Rogers Communications Inc. practised what it preached last year when it rolled out a digital communications strategy to share the details of its move to a new benefits provider with employees.
The company’s engaging and effective campaign led to the company’s win for best benefits plan communications at Benefits Canada’s 2016 Workplace Benefits Awards in Toronto last week.
“We’re a telecommunications organization so I feel we really need to do what we’re preaching to our customers,” says Jason Traetto, Rogers’ manager of benefits and wealth programs. “At the end of the day, we want to be paperless, we want to be online and we want to be interactive. We want our employees to experience what our customers experience.”
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Rogers created a digital magazine to communicate the new plan to employees. It was designed to be entertaining but still deliver important information, noted Traetto in the organization’s award entry. For instance, it contained a quiz on benefits fraud awareness and employee-submitted travel photos with notes about travel insurance benefits. The company also reduced costs by leveraging its own media resources to create the online magazine and re-purposing benefits information content from its new provider Sun Life Financial.
Rogers also encouraged employees to make their claims electronically, using Sun Life’s mobile app. The campaign theme, “Hand in Hand,” represented the partnership between the provider and Rogers employees, and was also a nod to the organization’s business of providing digital services.
To up the fun factor, it also held contests for employees and decorated offices with decals and animated PowerPoint presentations about the new benefits. It shared videos featuring one of its media personalities and made it easier for employees to access their benefits information online by providing a direct link to Sun Life through Rogers’s intranet site.
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The numbers reflect the campaign’s success. Eighty-nine per cent of Rogers’ benefits plan members accessed Sun Life’s website in the first three months, totalling 90,000 views. Usage of the mobile app increased on average by 212 per cent and electronic claim submissions increased from 32 per cent of eligible claims to 46 per cent. In turn, call volumes to Sun Life and Rogers’s human resources team during that time period were 50 per cent lower than expected.
“It’s good to be recognized by our peers for this,” said Traetto upon receiving the award. “The team put a lot of hard work into it and we’re grateful to Sun Life for helping us create a really good experience for our employees as we moved forward.”
Read more about the winners of the 2016 Workplace Benefits Awards.
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