Virtual Benefits Fair Platform

It’s no secret that providing Employee Benefits for healthcare & insurance organizations is becoming progressively competitive. Customers keep demanding a better overall experience & favorable pricing as more players enter the foray. As part of that “experience”, companies expect benefits providers to remain highly engaged with their employees by delivering on-site training. This becomes a big challenge especially for providers looking to scale. Although training and education is an essential part of any benefits business, they also represent a massive cost. When small providers look at their finance sheets, they find travel associated with sending staff for on-site training is a major expense that keeps ballooning over time. When you add the time, effort & resources required to deliver these sessions, providers start noticing a huge dent in profit & growth. In our primary research, one benefits provider shared with us that they attended over 150 on-site benefits fairs for their stakeholders last year and attended another 108 webinars. Minimizing costs on such endeavors was their number one priority. So, how can benefits providers tackle this issue? An innovative solution called “Virtual Benefit Fairs” is taking a flight to address these problems.

What is a Virtual Benefits Fair?

Virtual Benefits Fairs are branded online events that providers use to streamline their customer education. They run the entire year and act as a centralized educational center. This online platform enables providers to invite employees to an online space where they can learn about various programs using videos, presentations & pre-recorded webinars. Moreover, benefits providers can advertise “live days” where their representatives can be available online to take questions from employees through chat tools & live webinars. Let’s take a look at the 4 reasons why providers prefer a Virtual Benefits Fair:

1. Cost Reduction & Convenience

A Virtual Benefits Fair reduces the need for providers to regularly commute to conduct training. They can invite customers to one online platform where their representatives can be available from the office to provide support via chat and live webinars.  This translates to relaxed schedules and lower travel expenses. Of course, employers will still insist on-site training throughout the year but with a Virtual Benefits Fair in the equation, providers can work with employers to reduce the number of physical sessions and aim at a hybrid model where the virtual component takes some of the workload off.  

2. Great User Experience for Customers

It’s not just the providers that benefit from the platform; customers prefer them too. With online benefits fairs, employees also don’t have to commute to a physical venue or spend an entire day in on-site training. The online nature of the platform, allows them to access the information they need and ask questions from the comfort of their home/office and from any device. Moreover, online benefits software is usually very easy to use. Depending on the vendor, they can provide visually intuitive experiences that require very low learning curves and easy navigation. Virtual event platforms now use cutting-edge technology to allow attendees to access these online events with nothing but a browser. These online events help deliver “on-demand” education which means attendees have more control of their learning experience and can focus on information that concerns them. Rather than following a fixed schedule of a training clinic that may or may not be relevant to them, attendees can save time by choosing the videos they wish to watch, the collateral they want to save and the representatives they want to connect with.

3. Ability to Accommodate Multiple Clients in one go

The process of delivering the same benefits training & material to multiple clients (and their employees) is extremely redundant. Virtual Benefits Fairs aims to address that by enabling you to cater to all your clients at one time and in one space. There are several features that help with reducing needless repetition. For example, providers can upload all the relevant material to the virtual platform once and then invite employees from various companies on the same platform to educate them simultaneously. Moreover, online Benefits Fairs typically have a group chat room facility that helps representatives to answer frequently asked questions for all logged-in users to see. Similarly, training can be packaged as pre-recorded webinars and uploaded to a video repository for customers to consume all year round. This reduces the overall effort spent in training and makes already prepared content more reusable.

4. Measurable Engagement & Results

With a congested travel schedule and constant stream of training to deliver, providers are so focused on execution, that a strategic analysis of their content and delivery methods take a backseat in priority. Moreover, it’s just hard to measure how engaging sales material and training are in a physical setting. With a Virtual Benefits Fairs, on the other hand, providers can measure performance through detailed user behavior reports. These are used to reveal attendance trends, content items that were downloaded the most, satisfaction surveys and audience engagement during each webinar/chat session. These metrics allow businesses to re-assess their sales material & training curriculum and improve them over time. Furthermore, these engagement metrics can also be shared with clients themselves to prove the value delivered to their employees.

Concluding Thoughts

As costs and competition continue to soar in the benefits industry, we can expect an increasing preference for online customer education. Virtual event platforms inevitably will become an essential part of the training strategy for benefits providers. Furthermore, this reliance on online benefits fairs will continue to rise as platform providers enhance their offerings to include features like integrations with LMS systems, advanced reporting & artificial intelligence. It’s time for providers to plan ahead and start looking at virtual event vendors that can cater to their specific needs.

ABOUT vFAIRS

At vFairs.com, we strive to build a top-class online event platform that will help event organizers make memorable connections with their target audience. We’re obsessed with taking out the hassle normally associated with physical events and leaving organizers and exhibitors to focus on what’s most important: engagement with the audience. Get in touch with an expert to learn more about vFairs here.

The best compensation packages always employ a holistic perspective of an employee’s welfare. Non-wage benefits, such as sick leaves, health insurance, retirement benefits, maternity/paternity leaves, etc form a significant aspect of compensation packages and are instrumental in retaining employees and securing top-notch talent. Interestingly, however, while employees place a premium on these benefits, there seems to be a sizable gap between the existence of such benefits and the employees’ awareness about them. Randstad found that only 48% of employees were fully aware of the benefits offered by their employers. Furthermore, only 40% stated that their employers made them aware of available benefits. Poring over copious amounts of verbiage concerning these benefits always feels cumbersome, and employees would rather just put it on the backburner for another day! HR, already burdened with process overhead, always finds itself struggling to keep employees updated with the latest benefits being offered.

Why it Matters

Familiarizing your employees with the range of benefits your company offers is crucial. According to the same report published by Randstad, 66% percent of workers agreed that a concrete benefits package was the most important determining factor when considering job offers. Naturally, working for a company that is dedicated to prioritizing its employee's well-being is very reassuring, which in turn boosts the employees’ motivation level manifold and allows them to develop a positive perception of the company’s culture and values. Here are some fool-proof strategies that your company can experiment with to educate employees about company benefits and actively engage with them in an attempt to develop richer insights on the matter.

1. Embrace the Digital!

In recent years, with the onslaught of technology, there has been a noticeable shift away from traditional modes of communication to the vast opportunities that the digital realm offers. In the workplace too, digital innovation has made great strides, with fully automated human resources management systems swiftly gaining traction among companies. A digital platform that serves as a centralized unit for managing employee records, which is accessible and user-friendly in equal measure, is becoming the most efficient means of storing and sharing important information, such as details of company benefits. Employees can access this information with the ease of a few clicks, without dragging themselves through the time-consuming hassle of first reaching out to HR, requesting for the relevant paperwork and then ultimately having only enough time to flippantly leaf through it once it’s finally in their possession! For the sheer ease and convenience that these digital management platforms have introduced, companies across the board have begun toying with the idea of embracing these technologies, which are now readily available in the market. AfterHire, a transformative employee onboarding and engagement platform, for example, helps consolidate key documents in one place, allowing employees to immediately gain access to these resources upon being hired.

2. Go Virtual!

Interactive virtual spaces that carry key resources for easy access, download and sharing are also emerging as an effective solution for such common HR dilemmas. Vfairs, a customizable software that allows companies to host amazing virtual events offers a Virtual Benefits Fair platform as one of its significant features. Through an interactive virtual platform that utilizes rich tools such as webinars, presentations, chat forums, and brochures, employees can be educated about company benefit plans. A virtual Q&A session afterward can help clarify the employees’ concerns. This Virtual Fair event can go on for an entire day, allowing a company's global workforce to log in at a time that suits them and consume this extremely important content on demand. Moreover, the benefits providers can also be made part of the fair at virtual booths where employees can chat with them in real-time to solve all their queries. This advanced solution is not only refreshingly exciting but is sure to immediately grab your employees’ attention.

3. Be Omnipresent!

Innovation and convention, however, can and should co-exist! The demographic profile of your workforce is likely to be wide and diverse. While the young blood in your company would have a clear predisposition for the deeply enticing world of social media, the elderly segment probably still clings tenaciously to relatively traditional modes of communication such as face-to-face sessions, paper-based guidebooks, or SMSes. Then there are some methods, such as email, that are widely used across all age groups. It’s therefore essential to maintain your presence across a wide variety of platforms to maximize the reach of your message. Get your creative juices flowing and never cease to ideate different strategies of communication. Perhaps schedule interactive presentations and informative workshops or get your upper management to start a dialogue about benefit programs with their respective teams! Go the whole nine yards; there’s no limit to what you can experiment with! Keep in mind, however, that no matter what medium you leverage, encouraging feedback is of chief importance. Be receptive to any queries, concerns or confusion that your employees might have and be sure to resolve them to the best of your ability.

4. Visuals Matter!

Whether you’re preparing a presentation, holding a session or sending an email, enrich and supplement your content with visuals. Gleaning information from endless pages of plain monochromatic text is mind-numbingly tedious! Pair your content with compelling visuals to captivate your employee’s attention. A research study concluded that people following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without any illustrations. Educating your employees about company benefits with the aid of attractive infographics, short engaging videos, eye-catching illustrations can go a long way in helping them assimilate and retain the information you’re presenting them with.

5. Share Success Stories!

Another effective and proven method for educating your employees about your company’s benefit programs is to encourage employees who have previously availed company benefits in times of need to share their successful experiences. This could be done through a face-to-face session with the rest of the employees, an impactful video or even a written testimonial!

Hearing personal stories of success doesn’t only inspire genuine interest but also stands as a testament to the legitimacy and effectiveness of the benefits on offer by the company and can thus secure an enduring interest in these programs.

6. Everyone Loves Incentives!

Integrating exciting incentives into your strategy to educate the employees about company benefits is yet another surefire way of gripping their attention. Even the modest lure of attractive goodies, free lunches, and gift vouchers amid the humdrum monotony of office work is sufficient to get them to tune in to what you have to say. Never underestimate the importance of freebies!

7. Simple Wins the Race!

No matter how much you’re bombarding your employees with information about company benefits, none of it would really register if the language you employ is inaccessible. The often incomprehensible jargon that companies use to reveal details about their rules and programs acts as one of the greatest disincentives for employees to want to learn more about them. Keeping the language easily digestible will not only encourage more employees to access documents concerning company benefits but will also enable them to understand and retain the information therein much better.

8. Keep it Constant! 

Most importantly, efforts to educate your employees about company benefits should be an unceasing, year-long activity. Informing them about company benefits only during onboarding or rolling out the yearly reminder via email and then expecting them to retain everything in the already overcrowded, chaotic recesses of their mind is obviously not realistic. A task as crucial as this should thus constitute a permanent priority for HR. Perhaps mix it up over the year, add some creative flair and variety to the means you employ, but remember to keep it a constant effort! After all, as the saying goes, true education is a never-ending process! There’s clearly a number of ways through which you can get your employees interested in company benefits. The key perhaps is going beyond the boring and traditional to think of innovative ways that can generate genuine curiosity among your employees. Central to this endeavor, of course, is making a conscious effort to frame at least some part of your strategy within the digital context to benefit from the ease and range of methods it offers. Once you’ve tapped into the wealth of digital solutions in-store and unleashed the innovative thinker in you, you’re good to go!

ABOUT VFAIRS

At vFairs.com, we strive to build a top-class online event platform that will help event organizers make memorable connections with their target audience. We’re obsessed with taking out the hassle normally associated with physical events and leaving organizers and exhibitors to focus on what’s most important: engagement with the audience. Get in touch with an expert to learn more about vFairs here.