Earlier this week, a couple of friends and I were talking about marketing and sales delivery. Someone said, "Amazon is the Sears catalog of the 21st century" and we proceeded to draw parallels. Both expedite selection, purchase, payment and delivery of many products. During the 20th century, Sears became a behemoth, with brick-and-mortar stores in urban and suburban locations and a catalog for people in more remote locations. This resulted in a company that could be seen as a combination of today's Amazon and Walmart.
During the discussion, my mind drifted toward voluntary employee benefits. As my friends debated why Sears gradually dwindled into obscurity, I wondered: Is the process we offer employees more like the Sears catalog or the Amazon home page? Advances are clearly moving us towards an Amazon-like user experience. But there's a problem.
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Even though we have made the process easier and are delivering benefit choices through digital media, surveys of employees continue to show dissatisfaction. Employees dislike the process of benefit enrollment and voluntary enrollment tends to be a prominent contributor to this. Employees want to be better informed about their choices, but they do not seem to want to spend more time learning from the information we provide.
How can we address this?
Let's begin with terminology. I think the distinction between employer-provided and voluntary benefits is a vestige of the past. The distribution distinction is all but forgotten in today's market. Benefits are nearly always arranged and delivered via consultants (or specialists they sub-contract). Let's eliminate this unnecessary distinction — and the confusing terminology that goes with it.
Second, products should be organized under major headings, such as health, income, life, and lifestyle. Each should have subheadings, but the word "supplemental" immediately makes the employee wonder, what does it supplement and why? Instead, try terms like "focused coverage health products."
Let's return to Amazon. They would use phrases like "most employees who participate in a benefit plan also purchase one or more of these focused benefits…" They would offer reviews written by employees with similar plans and package the benefit options with info about the insurer or product manufacturer, including additional products that might be available. They would certainly make it simple to continue the prior year's elections, just as they make it easy for me to purchase a consumer product again. They would also highlight any updates to make it easy for customers to understand what has changed since the previous year.
Read more: The advantages of pairing voluntary benefits
Let's celebrate the fact that benefit admin and enrollment programs have been getting better at improving the employee's customer experience. We are at least at the Sears catalog level, but clearly, we need to update the communication and enrollment process by updating our terms of engagement. After all, employees are looking for Amazon level experience — and beyond.
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