Too much corporate ‘noise’ is stopping employees from engaging with group protection policies, according to research from insurer Legal & General.
The research, released this morning, finds while two-thirds (66%) of employers claim more regular communication is the top focus to engage their employees on benefits in the next 12 months in Aon’s UK Benefits & Trends 2021 survey, too much corporate ‘noise’ right now is leading to the total opposite; acting as the main barrier to relevance and usage when it comes to group income protection and critical illness.
One in five (19%) of those that say they don’t find their critical illness policy relevant to their health, wealth and happiness, claim it was because they do not read all the company information, and there’s just too much to take in, with 17% saying the same for income protection and 14% who did not feel the employee assistance programme (EAP) product is relevant to their wellbeing.
When employees were asked what they think would help them recognise or understand the value of benefits like Income Protection, Critical Illness and EAPs, the top responses were if I were struggling with anxiety or stress (33%), if I saw the impact of a sudden loss of earnings on friends, family, colleagues (29%), if I needed help with a general health question (28%), if I needed help with a general legal question (27%), if it was communicated in a ‘real life’ way – using human stories (26%) and more regular communication to remind me it’s there (26%).
Commenting on the findings, Colin Fitzgerald, distribution director – group protection, Legal & General, (pictured) said: “In the last 12 months, as more people have been working remotely, most organisations have put employee communications front and centre. However, there is a fine balance between maintaining engagement and tipping the balance to overloading employees with too much information to the point they simply feel overwhelmed.
“Employee responses to our survey on what would help them better understand the relevance of benefits are telling – it’s all about ‘lived experience’. This is a wake-up call for our industry – we need to be communicating in a way that taps into this, using human stories packaged in short, snappy and engaging ways to better connect. And we need to use employee insights to better target communication in line with the interests and needs of different audiences in a company. In short, customised benefit and wellbeing communication, not ‘more’ communication, is now mission critical.”
