Law firm Travers Smith uses a range of communication methods to promote its group protection benefits to its workforce and improve how much these are valued.
The organisation, which employs 800 employees based in London, provides its workforce with core levels of employer-funded critical illness insurance, group income protection cover and life assurance. Through a salary sacrifice arrangement, employees can opt to purchase top-up private medical insurance (PMI) for themselves and for their partners or spouses. Its critical illness cover also includes a second medical opinion service and offers some cover if an employee’s child becomes critically ill.
It ensures staff understand and value their protection benefits through access to its online benefits platform, provided by Benifex. For each insurance there is a dedicated page of information on the platform, where staff can read up on the schemes to understand what benefit coverage is provided and what each costs. Cost information is also displayed on a total reward statement summary.
Jackie Buttery, head of benefits and reward at Travers Smith, says: “The platform shows what Travers Smith funds on behalf of employees and additional PMI costs, including any national insurance savings, where top-up insurance is purchased. Introducing total reward statements has been important in building understanding of our investments in the benefits package and the core risk and health insurance provisions are important elements in that.”
The firm ensures it promotes its protection benefits to all new employees via a specific benefits induction session each fortnight. It also sends out dedicated benefits and wellbeing communications fortnightly to all employees, highlighting all it offers.
It has an annual benefits engagement season each March to promote the insurances, because it is the time of year when most employees can make changes to their cover levels. It has installed digital screens and placed signs around its canteen to clearly present the information. This March, it hosted more than 25 benefit providers onsite for two roadshows to give staff an opportunity to ask questions one-to-one.
More than 300 people attend these, and the firm has seen an increase in the numbers of employees opting for top-up insurance cover; signalling that it is valued by many, adds Buttery.
The firm recognises that employees’ insurance needs evolve as their lives and circumstances change, so it created specific communications on the various life events accepted by insurers, so staff gain a deeper understanding of when changes are permissible during the year.
“The communication is through our life events matrix on our online platform, which can be accessed by clicking on a tile that says ‘when can I make changes?’ to enable them to clearly see the information,” says Buttery. ”This explains different life changes, what support employees would be eligible for and what they can select, to avoid them missing the chance to sign up. The information can also be printed.”
This is part of the firm’s wider efforts to promote its benefits and ensure its benefits proposition can be accessed at any time as far as possible.
