Solving the Employee Communication Puzzle: Tips for Better Engagement

Remember the frustration you felt staring at a half-completed jigsaw puzzle? It was missing a few crucial pieces and all you had was a frustratingly incomplete picture.

Many times, that’s the reality for HR and employee communication about benefits. You pour everything you’ve got into crafting the perfect total compensation package, but when it comes to communicating its value to your employees, you can’t get them to see the big picture—much less the details. And that hurts engagement.

Best Practices for Employee Communication: An HR Guide for Employee Engagement 

Overcoming employee communication challenges is no easy task. It never has been. Between evolving technologies, multi-generational employees, remote staff, and nonstop connectivity, capturing employees’ attention requires… finesse. 

We know that delivering engaging and informative benefits communications year-round works. It leads to more invested teams that utilize their benefits and feel valued at work. But when the communications from HR are lackluster, teams disengage, benefits utilization goes down, and some of what makes up a compensation package is, for a lack of a better term, wasted. Not exactly what you envisioned.  

While every organization faces unique challenges, there are some proven techniques to cut through the noise and connect with employees. 

Tips for Improving Employee Communication 

• Go Visual: Simplify text-heavy flyers and booklets about policy changes or other complex info with infographics, videos, and other custom graphics. Research shows that at least 65% of the population are visual learners. And that makes sense. Our visual cortex processes information faster than reading words. Visuals help busy employees quickly grasp complicated topics. 
• Use Multi-Channel Strategies: Copying and pasting the same stale messages onto an intranet post or email won’t change behaviors. Research by Gartner shows that integrated campaigns that approach topics from multiple angles across four or more channels are 300% more effective than single or dual-channel campaigns. 
• Optimize for Mobile: With 70% of digital media time spent on smartphones, ensuring your communication is mobile-friendly is a must. Prioritize critical information needed anytime, anywhere. Crisp emails, text alerts, sleek microsites—accessibility drives utilization. 
• Focus on Clarity: At its core, communication is about helping people understand. Corporate jargon hinders rather than helps. And gobbledygook is expensive. Complex messaging costs companies $98 billion a year, according to Siegel+Gale. Clear communications help your employees understand the practical implications and act on calls-to-action. 
• Continually Evaluate and Improve: Communication is a two-way street. Survey employees for feedback, check metrics on utilization and comprehension, and adjust strategies based on results. Employees who feel heard are 4.6x more likely to do their best work. Continuing to refine things ensures your efforts stay effective over the long term. 

The harsh reality is that even the best-laid communication plans can go awry without guidance from communications and marketing professionals. Key messages get buried in jargon and dense walls of text—to say nothing about neglecting design’s role in comprehension—and inevitably employee engagement goes down. 

In the end, juggling employee benefits communications with your other responsibilities is like wrangling a herd of kittens—it might sound fun for a bit, but without professionals, it’s just chaotic, messy, and guaranteed to leave you exhausted. 

Leveraging Strategic Partners: Best Practices for Internal Communication 

At bswift, we understand the struggle. And that’s why we created the bswift Communication Agency.  

We’re not here to judge your old benefits communications campaigns. (Those posters you made on Canva were… a good start!). You understand where your team’s strengths are and when to lean on partners. 

But it’s time to upend that fragmented jigsaw puzzle and paint a masterpiece of employee communication and engagement. Imagine this: 

• Employees are crystal clear on their benefits: They understand their benefits, navigate retirement plans, and make informed choices about wellbeing and finances. With clear total compensation statements, they grasp the full value of their benefits packages. Instead of a bureaucratic obstacle course, open enrollment becomes a tour of the possibilities. 

• Employee engagement soars: They participate in programs, utilize resources, and feel connected to their employer. Morale and productivity climb, and your company culture becomes the envy of the industry. 
• You reclaim your HR superpowers: Freed from the communication trenches, you can focus on what you do best: strategizing, inspiring, and leading. You can reclaim that much-needed bandwidth for those high-impact initiatives you’re so great at.  

You can free yourself from that DIY jigsaw puzzle when you partner with internal communications experts. As an award-winning dedicated in-house agency, bswift Communication Agency provides ongoing campaign management and support, refining your communications strategy year after year. 

We leverage storytelling, design, data, and empathy to craft clear, captivating messages that resonate with employees, regardless of their background. Compelling visuals, engaging narratives, and strategic omnichannel campaigns reach them where they are. 

But don’t just take our word for it. Dive into our case studies and see how we’ve helped organizations of all sizes transform their employee communication from loose jigsaw puzzles to stunning masterpieces.  

If you’re ready to make an impact on employee engagement, benefits utilization, and your workforce’s overall satisfaction, then the bswift Communication Agency might be just what you need.