IMAX Corp. won the Benefits Plan Communications award at Benefits Canada’s 2024 Workplace Benefits Awards on Oct. 18 for its use of engaging technology tools to educate employees during its benefits plan redesign.
The entertainment and technology company was recognized for the steps it took to consider the voice of its employees — through interactive virtual and in-person sessions — while it was redesigning its benefits plan from a traditional model to a more flexible approach that also includes some cost-sharing options.
“We did a lot of employee listening and, from there, it became very evident they didn’t even have the basic fundamentals of what benefits were and so we really needed to define what that was in a very simplistic way,” says Moji Odebunmi, senior director of global total rewards at IMAX.
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The company emphasized a feedback-heavy approach due to employees’ historical resistance to changing the plan. In response, it created educational tools full of real-life examples that purposefully bypassed jargon to simplify the proposed changes and how these would work.
IMAX also created an interactive digital tool to help employees better understand their coverage options. During the education campaign, the tool prompted employees to answer a few questions and then showed them different options of the flexible plan so they could choose which was the best fit for their personal situation and benefits needs. The tool was used multiple times by about 240 employees and overall received 2,600 visits.
In addition, IMAX added an artificial intelligence component to its virtual meetings with employees to increase engagement. Through machine learning and natural language processing, the technology ran live virtual conversations with up to 1,000 participants at a time in an online chat-like platform. Through this chat-based dialogue, a moderator could ask open and closed-ended questions and receive anonymous responses with a voting tool.
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Leading up to its Jan. 1, 2024 launch date, the company leaned on its movie industry experience to build anticipation by creating sneak previews and a trailer. Team leaders were also added to Q&A sessions that addressed their concerns with the program.
Following the launch, IMAX found about a third of its workforce opted for the most enriched health option and a quarter picked the most enriched dental option within the new flexible benefits plan. For both health and dental, more employees picked the maximum option over the simpler core option, but most employees selected the midway option, which is provided at no cost.
During the benefits plan revamp, Odebunmi says she felt entrusted by employees but also challenged to ensure the changes met their needs and didn’t have a negative impact on them.
“A lot of the people that were long-tenured, who were very apprehensive about any of the changes, we used them in a positive way . . . . After we had our core design, we invited them to an in-person focus session to help navigate and negotiate what changes we needed to make.”
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