Posted by Lisa Hochgraf
Here's a sure way credit unions can get and keep smart employeees from larger competitors: do a good job of marketing your employee benefits to your staff.
As with most of my blog posts, this one was inspired by personal experience. CUES is a relatively small employer, having just over 50 on staff. But it beats the pants off my husband's Fortune 100 employer in terms of using benefits and the open enrollment process to win employee trust and loyalty.
Now I'm sure my husband's company spends plenty on benefits for employees and I'm grateful to have a health benefit. But last week my husband and I, pretty educated people, spent hours asking questions about the options being offered to us. After a couple of days of research, we figured out that we were not dealing with one health package, but five separate companies--one each for health care, prescriptions, durable medical goods, health savings account administration and HSA investment caretaking. We couldn't call one phone number and get answers and we couldn't talk to a real person in my husband's office--there isn't a benefits person at his location.
We know the benefits being offered are shrinking as companies pare them down to deal with increasing premium costs. Somehow that seems manageable. But untangling the offerings that were in place for us with multiple phone calls to call center environments certainly didn't build our loyalty or trust. Rather it made us think maybe they made it hard on purpose.
Now, compare that to CUES, where we meet to talk about benefits with our executives. We get a very clear summary of what's available, plus lots of supporting materials. And even when we need to call the actual companies providing the benefits for information, we can do so knowing that there's a benefits person on the CUES staff to help us out if we get lost in the jargon. (Three cheers for Kathy Wright!)
For this, I think CUES sees a boost in employee loyalty and trust. I know my company loyalty and trust gets a boost as a result. And, interestingly enough, a new CUES employee told me just today that she'd heard great things about the company before she even started.
The idea that CUs could better compete for employees by marketing their benefits was part of a Credit Union Management magazine article in July: "Give Good Benefits: Want to be named a top employer in your area, increase staff morale or reduce turnover? Many credit unions find offering an outstanding benefit package and bragging about it to employees and potential employees is the way to win their loyalty."
Interstingly, when I mentioned the concept of this post to my boss, CUES VP/Publications Mary Arnold, she said a speaker at CUES' recent CEO Network: A CUES Member Quorum had spoken on these very ideas. And he took it a step further, saying employers didn't have to have the absolute best benefit packages to make a very positive impression on employees.
"It's all in how your benefits are perceived," Jonathan Braddock told conference attendees, according to Mary's notes. Braddock is senior vice president of WHA Financial Services, Madison, Wis. "Make the best of what you have an make sure employees understand it."
You can do it!
