cannot work due to my condition. I think you get the idea.

In the industry I work in, disability benefits are available but only equal about one-half of what I normally would be making. These benefits are formulated from a day to day basis for days you have received no other compensation for. Needless to say, every day claimed is extremely important in the basic task of feeding my family and keeping the lights on.

I have been an employee for about 10 years and as such, I have built up some paid time off. I sent paperwork in to take some of my time off, to help pay the bills, but when the paycheck came, I was short on several days. This was compounded when I did not claim disability benefits on the days I thought I was being paid for. As an end result, I lost out on my vacation days AND DISABILITY BENEFITS. Talk about getting hit where it hurts.

My boss threw away the paperwork I sent in and then lied about ever receiving it knowing that filing a grievance for the time I should have received would take months if not years to resolve. Its hard enough just trying to stay alive, let alone trying to pull knifes out of not only my back, but the backs of my wife and children too.

Got anything to top that? And if you do, I will personally go and ninja kick your boss in the neck for you.

NB to HR: Make this right. There are the rules, and there’s what’s right. And if you don’t do anything else this year, GET YOUR PEOPLE TO SIGN UP FOR DISABILITY INSURANCE. Enough with the ridiculous training classes and quarterly meetings. Do something that matters. Get people to sign up for LTD. What are you waiting for? (To make this easy, within a week I’ll post a communication kit that you can use. Free.)

Help Employees Understand the Value of Their Benefits

Benefits are free.

Well, butterflies are free, but benefits are not. In fact, companies spend 43% of their payroll on benefits, on average. So, what looks “free” to employees isn’t free at all.

In a story called “Do Employees ‘Get’ Benefits — Not,” writer Susan Heathfield summarizes recent research by Charleton Consulting Group that says employees significantly undervalue their benefits:

Even more of a mystery than compensation, though, is the cost and the value of your benefits. According to a survey conducted by the Charlton Consulting Group and analyzed and reported in the HR Daily Advisor, employees “estimate the cost of benefits pay to be 30 percent or less over and above pay. In fact, according to government statistics, the average cost of benefits is nearly half again that … 43 percent of pay.”

Here’s what works:

  1. Tell them what they have. Seems simple, but just writing out a list on a mimeographed piece of paper or burying information five clicks deep on your website doesn’t count toward “telling them.”
  2. Write in plain English. Okay, if you’re in Denmark, write in Danish, but make it a plain Danish. Fancy words and legalese don’t work. Write like you talk, unless you happen to be Sir Lionel Barrymore, in which case you can write Benefits: The Shakespearean Sonnet.
  3. Don’t lead with “look at all we’re paying for you.” Kids hate this one. I know mine do. “Look at all I do for you” is annoying at best, and cloying at worst. Sure, you want employees to be able to understand how much money it takes to fund benefits, but leading with that is a sure-fire way to get them to stomp on your total compensation statement.
  4. Make clear and simple pictures of what you invest versus your competition. Too many times employees leave for “a dollar more an hour” only to discover that they’re giving up a LOT more. People think in pictures in their heads. Know that. (I wish I could draw a picture right here.)
  5. Tell them more than once. Yes, it’s great to tell employees about their benefits at orientation and then again at open enrollment. But that’s not enough. The way to reinforce the value of benefits is to communicate regularly about benefits. Maybe just one at a time would do. How about pushing information about your long-term disability insurance? That’s one that often takes a small investment by the employee but can be highly valued and essential if they are ever injured. Make your communication come in bite-sized pieces and frequently.

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