ANDREA TARRELL
Marketing Coordinator

Your time (and the time to create benefits communication) is precious.  As with all resources in short supply, the secret to not running out is...recycling!

Yes, recycling.  Recycling benefits and wellness communication materials is an underappreciated art that can make a huge difference for the HR professional charged with delivering these messages.  Not only is it a time saver, but recycling content can help make your messages "stick" better with employees by repeating the messages that are most important.

Go through your outbox

HR professionals are constantly called on to answer questions about plan design and benefits offerings.  If email is your go-to mode of communication, you’ve likely typed out the answers to many of your organization’s most common questions already.  With a little reformatting, you can turn these emails into an FAQ or even a few standalone flyers or blogs to include in your benefits communication schedule.

Powerpoints are the holy grail of recycled benefits communications

Presentations, webinars, lunch n’ learns and the like take a lot of work to create.  Milk these for all they’re worth, whether it’s something you or someone else put together. 

Take the research you did or any notes you took and look for ways to break it up into smaller chunks you can reuse in different ways – these can be reincarnated as articles, short blogs, fact sheets to post in the breakroom, etc.  [We do this all the time with our HNI University workshop content!]  Record an audio version of a chunk of a presentation and you’ve got yourself a podcast.

Put a new face on an old message

If you’re drilling the same message over and over again, try showing things from different people’s perspectives.   Recruit an employee to tell their benefits/wellness story in the first person.  Which is more compelling:

a) Getting routine screenings can save lives!

b)  “When Kim Crossley went for a routine eye test, all she was thinking about was what style of glasses to get. Instead, within hours of her appointment, the seemingly-healthy 23-year-old was lying on an operating table with surgeons battling to remove a brain tumour and save her life…”(Want to know the end of the story?  I won’t leave you hanging, read on here.)

You might be surprised at how willing people in your company are to tell their stories – but only if you ask them!

Become a spin master

Most wellness messages really are nothing new.  We all know we should eat healthy, exercise, get our health screenings done on schedule, yada yada, so on and so forth.  Well, if you just keeping saying that, you’re going to get tuned out. “Spinning” content in a fresh way is essential.  If you can pull off fresh and funny, even better!

No offense meant to the "old guys" out there, but I found this video promoting prostate cancer screenings pretty funny and unique:

Most people have heard messages about getting regular screenings over and over again.  It takes a fun and different approach to break through and get people's attention.

How do your wellness and benefits communication stack up?

Our recent HNI University workshop, Branding Benefits [& Why Traditional Benefits Communication Falls Flat], talked about some of the best practices for benefits and wellness communication.  As a follow up to this event, during the month of July we're offering a free internal communications assessment.  Sign up to see how you stack up in this area!

Related Posts:

Social Wellness Models: A new Way to Inspire Employees to Get Healthy

Is Social Media the New Frontier of Benefits Communication?

5 Tips to Keep Benefits Communication Flowing Year Round

Branding Benefits: How Do Your Employees View Your Plan?