Contents

Guiding Good Choices

Quick Poll – Review

April/May Quick Poll – Vote

Further Reading

Contact Information

NIHP Home

Guiding good choices
— Excellent communications help employees make sound
healthcare decisions

Face it — signing up for healthcare benefits can be a complex proposition for workers. Enrollment time can trigger insecurity, uncertainty, and indecision. Employees need help, and you’re in the driver’s seat. A wrong turn can hinder productivity, stimulate counterproductive water-cooler conversations, increase staff workload, and decrease participant satisfaction.

Take time up front to create clear communications objectives, strategies, and tactics. It will save you time, money, and chaos in the long run.

Want to improve your next communications plan? Here is a list of ten helpful tips:

• Minimize questions and uncertainty by conducting an employee focus group. This approach can help isolate and correct unclear messages, identify confusing lingo and acronyms, and educate a core group of your audience.



• Hold in-person meetings to allow for questions-and-answers and encourage buy-in. Try to anticipate questions and concerns ahead of time and prepare answers, if possible. If speakers get stymied, keep track of unanswered questions and promise a prompt response.



• Be prepared to answer, "What has changed?" as well as WIFM (what’s in it for me?), and the ever-present, "Why?"



• Don’t dawdle, but provide relevant background information up front. Understanding big-picture healthcare issues — regional, national, even global — helps set the stage for more specific company messages.



• Tell the truth using simple language. Use short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs. Include pictures, charts, graphs, and bullet points to help tell the message. And avoid legal jargon if at all possible.



• Mix it up and make it fast. Consider using multiple presenters to engage your audience and build credibility with more onsite experts. Keep your entire presentation less than an hour long.



• Define next steps. As clearly as possible, let employees know what they are supposed to do and by when. Simple checklists provide a basic organizational tool employees may find helpful.



• Remember ESL issues. More and more employees consider English their second language. This is not a time for them to misread or misunderstand.



• Save open-enrollment packets or printed handouts until the end of the presentation or mail them home. This helps employees resist the temptation to read ahead during presentations and encourages them to share the information with their families.



• Use online resources to reinforce your messages, stimulate involvement, and provide an alternative medium — one that employees can access whenever they choose.

Lastly, enlist the help of your management team – perhaps the most important link in your communications success. Make sure they understand the health plan’s ins and outs by teaching them before general meetings. NIHP can provide custom training sessions to help these important communicators, formulate materials for your employees, or review packets to ensure accuracy.

Whether you’re a small or large employer, chances are you can improve your next enrollment season. Let us know what we can do to help!

A Quick Review of Last Issue's "Quick Poll"

April/May Quick Poll – Vote

Further Reading

Communicating CDHPs to Unions

Business Insurance, February 25, 2008.

Having good relationships with workers along with effective communication strategies are critical for the successful introduction of new health benefit plans. Sharing economic and industry results is important so that the unions understand the business environment in which the company operates. In addition, emphasizing the financial benefits of the change may help overcome any resistance to the plans.

Now Hear This

HR Magazine, June 2006.

Although booklets and packets are useful tools for informing employees about health coverage options at open enrollment, oral presentations can sometimes be the most effective method of explaining benefits. The shaping of benefit messages to be conveyed through oral presentations is a very different exercise compared to the preparation of written materials.

Writing for Open Enrollment

HR Magazine, June 2006.

Benefits enrollment information works best for employees if it is presented in a manner that is clear, straightforward, and authoritative. If it is not, enrollment may be hampered, organizations can lose time and productivity, and there may be the potential of an adverse effect on morale.

For more information contact us at:
(800) 723-0202 or NIHPCustomerService@fhn.org

1006 W. Stephenson St., Freeport, IL 61032

Add your address to this mailing list
Remove your address from this mailing list
Make a suggestion for future content or provide feedback on this issue