The focus of voluntary enrollment participation has traditionally been driven by a sales approach (as distinguished from a marketing approach). Think about it. The primary method of distributing voluntary benefits is the enrollment process, and the enrollment process, whether it is described as "educational" or "low pressure," is one where the desired result is a sale. Whether enrollments are facilitated in personal meetings, Webinars, call centers or Web-based applications, there has never been much attention paid to differentiating the menu of available products or the messaging about the products at the individual enrollment level.
Today it's time to think of marketing approaches to supplement these sales approaches. Benefit managers no longer view voluntary benefits as requiring a "one size fits all" design. This is consistent with the increasing diversity of employees, whether this diversity is based on age, gender, ethnicity, lifestyle, culture, and so on. This is behind the increasing complexity of voluntary product packages and the prevalence of nontraditional products such as ID theft, legal services, discount packages, employee assistance and mental health plans, etc.
Put all this together and our challenge becomes changing perspectives from voluntary benefits as a product into voluntary benefits as a marketing approach. How do we do this?
Let's consider the employer. Today's employers want to be enablers of benefits that will satisfy an increasingly diverse employee population rather than providers of benefits. Viewing employers as a conduit to meet employees' needs for benefits and services is the key to the perspective of voluntary benefits as mass marketed benefit products.
The traditional approach to the employer has been product and service centered: let us bring in products you do not want to pay for that will have little to no administrative impact and will make your employees happy. This is a classic product sale approach. Instead, consider approaching employers from a marketing perspective let us create a benefits program that will satisfy your diverse employees, along with communication and delivery processes to support the program. This approach will allow for diverse products, multiple methods of communicating and enrolling (which is not necessarily tied to a traditional "once a year" benefit enrollment cycle).
Then consider employee perspectives. Employees generally have a positive view of benefits. As Sun Life has pointed out, "Employees value their total benefits offering more than cash - even in this volatile economic environment." Employees who consider voluntary benefits to be their personal benefits will seek products that offer simple purchase and payment processes, good value relative to personally purchased products, portability (that they really plan to exercise for the right reasons), and methods to update their coverage as their needs evolve.
Build on the transition of the employee into a customer and the employer's interest in satisfying their diverse employee pool via enabled benefits rather than provided benefits. Use marketing techniques to create voluntary benefit packages where the result of enrollment is a customer and not just an enrollment unit.
Marty Traynor is vice president of voluntary benefits at Mutual of Omaha. He can be reached at marty.traynor@mutualofomaha.com.
