The University of Alaska’s System HR office has experienced some feedback from employees stating they understand neither the University’s healthcare benefits nor the open enrollment process. Some employees report having missed the open enrollment deadline and stated they did not realize open enrollment had happened for the year. This has created frustration for employees and the System HR office. The current options for delivery of this information rely extensively on email and to a lesser extent, mailbox flyers, home mailers and University website. Home mailers are disproportionately expensive for distribution of open enrollment and benefit information than other forms of communication.
Amy Lichtenwalter, Lockton’s Communications Practice leader, interviewed the HR directors from each campus to find out what had worked and not worked in previous communication campaigns. She also asked if any type of tracking system had ever been used to monitor open rates on emails and did the employee find the information to be helpful and understandable.
All the HR directors agreed that tracking this information would be vital to understanding the thoroughness of the delivery and the usefulness of the information to the employee.
We also discussed the University of Alaska’s employee demographics to better understand the mix of employees. The University has a diverse employee population with a range in ages from
18 to 70 creating the need to have multiple methods of reaching employees. Another key issue is the importance of consistent repeated messages in different formats from the University. The campus HR directors agreed that using Social Media strategies would create deeper penetration in an over-all communications strategy compared to a letter/flyer based strategy.
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Develop a small website specifically designed to disseminate employee benefit and wellness information. o This would allow Lockton to run the communications strategy turnkey and implement a tracking system.
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Regular benchmark tracking and reporting. o This will demonstrate which medium is being used by what percentage of the
University’s employee database. o Understand communications preferences will allow the University to increase the effectiveness of its communication tools and thereby adoption. o Benchmark tracking will also allow the University to identify employees who do not receive information digitally. This will allow the University to focus offline communication only to those who resist online communications, thereby reducing offline media costs.

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Call Center o Pre & Post-enrollment call center for employees to call and get questions answered on all healthcare plans and assistance with benefit questions
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Wallet Card o Provide the employees with all benefit plan vendor contact information (phone numbers and email addresses)