How To Create an Internal Health Support Comms Strategy [+ Sample Plan]

In recent years, employers around the world have stepped up to expand employee benefits, offer additional mental health and wellness support, and create a slew of other programs to help employees find work-life balance and achieve their physical and mental health goals. This marks a positive shift in overall HR trends – but employees can’t take advantage of the internal health support your company offers if they aren’t aware it exists or how to use it.

Healthcare literacy – the level to which employees understand their benefits – is a crucial element of internal communications strategy, and it’s closely tied with employee wellbeing. According to MetLife, three-quarters (76%) of employees who understood their benefits said they were happy and even more (82%) said they felt a greater sense of stability due to their benefits.

Effectively communicating the internal health supports your company offers, like many other areas of education, requires repetition and consistency. At companies with higher benefits utilization and better employee attitudes about health support and resources, HR teams are more likely to communicate throughout the year about different ways employees can work toward their health and wellness goals.

Creating an internal health support comms strategy

Many employers understand the importance of communicating about benefits around open enrollment time, and that is essential. However, to help employees truly understand and utilize the coverage and resources available, they need more than a few weeks of frantic emails and virtual info sessions. And, confining benefits communication to open enrollment often means that other types of supports and resources get little or no attention at all, save for a buried link on the company intranet.

Consider these questions when creating a communication strategy:

• What supports and resources do we offer that have low utilization rates?
• What supports and resources do we offer that directly address employee job satisfaction, engagement, and retention?
• What supports and resources do we offer that differentiate our company from competing employers?

Once you have a shortlist of offerings, you can begin to create a communication plan. Start by determining what channels you’ll use to communicate with your staff. Email and company intranet are common vehicles, but don’t stop there. Allow employees to opt-in to text message updates or, even better, consider the advantages of using an employee communication app to provide consistent, cohesive messaging to all employees (without getting mixed up with their friend group texts).

Hosting virtual or in-person meetings can also be effective, if they are held at numerous times so people can join when it’s convenient for them.

Timing of communication matters, too. You can’t expect great results from hosting a two-hour virtual info session in which you cover every single benefit offering, perk, and resource available to employees. It’s easier to manage – and to digest – when you highlight different supports at different times throughout the year. Many companies choose just one or two resources to highlight each month, and build a communication plan specific to those offerings, including manager awareness abd training, employee awareness, opportunities to ask questions, and information on how to take advantage of those particular resources.  

A yearly communication plan becomes even easier to create when you lean on pre-existing health observance calendars and global health days, and align your communications for relevant months, weeks, and days, according to the supports you offer. Additionally, you can highlight different offerings with each season, leading up to the period when they become most relevant.

Measuring the success of your communications

In some cases, companies can measure the success of their communications around internal health supports by monitoring utilization rates. However, those figures don’t tell the whole story. Perhaps a particular support is underutilized because it’s not relevant to a majority of employees, for instance.

In addition to tracking utilization, claims costs, and other data that stems from usage, survey employees about the supports and resources you offer. Ask their opinions on what they find relevant, and what types of resources they would like that you may not currently offer.

Conducting employee feedback surveys on a quarterly basis is another way to help keep benefits and other supports top of mind, and track employees’ satisfaction with your offerings over time – both of which provide valuable insight as you make choices about which benefits to expand, which to shutter, and what you need to add on.

Empowering employees through effective communication

If your employees don't know about the awesome internal health supports and resources you offer, they can't use them. You need a strategy and a plan to make sure everyone's clued in on what's available and how to make the most of it. But understanding benefits isn't just about ticking a box – it's about helping people feel happy and secure. That relies on year-round communication, not just during open enrollment.

Download our Sample Communication Plan (sneak preview below!) to use as a guide for creating your company’s unique, relevant calendar of internal health support and resource communication. Be sure to align all your communications with your company culture, while maximizing the educational component that helps employees make the most of the resources available to them.

Once you roll out your communication plan, it’s crucial to keep checking in with your team. Track how they're using the benefits and ask them what they want. Use their feedback to make strategic adjustments to your benefit and support offerings as well as your communication strategy, with the ultimate goal of better serving employees’ evolving needs and preferences.