Engaging employees with their benefits is a top organizational priority for 45% of HR professionals, second only to managing costs. A lot goes into engaging employees with their benefits, but at the end of the day, meeting them where they’re at is the best way to drive results. Crystal Clark, Senior Program Manager of Benefits at American Cancer Society, shares how her team transformed their benefits communications using personalization, technology, email, and vendor partners.
This episode is an encore from our 2024 Vision event, our annual HR and benefits conference that focuses on the future of HR, benefits technology, and workplace trends. Want to learn more? Check it out here: www.businessolver.com/vision
Sherri Bockhorst
Hi everyone, welcome to our vision session today. I am super excited to introduce our speakers and our topic for today. Year-round engagement is near and dear to my heart. I know a lot of employers offer a lot of benefits that end up being forgotten about, underutilized, undervalued.
So, we’re gonna talk about how to bring those to life for your employees today.
So, I am joined today by two wonderful panelists. I’m super excited about all that they have to offer to you today. So, Crystal, can we start with you? Can you do a quick introduction?
Crystal Clark
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I’m Crystal Clark. I am the Senior Program Manager of Benefits at ACS (American Cancer Society). I’ve been here for about just shy of two years now and absolutely love it. And one of my favorite things is employee engagement. So, I’m going to do my best to keep us in this half hour session.
Sherri Bockhorst
Wonderful.
And Becky, you want to introduce yourself?
Becky Hayter
Of course. I am Becky Hayter. I sit here on the Consumer Experience Team. I am a Consumer Experience Strategist. I’ve been with Businessolver for two years this month.
It’s been a really great experience. I love the CX side of things and really stepping into our members’ feet and really trying to just engage with them and help them understand what benefits they have available to them.
Sherri Bockhorst
Wonderful. Hopefully you’re stepping into their shoes and not their feet.
Becky Hayter
God. Yeah, I guess so.
Sherri Bockhorst
I think it might be a little trouble there. So, let’s start with ACS.
For those that might not be as familiar with what you do and the types of people that work at ACS, can you share a little bit about your organization with us?
Crystal Clark
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I’d love to.
Some of the things that kind of make us unique here at the American Cancer Society, demographic wise, so first we have a very predominantly female population. In fact, over 80% of us are women here.
We have a very heavy remote workforce; again, over 80% of us work remote and we truly are across the whole country. So, we have team members in Guam, Hawaii, Alaska, everywhere in between. And so all time zones. So, that’s kind of fun for some of our communications.
We also have a fairly tenured workforce at about an average somewhere between nine to 10 years.
But then we also have a whole lot of new people coming in as well. So, we’re in this position of communicating to the old and the new, so navigating that.
And then we just have a really diverse workforce. So, we have the people that you would probably think of when you think of the American Cancer Society. So, you’re thinking of the scientists, the people who are doing the fundraising, the events, those types of things.
But then we also have people who work in our Hope Lodges. And our Hope Lodges are the facilities where people who are having to travel for cancer treatments they can stay for free with their caregivers while getting that treatment.
So, we have the people who are staffed there as well as the volunteers. We also have advocates and lobbyists who are out going in front of lawmakers trying to get big changes with that. We also have a very large call center, they’re remote as well, but these are the people who work 24/7. So, it’s a 1-800 number. If people have questions about cancer, you know, either about their treatment, their diagnosis, somebody they love that they’re taking care of. Sometimes we’ve had children call in, you know, wanting to kind of figure out stuff that’s happening with their parents. We have those people and they have very unique needs as well. So.
Sherri Bockhorst
And Crystal, from my experience working with healthcare organizations, sometimes healthcare workers take care of themselves the least because they’re so focused on their patients. Do you find that to be true with your population too?
Crystal Clark
Absolutely. So, again, just the nature of what we do and who we are, everyone seems to put everybody else before themselves. So, that is definitely something that we try and break through.
Sherri Bockhorst
And so I think part of trying to break through to that is giving them resources to help them when they have a time of need. So, you offer a lot of different resources to your employees. You want to talk us through a few of these and how are you sort of keen to offer these and how you try to help engage people?
Crystal Clark
Yeah, absolutely. So, I think like most employers now we offer a whole lot of point solutions.
So, what’s out here [on the slide: showing Anthem, Bloom, FEI, OptumRX, Virgin Pulse, Sword, and Transamerica as a sample of ACS’s voluntary and supplemental benefits] is just a very, very small capturing. And these are the ones that we actually use for our Activation Paths. So, we have point solutions that cover physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, and financial wellbeing.
And so these are the ones that we kind of focused on that we feel at the moment are really important to get in front of as many people as we can. So, we have our medical provider out there. So, making sure people have easy access to that and knowing the programs that are available for them. Bloom and Sword is our virtual physical therapy programs. We have our EAP that’s out there. We wanna make sure that’s in front of as many people as possible all the time, as well as pharmacy resources.
Our wellbeing overall, arching wellbeing programs out there.
And we also have our 401k provider out there because we want people to have real easy access.
And a lot of these point solutions, we try and make sure there is single-sign-on available for everybody, especially being remote. We’re so used to being able to get into everything so easy. And if we can’t and you need a password all the time, it’s a lot of people aren’t going to go there and I will fully admit I’m one of those people as well.
Sherri Bockhorst
And Crystal, it’s funny because Anthem’s on the screen. I think historically people wouldn’t consider Anthem a point solution, but the way that you leverage some of the resources with Anthem, it’s almost like those resources are point solutions. Is that how you would describe it?
Crystal Clark
Yeah. So, I think first of all, within, with all of our vendors, we have real strategic partnerships with them.
And so Anthem offers a lot of programs and we have included a lot of programs in that it’s not just the going to the doctor and your copay types things. So, we want people to be aware of what all is available out there. Even just as simple as what’s available on their app, which is so much.
Sherri Bockhorst
Yeah, I know a lot of clients have like a nurse line embedded within their medical plan or telemedicine and people just forget that they’re there. And so we’re trying to help bring some of those forward.
So, that’s where we call in Becky. So, Becky’s like our savior for bringing all of these solutions to life. So, Becky, know Crystal mentioned Activation Paths, can you talk a little bit about what that actually means?
Becky Hayter
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we listened to our clients when they said that they were having trouble reaching their members and we wanted to come up with a solution for them that helped in multiple different ways, really taking that omnichannel approach from a technology perspective as well as a communication perspective.
And so we have clients that have these array of benefits that are amazing for their members, but they’re not members aren’t aware that they are there. So, that’s where Activation Paths come into play. It’s really nurturing that member and that year-round engagement to help them understand these benefits, not only at the time they need them, but before they need them. Right?
And so we do that in two separate ways with Activation Paths. We use our technology, we enhance our technology in a way that helps bring this awareness. Using point solution widgets throughout the portal that have tracking and impressions and just activations behind that. We use Sofia who’s educated behind these point solutions, who’s thinking about the question behind the question to be able to promote those point solutions inside conversation.
Bringing awareness to the mobile app, right? We have a lot more members downloading the mobile app and utilizing that mobile app. And so, when they’re in there, we want to make sure that we’re grabbing their awareness during that channel too, right?
So, we put these Activation Paths, point solutions onto the mobile app, whether that’s member services enhancing their knowledge behind these point solutions.
So, from a technology aspect, we’re really just making sure we’re doing our job for these, I like to say those non-electable benefits that often get overlooked.
And then the second half of that is the communication, right? Making sure that we are communicating properly and communicating efficiently with what our members needs are.
One thing that’s cool about working with American Cancer Society was that they already had Activation Paths. They had five Activation Paths on their service. And then they brought in one of our solution partners, Sword, which helped them add two more Activation Paths to their list for free.
So, we have a bunch of really great solution partners that kind of highlight a bunch of these areas in these point solution categories that you see and Activation Paths come for free with them just to really drive home that awareness and really, like I said, nurturing that member.
Sherri Bockhorst
So, Becky, you and Crystal have been working together for quite some time, right?
Becky Hayter
We have.
Sherri Bockhorst
So, helping set the strategy, the cadence of communications. Do you remember, either one of you, do you remember when you go back to the beginning, what was, how was ACS communicating with members about these programs prior to Activation Paths?
Crystal Clark
So, how we were communicating, we were probably, and we’re still doing it today. So, I think Activation Paths is just another layer for us. Just because being remote, we only have so many places we can put digital information. So, for us, we tend not to do a whole lot of company-wide email.
So, that was for sure a gap that Activation Paths helped.
But then we love communications at ACS. So, we actually do a lot of articles that go out on our intranet. We do posts on Wednesdays, we do Wellness Wednesday posts. We do Financial Friday posts.
We also love guides. So, we put together a lot of guides trying to help target people. Of course, we have to guide people to get the guides, which is always fun too. But we have guides. So, if you’re brand new to benefits, we send it out to people who have just turned 26, maybe coming on to our plan for the first time, there’s some of that information.
We have parents-to-be guides, so information all about your growing family.
We also have a general guide that’s called Find Yourself and so can go in and it’s you’re interested in financial wellness. Well, here’s kind of the programs we have for you. Or I’m pretty healthy. So what’s available for me. And so that might have some more of our just wellness programs. So, there’s different types like that.
Then we also really, even before we started pushing out some of the Activation Paths, we decided that our Businessolver portal was going to be our hub for all things benefits. And so we really steer, so everything is in our resource center. We really try to build out our pages and we go in and as things change, we make sure we update things on our pages.
If we have new articles or webinars that were that have happened, we will put them on the homepage of the portal.
When I do a new hire orientation, it’s fun because I know they’re not gonna remember anything I say. So, I tell them one thing we have one we’re gonna have a quiz, but I’m going to give you the answer now. And the answer is, it’s the name of our, our, it’s My Benefits ACS, which is our portal. And I’m like, that’s the only thing that you have to remember.
And then it’s nice because then it’s reinforced when those Activation Path emails go out.
Sherri Bockhorst
Yeah, muscle memory, right? But you like how do you create that muscle memory so people know where to go?
Becky Hayter
Yeah, it’s really nice. The thing that’s nice is that we do a really good job at listening to our clients and what they’re doing, right? We know we don’t want to overwhelm a member with too many communications or we want to make sure that our strategy is fitting well into what they’re doing.
Something new that we’ve done with ACS is you know the text messaging and we added in text as a form of communication because we do monitor just that opt-in rate which they have a really high opt-in rate for members.
Another new thing is that the new hire drip campaign making sure that we are, know Crystal enjoyed that. Just making sure we’re getting members when they’re most excited about their benefits when they’re starting a new role.
So, we set up a campaign that just auto deploys around these benefit offerings to make sure that they’re aware in that time of happiness, starting a new job.
Sherri Bockhorst
So, it’s for new hires, Becky, the trickle campaigns?
Becky Hayter
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we set up a cadence and everyone’s different, right? Some do two, four, six, some do, you know, four, eight weeks after new hire, just making sure that they’re getting that awareness right in that beginning moments.
Sherri Bockhorst
And I love that Crystal brought up in the beginning, you how do you appeal to the folks or engage the folks that have been there the 10 plus years, but then how do you sort of catch your new hires up, right? If they haven’t been around to learn along the way.
Becky Hayter
Yeah. And one thing, one thing to that we really enjoy kind of testing out just from, you know, my marketing brain, it makes me really happy is we sit at, you know, around a 40 to 50% open rate for these Activation Path emails.
And so we kind of hit more members than most people or most people have the ability to especially, right, these benefit programs by themselves. They’re not activating on that many open rates through email communication.
But since we have a trusted platform with these members already because it’s where they enroll in their benefits, we see a really higher success of impression rate.
Sherri Bockhorst
Like you had mentioned earlier that we called the QBQ, the question behind the question was Sofia, can you give us an example of what that might look like? Like what might somebody ask where Sofia does something?
Becky Hayter
Absolutely. So, let’s say someone comes in and asks Sofia, what is my deductible? Right, a question that I’ve asked Sofia before.
Sofia will recognize that if someone’s asking what their deductible is, that they most likely are going to be looking for a provider or some type of benefit or healthcare afterwards. And so she will, in that message, give that deductible, but then also suggest, ‘Hey, did you know that you have these programs available?’
It’s a great position to promote care navigation, telemedicine, nurse line, something that’s gonna draw down that cost for that member.
Sherri Bockhorst
I love that.
Crystal, have you’ve seen from your perspective as you launch these.
So, I always find it so sad when we put so much effort into it and oftentimes I hear, I haven’t heard any noise. So, I’ll take that as a positive thing. Have you heard anything positive or negative by deploying this type of support to your members?
Crystal Clark
So, we’re probably in like the typical group that if there is something that’s not working, we are really going to hear about it.
Outside of that, it does get kind of quiet, but we are able to tell.
One of the nice things is that we can get the statistics. So, we know, okay, yes, this truly, truly is working. And so I think that this speaks volumes.
Sherri Bockhorst
Yeah. So, when we have clients launch, we don’t just sort of keep our fingers crossed that it’s working. We do look at it, we adjust.
Talk to us a little bit about the reporting. This is the ACS report for fourth quarter of last year. Just talk to us a little bit about the statistics and what you’re looking at when you look at these reports.
Becky Hayter
Yeah, it’s really, really nice for us to have these reports, right? It makes us be able to make educated decisions and suggestions moving forward. That end of year review that we have with our clients is actually my favorite time of year because we’re able to utilize this data that you see to make suggestions, right? ‘Hey, it looks like this Activation Path is getting a lot of traction. Do we want to put a little bit more information behind that?’ Or, you know, do we want to put more information behind something that might have a little bit less?
From an impression standpoint, we like to see impressions being consistent because that means we’re doing our job of getting them in the member’s place consistently across the board.
But something also might pop out. Right? I didn’t know if you look at this that you will consistently, ACS has very consistent stats, but if say, if muscular skeletal had higher numbers, ACS then knows that their members are interested in that, which we do see in other clients that there is a benefit that is significantly higher than the rest.
One thing I’m very proud of at ACS is their click through rate, their unique click-through rate.
So, we sit at about 15% on average consecutively across our clients. ACS sits at a 40% average click-through rate. this, unique click-through rate. This means that on average, if a point solution is presented to their member, there’s a 40% chance that they’re gonna click on it and to engage in that benefit, which is absolutely incredible. And we love to see that.
So, again, though, these are…Benefits are changing, right? Activation Paths are a really great place to put in new benefits coming on. We can switch these out and kind of have that discovery conversation at the end of the year of what’s doing well. Do we have another benefit we want to get some more traction behind?
So, we really love to learn more about the client, their needs, their member needs, and adjust based on the data that is being presented.
Sherri Bockhorst
So, Crystal, when you see these numbers and here’s some more numbers regarding your specific population, but a 40% engagement rate in those programs, I think most clients would be delighted about how you’re feeling about the program and how it’s supporting your numbers.
Crystal Clark
So, we’re a funny group because we’ll see 48. We’re like, why aren’t we at 50?
We always try to overachieve on everything, even though we’re already overachieving. But it’s no, I mean, it makes us really happy because there is no other…Ican tell you, if I put an article out, I put anything out, there is no way that it’s getting, you know, even close to that number of eyes on it.
So, it’s really wonderful to see…And, you know, I really like the way that it goes out–it has kind of that cohesive look and it can really target as well. Versus if we, which we don’t do, we don’t send out like sweeping emails, you know, partly to, all know you send out that sweeping email to everybody. And then that’s when everybody replied back going, yeah, I had this question that I wanted to ask you about. And then they totally missed what was in there anyways.
But so this is really nice because then we can target it too. Like Bloom is a wonderful example. So, Bloom is our digital pelvic therapy. So, it’s intended just for women.
And so through this, it’s nice that we can target just the people who are enrolled in the medical plan that you have to be enrolled with to get that and also, you know, specified with the correct gender to receive those messages.
Sherri Bockhorst
No, that’s a great call out. Becky, like we talked about the new hire so we can see when somebody’s a new hire and start that, what you call it, a trickle campaign?
Becky Hayter
Drip campaign.
Sherri Bockhorst
Drip campaign trickle. Sorry. So, we can start that drip campaign.
Crystal just mentioned like we know the demographics of the population. How do we use data to know who to target that’s kind of driving these higher engagement rates?
Becky Hayter
Yeah, and that’s often what we kind of speak through in that strategy, right? You know, for them, it makes sense to have that kind of, you know, granular target. But for others, it might make sense to kind of keep it broad. And that’s kind of our position of that’s… Why we bring it up because, you know, dependent of someone might have or need that benefit.
So, is it better just to kind of keep that broad? But there’s other things that happen where we could target more. Like if someone’s getting close to a retirement age, we can send out a targeted email, whether that’s around 401k or whatever benefits they need from there.
Or, you know, we’re not talking about claims-based, but there is also the opportunity to have claims integrated into claims Activation Paths as well, which kind of target those people more who need that benefit more than others do.
Sherri Bockhorst
Yeah, I love that. Crystal, do you? So, when we send those targeted emails, how do you when you’re working with Becky, how do you help set up that cadence so that people don’t sometimes it’s like, gosh, are we going to are we going to send too much?
How do you make sure that cadence is set up in a way that you’re just not overwhelming people to the degree that they’re not paying attention at all anymore?
Crystal Clark
Yeah, I agree. It’s finding that balance. And it’s great. We have strategic meetings, and that’s what I love. It truly is a partnership. So, we come in, this is what we kind of do. Here’s what our population likes. They do not want to be bombarded every other week with something. They’re just going to block that out.
We kind of ask, you know, Becky knows some of the best practices and what’s really worked for other clients. And we’ll leverage some of that.
And then some of the stuff that we know works well and we’ll present that. it’s a really good partnership.
Sherri Bockhorst
So, I’ve seen some clients tie some of their programs to like national observance days or something like this February, healthy heart month, right? Am I remembering that? I think that’s right. Yeah. So, do you tie messages? Do you try to tie in a broader events in any way?
Crystal Clark
We do. So, we have some of them that are like that. We don’t necessarily have all of those kinds of observances, but there are there. There’ll be certain ones. I think we actually just did a recent one for the women’s I don’t know the official name, but like Women’s History Month or whatever.
And so was all kind of the women empowerment and some of the again targeted women-specific benefits. And that went out.
So, we will tie some of that. And then sometimes it’ll just tie to what we have going on as well.
Sherri Bockhorst
Yeah. I just love your system. Although I know it’s not, we can always continue to improve your stats. It’s so good. It’s like, what are some of those tricks that you’ve already started to learn?
So, which kind of gets us into, so this has been a great discussion about what you’re doing, the programs that you offer, how you’re reaching your members.
We always ask at the end of these, the one thing. So, as you look at everything that you’ve achieved in this space of trying to drive engagement to your population for all these wonderful benefits that you offer, what’s that one thing that you hope our audience remembers from the discussion today?
Crystal, you want to go first?
Crystal Clark
Yeah, I’d be happy to. I think the one thing for us is just really, you know, use your vendors as a strategic partner.
So, if you’re building out, you know, we talk, I talked about the Wellness Wednesdays and Financial Fridays, all that content comes from our vendors.
And it’s amazing how much stuff they will share with you and they’ll be very strategic. And then again, working with Becky and just our, partnership that we have and the ideas that she brings.
So, definitely just find, you know, some strategic partners to go with you.
Sherri Bockhorst
So, I’m going to ask you a question related to that.
So, how do you capture, because there is, you’re right, there’s like a vast amount of information that all of your partners can bring to the table to help you. How do you keep all of that organized?
Crystal Clark
So, we actually do a whole content calendar and we started in November, December, and we kind of roughly sketch out our entire year as part of our well-being program. And then we’ll drill it down.
So, I personally take on Wellness Wednesdays. And so I’ll just kind of start dividing it up between the vendors and we work with them and I’ll let them know they’re more than happy to provide you stuff if you’re going to advertise their programs. Like it’s wonderful how much stuff that you can get.
And then so, you know, it’s just organizing it into folders and I’ll keep it somewhat loose because sometimes something will pop up and I’ll bump something out, but it’s really, it truly is a lot of planning to have that rough idea for a year out so that way you are not scrambling trying to figure out what you’re going to do.
Sherri Bockhorst
Yeah, when you were talking about the, what is it? Wellness Wednesdays and-
Crystal Clark
Financial Fridays.
Sherri Bockhorst
Fridays. Like that’s a lot to pull together and manage. You’ve to be on top of it. Okay. So, Becky, what about you? What would be your one thing?
Becky Hayter
I have so many one things.
One of the first one things is not forgetting to say shoe instead of foot. is one thing I regret this whole time.
But the other thing is don’t underestimate the importance of awareness and really meeting members where they are in a consistent way, in a year-round engagement way. I always love to share this personal story of mine because ironically, I didn’t realize I was going to be leading the charge of Activation Paths.
was also impacted by Activation Paths when I joined Businessolver. When I logged, when I enrolled in my benefits for the first time, we at Businessolver use Activation Paths as well. And during my enrollment, after I enrolled, I got to the platform, I saw our point solutions and our benefit programs, and I was looking through the Activation Paths, and I realized that we at Businessolver offer caregiver support through Grayce. And at that time, I was like, wow, this is really cool.
I would have never known that my employer would offer something like this. went on with my life and six months later, I part-time care give for my father with dementia and we were at a place in life where we needed help. And I told my mom, was like, I have a, you know, a benefit offering through work.
And we met with Grayce multiple times and they saved us a lot of heartache and a lot of conversations we didn’t want to have.
So, yeah, so from a personal perspective, the Activation Path did its job in my life. So, I really encourage all people to be using Activation Paths.
Sherri Bockhorst
Yeah. Becky and Crystal are both super passionate about this, you know, at the end of the day. And thank you for sharing that story with us, Becky, because that’s the challenge, right? How do you help people like Becky in that moment of need, remember that that resource is available because that’s what benefits are.
Benefits are here to be used. There’s some benefits like my car insurance. I have to use it too often because I’m not a great driver. These are the things we want people to use. We want them to remember that they’re there. And that’s the whole point of what we’re doing.
And I love that you found that, Becky. So, thank you so much. A half an hour goes so quickly. We appreciate your time today.
