This year presents a new reason to take a second look at how digital postcards improve the open enrollment process. The disruption caused by the pandemic brought an end to in-person enrollment meetings and benefits-onboarding presentations for HR and benefits providers. Workforces are virtual and dispersed and access to centralized benefits information is more critical than ever. Enter the digital postcard, a favorite of Flimp clients for dispersing open enrollment information.
In order to transition to digital postcards during this year’s open enrollment, a few small adjustments should be considered. First, the postcard should be reimagined as if it was a virtual benefits fair. It can take the place of an in-person benefits fair and showcase the many plan options available to employees. Secondly, the postcard should be the “hub” employees refer to where they can find an overview video, benefit guide, enrollment portal, or even a decision-support tool like our PLANselect or BENEFITchoice offerings.
Why the Digital Postcard Works
Ease of distribution:
You can share digital postcards via email, text, social media, chat, etc. They can also be accessed from QR codes on physical breakroom posters, or in mailed benefits fliers. This is particularly valuable to those who don’t have a company email address but do have access to a smartphone. They’re also great for sharing benefits information with non-employees that may be decision makers for benefits in the household.
Ease of updates:
Flimp’s document hosting makes updating and replacing content on a digital postcard seamless. With changes happening so quickly this year, this feature is critical to keep everyone, literally, on the same page with the very latest benefits details, deadlines and changes. The postcard link remains the same, so there’s no need to resend emails or texts when information is added or changed. You can simply update the postcard in the hosted environment and, rest assured, your employees have the most up-to-date information.
Customizable:
Each postcard can be updated to match branding guidelines and needs of the organization. If you know your teams struggle with retaining benefits information, an overview video can autoplay to catch their attention. If you know they need help choosing the right plan, put the benefits decision-support tool front and center with links to other resources. This is particularly important when companies swap out existing plans with new choices, as many are this year. Providing additional information sources alongside informative, compelling video is what makes digital postcards so successful for employee engagement.
Repeatable:
Benefits vary from state to state and for full-time and part-time employees. Companies with employees in multiple states need to communicate different sets of benefits or tax information to these different audiences. It’s simple to quickly recreate digital postcards with slight variations for plan information, relevant document links and a unique trackable URL. Organizing, customizing and distributing all of this information in the short open enrollment period is an annual struggle. Adding a pandemic to the mix means HR professionals have even less time to customize all this content. It can help ease the communications burden to have a digital postcard that can be customized and replicated so easily.
Measurable:
You can track and measure engagement for each regional office or group (part time/full time) in your workforce. Digital postcards receive unique URLs allowing for extensive and detailed analytics reports. Our reporting capabilities include the number of views a digital postcard receives, links clicked, minutes of videos watched, viewer’s location and the type of device they’re using to access the postcard. These results can help HR managers and benefits providers better understand how workers engage with their communication efforts and where they can make improvements.
As we enter open enrollment 2020, consider how you’ll share communications with your employees. How will you customize your content and ensure the right information gets to the right people so they can take advantage of the valuable benefits you offer and make the best decisions? How will you break through the noise and grab their attention when there are so many distractions? Will you measure your engagement and how? The digital postcard may not be the only answer but, with engagement rates over 70 percent (and trending even higher in 2020 so far), it’s a great place to start your planning.