5 Ways to Brand Employee Benefits

August 31, 2021

Business leaders are commonly frustrated that their employees don't seem to understand the investment the company makes in health insurance and other employee benefits. If you want to improve appreciation and engagement in your company employee benefits, brand them.

“A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers” (American Marketing Association). In branding, marketing, advertising, and sales, companies seek to create a positive association with their product or service. Similarly, companies typically want to associate their employee benefits with a positive reason to join or stay with their company, 'selling' them on reasons to work there.

What better way to link arms and build a grassroots campaign than to leverage the internal marketing team. Marketing teams can supercharge communications by:

• Putting language and content into the "voice" of the culture of the organization. Intentional or unintentional, every company culture has a voice, or tone it sets in communication. Match that tone to connect back to what is familiar. 
• Connecting to mission, vision, core values. The "why" of any organization is rooted here. Many companies mistakenly use these only as external facing when the most important ambassadors are internal. Link the "why" of employee benefits with the mission objectives.
• Naming (productize) the benefits offering as a package consistent with external marketing. Use images, logos, and taglines that draw people to engage and are already associated with the company brand.
• Using various mediums to communicate. Advertisers don't sell on 1 channel, and communicating benefits shouldn't either. Pick the top 2-3 ways the company already communicates with employees so the information hits where the employee is rather than trying to pull them to one place.
• Communicating - communicating - communicating. The core of marketing and branding is communication. There's a reason advertisers repeat messages. Don't worry about being a broken record. Repetition builds awareness.
  
  

Get creative, have fun, and engage the employees to improve their experience. If leaders desire to build awareness, trust and appreciation, make it about the employees.