Unlocking Employee Feedback, Part 2: Strategies For Soliciting Feedback

Here are three strategies for soliciting feedback from your employees about company benefits:

1. How much do they know about their benefits?
2. How much do they use them?
3. Do they like them?

There's a logical progression:

The more employees understand about their benefits, the more capable they are using them, and are subsequently more satisfied.

For example, an employee who knows that her health insurance offers free postnatal benefits such as nursing pumps and postpartum support will naturally be happier with the plan overall. This is win for the employee and the company because the benefits have already been paid for.

Here we'll briefly touch on these strategies, and at the end, share tips for constructing your surveys.

How much do they know about their benefits?

Testing employees' understanding validates that what you think they know about their benefits is what they know. Finding these gaps helps you know where to apply more education.

Here's an example from a survey Banzai conducted with 1,300 teachers nationwide:

We clearly showed that with respect to pensions (roughly 13% of teacher compensation), few teachers really understand them.¹

Furthermore, in follow-up conversations many teachers told us that they also didn't understand early-retirement options. Early retirement can be a blessing for both employees and districts, as it frees up space in short-term budget shortfalls, and releases teachers to pursue other passions earlier.

This is a clear example of how, if American districts can recognize the nature of a real educational problem, they can—relative to other intransigent problems in schools—trivially improve recruiting and retention.

Are they using their benefits?

You're probably already measuring enrollment, and that's great. But enrollment alone measures utilization crudely. Consider the suite of confidential services offered by an Employee Assistance Program (EAP). Much of what an EAP provides is personal and not at all within an employer's purview. And yet, the employer pays for the EAP.

While you need to be cautious to survey employees anonymously and optionally, it is perfectly appropriate and legal to ask them if they've used aspects of their EAP—it's the only way you'll know.

Sometimes you can settle knowledge and utilization questions at once. For example, if less than a majority of employees report that they have not used the company's vacation stipend, you can be confident they probably don't know anything about it.

Do they like their benefits?

Like I mentioned above, you probably have tools for measuring enrollment. But enrollment is quantitative, and you need qualitative feedback too—you need to know that what is used is actually liked. You want to know things like:

• Are out-of-pocket expenses easy to get reimbursed?
• Are you happy with the investment options offered by the 401k?
• Do you like lumping sick and vacation days together, or would you prefer they were separated?
• Were you able to use the corporate ski passes as much you would have wanted this season?

Tips For Preparing Your Surveys

Here's several rules-of-thumb to consider when designing your survey:

1. Come right out and ask. Keep your questions simple, short, and direct.
2. Don't hesitate to quiz them. When you really want to know what they understand about their benefits, quiz them, like in school. (e.g. "Can you explain the difference between the high deductible and low deductible health plan options?")
3. Help them reveal trade-offs. Questions like, "Are you happy with your pay?" are not particularly revealing. Rank choice questions, which force trade-offs the responder to make a trade-off, are better at revealing what they value most.
4. Give space for free-form answers. Giving employees a free, non-judgmental, open space for talking about a benefit is often the most helpful form of feedback. (And, occasionally, the least helpful.)
5. Favor anonymous responses. Not all corporate feedback should be anonymous, but in gathering benefit feedback, favor confidential and anonymous responses—you'll learn more.
6. Don't take it personal. You'll be surprised that most feedback is constructive and polite. Occasionally it isn't, but it is rarely personal. Don't fear feedback, embrace it.

Footnotes

1. Teacher Pension Blog, July 20, 2020, https://www.teacherpensions.org/blog/update-teacher-salaries-versus-benefits.