‘Cliff edge’ retirement unpopular with most workers
Creating a brand for your employee benefits has many advantages for your company and employees, but how do you make sure it’s not just a ‘flash in the pan’.
An employee benefits brand is a lot more than a logo and pretty colours to splash all over your employee benefits communications. Your benefits brand should run a lot deeper than the superficial and really resonate with your employees. You want to make your employees feel part of something special which can be achieved with strong, targeted branding that taps into their emotions. Branding is all about emotion, experience and story telling! Creating a brand for your benefits allows you to have a more personal approach with your employees. People buy into brands that ‘get them’!
There are many important elements to consider when creating a benefits brand and we have covered a few below.
Your corporate brand
Depending on your company, your corporate brand may not be appropriate for your employee benefits. You may have a very serious corporate brand but want to take a softer and more relaxed approach when communicating benefits to your employees.
Brand Personality
All brands have a personality which is chosen for a specific reason. This is a key way to relate to your audience and sets the tone of voice for your communications.
Brand Colours
Colours evoke different emotions for us i.e. red for danger. But what about the other colours, what do they mean and what might you chose for your benefits brand?
Mission Statement
A strong mission statement will help you clarify precisely what you're trying to accomplish for your employees and align your efforts around that goal. Your benefits mission statement should be clear and concise, but also unique to your organisation.
Key Messages
Setting key messages for your benefits brand is a great way to ensure the most important messages always flow through all of your communications. Whenever you undertake a new campaign for your employee benefits your key messages are the perfect starting point.
Tone of voice
‘Tone of voice’ is about how your brand comes across in terms of written and spoken words. It’s not about what you say, but how you say it and the impression it makes on your employees.
Launch
The best way to get your new benefits brand out to your employees is with a ‘big bang’ launch! This maximises the exposure for the new brand and gives you ample opportunity to showcase your benefits offering within the company.
Ongoing Awareness
This isn’t a one trick pony… you have to keep the momentum going and consistently communicate your employee benefits throughout each year. The best way to make sure this happens is to create a communications plan. We recently created a guide to creating your employee benefits communications plan which you can download here!