Workforce:
~3,500 worldwide,
3,000 benefits eligible
Industry: Healthcare
Broker: McGriff Insurance Services, San Jose office
The Challenge
Each year, El Camino Health hosts on-site benefits fairs for open enrollment (OE) at both of their hospital campuses. Like many organizations, the pandemic forced them to seek out a new way to deliver critical benefits information to their 3,000+ benefits-eligible employees in a virtual environment.
And, as it was already late summer, they were short on time and needed a solution that could be set up and deployed quickly as OE was scheduled to start the last week of October.
El Camino Health was also interested in an “evergreen,” easy-to-navigate, centralized hub to organize all their benefits materials that their employees could access anytime they had questions about their benefits.
Highlights:
El Camino Health’s Virtual Benefits Showcase was a hit with employees both during and after open enrollment.
Overall
Dates: 10/26/20 – 5/31/21
Views: 11,591
Clicks: 6,721
During OE
Dates: 10/26 – 11/14/20
Views: 8,110
Clicks: 5,099
After OE
Dates: 11/15/20 – 5/31/21
Views: 3,481
Clicks: 1,622
The Solution
McGriff Insurance Services, El Camino Health’s benefits broker, assessed their client’s needs, budget and other key factors like ease of implementation for the HR team and ease of use for employees. In the end, McGriff recommended a Virtual Benefits Showcase from Flimp.
What’s a Virtual Benefits Showcase?
An interactive benefits microsite that gives employees on-demand access to everything they need to know about their benefits programs from anywhere, on any device.
El Camino Health’s Showcase features an intro video with messages from the CEO and CHRO highlighting changes for the new plan year, their benefits guide, and materials from each of their providers including videos, plan summaries, rate schedules, enrollment forms/portals, mobile apps, user guides and contact information. It also contains sections for employee-assistance programs, wellness initiatives, voluntary benefits, time off, leaves of absence, charitable donations and retirement plans.
While we can’t show their Showcase publicly due to confidentiality reasons, you can view an example of a generic Showcase here.
El Camino Health was able to leverage Flimp’s HR Benefits Video Library through the license held by their broker, McGriff. So, as an added bonus, El Camino Health could place explainer videos throughout the site to drive education and engagement.
According to Iliana Felix, Account Executive at McGriff, “Flimp was very flexible in helping us manage the schedule and organize the content to meet our needs. We asked for customization and they developed quick resolutions to our requests.” She continued, “Our project manager was terrific to work with. She was extremely knowledgeable and brought great ideas to the table when we weren’t sure how to proceed. Her can-do attitude made the overall experience very positive.”
One popular feature of the benefits fair El Camino Health did not think would be possible in a virtual environment was a raffle. The raffle was a key factor in engaging employees from booth to booth and driving attendance due to the amazing prizes offered (think Airbnb gift cards).
Fortunately, Flimp’s Showcase makes it easy to create simple forms that can be used for raffle entries. As usual, it successfully drew employees to the site and prompted 800+ entries, roughly the same as their in-person events.
To promote the Showcase, the HR team followed Flimp’s best practices by advertising it several times before, during and after OE. They included notes in their OE guide and home mailer and included weekly features in their internal newsletter.
The Results
Initially, the Showcase was used for their OE period from October 26 to November 13, 2020 for the 2021 plan year. After the very successful deployment during OE, McGriff (and Flimp) helped El Camino Health modify the Showcase to serve their benefits-education needs for
year-round new-hire orientation.
The Showcase was a hit across the board. Employees were delighted that they could easily find what they needed to make informed decisions on their benefits without having to attend meetings. And, given they could conveniently access the Showcase from any device, it was easy to share the information with their families, too. In fact, the tracking report shows that 14% of the views during OE came from mobile devices.
While the tracking report revealed that the majority of views took place during OE, interestingly, employees continued to visit the site in the months that followed. Overall, the site has been viewed about 11,600 times, with just over 8,000 views during OE. And, with so much helpful content in their Showcase, it’s not surprising that it received just over 5,000 clicks during OE and 6,700 total clicks as of the end of May 2021. This level of engagement for a first-time Showcase is very impressive.
CHRO Kathryn Fisk pointed out that employees saved time because they could access the site from work or home without having to attend a benefit fair and/or schedule a special appointment with the help desk. It also saved time and money for El Camino Health because they didn’t need to provide help-desk staff at both campuses for the entire week.
The time saved for the HR staff was invaluable as well. They spent less time on the phone by referring most employee questions to the Showcase site and, therefore, could spend more time dealing with more urgent HR concerns.
“In addition to successfully replacing our in-person benefits fairs, our Virtual Benefits Showcase also provides a central hub for all our benefits materials that employees can access anytime throughout the year,” Fisk observed. “It’s been very helpful for onboarding new employees, which was an unexpected boost to our ROI.”
As a result of their positive experience working with Flimp, El Camino Health is considering more new-hire communications and possibly implementing Flimp’s decision-support tool, PLANselect.
Testimonial:
“In addition to successfully replacing our in-person benefits fairs, our Virtual Benefits Showcase also provides a central hub for all our benefits materials that employees can access any time throughout the year. It’s also been helpful for onboarding new employees, which was an unexpected boost to our ROI.”
– Kathryn Fisk, CHRO
About El Camino Health
El Camino Health is a non-profit organization with fully accredited hospital campuses in Mountain View and Los Gatos, California. Their hospitals have served communities in the South San Francisco Bay Area for over 50 years. They strive to provide superlative care by focusing on patients’ needs, rather than on shareholders’ demands, and by incorporating the latest, proven medical technology and attracting the best medical staff and affiliated physicians. Both campuses have received numerous awards and honors for high-quality healthcare.
Related: A Template to Educate Employees on HDHPs/HSAs. Read it here →