## 4 Tips for Using Humor to Engage Employees During Benefits Enrollment

Whether you love talking about benefits (we know you do!) or not, we can all agree that most employees can find open enrollment talk confusing, stressful, and maybe even boring. However, a little laughter and fun can go a long way in engaging employees during benefits enrollment. The key is effectively using humor to make your benefits meeting and communications more lively.

However, there’s a delicate balance between being funny and getting the message across. We love using jokes and memes to communicate as much as the next guy, but it’s important that you’re being extremely careful about the jokes you make and the effect that they can have. That being said, we’ve put together a handy list of 4 tips you need to keep in mind when trying to use humor to make enrollment more enjoyable for employees.

## 1) Steer clear of poking fun at any group of people, anyone’s background, or anything personal

Sure, many comedians have built their careers using “edgy” jokes, but it’s a path you should avoid at all costs. Poking fun at any group of people is always a big no, regardless if you have the best intentions or think it’s a little “jab''. This means staying away from jokes involving gender, race, religion, or targeting a specific person like a fellow employee, or even celebrities.

Speaking of celebrities, you want to make sure you avoid any references to any current celebrity gossip or drama. We’re seeing more and more companies chiming in and making jokes about trending celebrity stories, but it’s best to avoid this situation overall. You never want to associate your brand or culture with negativity and gossip.
You want all your humor to be harmless and inoffensive. Think about making funny puns or hilarious videos about cats or dogs being goofy and cute. And keep all the jokes G/PG rated– think about kids’ movies that are kid-safe but many adults still get a chuckle out of them. That’s what you’re aiming for here.

## 2) Avoid anything political

Politics is another area you want to stay far away from. Remember, you’re an HR team promoting open enrollment, you’re not Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel. While it might be easy to slide in a joke or two about the current political climate, you still risk offending someone on the team. Regardless of anyone’s political views and affiliation, you all have the same goals when at work.

You should avoid any controversial topics. We’ll avoid mentioning anything specific, but we’re sure you have a good idea of what things you should consider taboo in a work setting. Just remember to keep things light, general, and fun so everyone feels in on the joke and your ultimate goal of educating employees about benefits is achieved. One bad joke could make them miss the entire point of what your meeting or communication is about.

## 3) Anytime you're going to make a joke, put yourself in other people's shoes

While this might sound obvious, it takes conscious and deliberate effort to get it right. Step outside your own mind and think about how other people might view your joke. Ask yourself questions like– does this joke make any sense? Is it relatable? Will this offend someone?

And don’t assume everyone will read things the same as you. A lot of inflection and verbal clues are lost in text, so sarcasm might be difficult for people to pick up on when they’re reading emails and messages. We’d say sarcasm should be avoided unless it’s extremely obvious, and it works better when people can hear and see you. Sarcasm is only funny because one of the key elements is saying the opposite of what we truly mean. So, it can be interpreted as literal if used incorrectly.

## 4) Only Use Humor to Grab Attention

Humor should be used only for grabbing the employee’s attention and interest. When you’re getting to important stuff such as benefits information, deadlines, or anything like that, then it’s time to get serious and down to the nitty-gritty. You don’t want to throw jokes around during these parts because you don’t want to confuse people and have them believe something that’s not true. Keep things straightforward and to the point. 

And don’t go overboard with your jokes when grabbing attention. If you take things too far, you will get the opposite result and turn people off. They’ll be less receptive to the serious info later on.

Jokes work best when they’re presented at the beginning of your speech or email. And they can also be used to close things out. However, stuffing in puns and jokes after every few sentences can make the tactic lose its effects.

## Final Thoughts

Using humor during benefits enrollment is a fun and creative way to engage employees in benefits enrollment. However, it has to be done right. Hopefully, these 4 tips we’ve provided will come in handy and help you get started on the right foot. 


Employees can find learning about benefits boring and confusing, here are some tips for livening up enrollment with humor!

Open Enrollment

4 Tips for Using Humor to Engage Employees During Benefits Enrollment

## Decision Support: The What and Why

“What is ‘benefits decision support’, and why do we need it?” This is a question we heard time and again at the HR Technology Conference & Expo this year. While we could go on (and on, and on) about how a decision support tool can improve your open enrollment processes for HR teams and employees alike, we thought we’d break it down in an easy to digest blog post.

Our goal is to help HR teams increase employee benefits engagement and participation, relieve the burden and challenges associated with benefits education, and ensure individual employees get the support and assistance they need to fully comprehend and understand the employee benefits that best suit them. That’s where our decision support tool comes in.

A decision support tool, as it pertains to benefits, is technology that helps educate employees on their options during the benefits enrollment process and provides recommendations as to which benefits are the best for their unique situation. This technology can not only provide employees with understanding and peace of mind, but also can improve benefits enrollment rates, save HR teams loads of time, and create cost-savings for everyone involved.

Sometimes, seeing is believing. Check out 3 ways that these rockstar HR teams improved their benefits experience by incorporating Nayya’s decision support technology.

## Decision Support Success 

### 1) Increased Employee Benefits Engagement During Open Enrollment & Voluntary Participation

_“As a broker, we work with our clients to try and meet insurance carrier participation requirements and typically have trouble reaching 10% employee enrollment no matter how many presentations and Q&A sessions we provide. By spending just 10 minutes with Nayya, employees fully understood the necessity of these new benefits which led to over 40% enrollment in each new line of coverage. The results were incredible!”_ – Cameron Hyland, AVP, Account Executive – Employee Benefits at Woodruff Sawyer (Just Global’s broker partner)

Just Global is a B2B marketing agency that helps some of the world’s most impactful companies and influencers grow their brand– working with names such as Adobe, Whatsapp, and Xerox to name a few.

However, they had an issue when it came to getting employees to take full advantage of the benefits they offered to the team. They set lofty goals for engagement and participation. However, they struggled to achieve them because, for many employees, this was the first time they were signing up for benefits and they felt overwhelmed by the complexity and confusion that came from the open enrollment process.

Nayya helped simplify the process with our easy-to-navigate enrollment survey, where employees can easily follow along and complete their benefits enrollment in around 10 minutes. They get guidance and personalized benefit bundles, making it easier for them to understand what their benefits will cover and what voluntary benefits work best for their situation. 

This approach boosted enrollment across the board, with 47% of their employees enrolling in critical illness insurance and 46% enrolling in accident insurance. [Read their full story here.](https://www.nayya.com/blog/just-global-drives-benefits-engagement)

### 2) Helps Reduce HR Stress and Workload

_“Open Enrollment went very smoothly with Nayya – in fact, without Nayya there would have been a significant drop in education, benefits engagement and enrollment. And implementation was so fast, it was a seamless experience from purchase to onboarding – really making our lives a lot easier.”_ – Erin Salas, P&C HR Coordinator at Pegasus Senior Living.

Pegasus Senior Living is a Texas-based company that provides senior citizens with world-class assisted living, independent living, and memory care across the nation. However, when they came to Nayya, they were struggling to provide individual benefits support to a workforce with over 2,500 employees. HR was constantly getting calls from employees asking about benefits and faced pressure from admins. Since employees are always on the clock 24/7, they needed a solution that could help them deal with issues at any time of the day or night.

That’s when Pegasus Senior Living decided to team up with Nayya, and they purchased our decision support tool– which they called the “connective tissue” that enabled them to provide that 24/7 benefits support and guidance they needed for employees at an individual level. With Nayya’s help, HR was able to dramatically reduce the number of calls that came in because employees had all the info they needed right at their fingertips. [Read their full story here.](https://www.nayya.com/blog/discover-how-pegasus-senior-living-embraced-data-science-to-transform-their-employee-benefits-experience)

### 3) Employees are More Confident in Their Benefits Decision

_“Nayya offered way more functionality and represented more types of benefits than any other decision support tool that we looked at.”_ – Melissa Harvey, HR Benefits Specialist at Hilb Group

The Hilb Group is a company that provides insurance services to small and medium-sized companies. They came to Nayya because they were looking for an all-digital solution for benefits education and selection for their 500+ employees.

While the main goal was to increase participation, they really wanted a way to communicate the value employees get from enrolling in their newly added voluntary benefits options. When they purchased the decision support tool, it helped employees pick benefits and add-ons personalized to their needs and goals. With this guidance, employees were more confident in their choices and took full advantage of benefits such as HSA and FSA pre-tax savings accounts and enrolled in benefits options such as critical illness and pet insurance. [Read their full story here.](https://www.nayya.com/blog/hilb-group-saves-money-improves-employee-experience)

## Ready to learn more?

These are just a few of the ways that we’ve been able to help organizations that partner with Nayya. If you want to learn more about our decision support tool, check out [our product page](https://www.nayya.com/platform/choose) or [contact us today](https://www.nayya.com/get-demo) for a demo!

Learn how these HR teams improved open enrollment with benefits decision support.

Case Studies

3 Rockstar HR Teams that Improved their Benefits Experience with Decision Support

To say that HR Tech was a week well spent is a massive understatement. We had some amazing conversations, connected with friends and colleagues, and had a ton of fun. One of the highlights of our week? Getting to share the stage with ADP and USI to talk about the future of employee benefits!

“Forging a Path to Help Millions Make Smarter, More Informed Benefits Decisions,” was presented by Dan Murdoch, CMO of Nayya, Anne Knight, Principal Product Manager at ADP, and Anne Burkett, National Practice Leader, Workforce Solutions, at USI. The panelists spoke about the current and future state of employee benefits, and how HR leaders can combat the unique challenges facing our workforces today.

## How ya feeling, HR?

“HR leaders are **stressed**,” Murdoch acknowledged as he dove into the presentation. His statement was, understandably so, met with collective nods and murmurs of agreement throughout the audience. It is widely known that organizations, and HR leaders specifically, are being faced with challenges we have never experienced before, such as: 

- Workforces torn between the remote vs. in-office debate
- Pandemic related vaccination requirements
- Inflation hammering away at employee’s wallets
- The great resignation threatening the longevity of workers
- The rise of “Quiet quitting”

And so much more.

Most employees don’t know the full scope of the work HR leaders have on their plates day in and day out. Underneath the hiring, firing, and employee admin that is seen by the rest of the organization, lies layers and layers of complex tasks and challenges that need to be managed.

![Screen Shot 2022-09-23 at 4.31.16 PM.png](https://nayya.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/bee756fca54f163ac262b0846fd268dd.png)

## Employee outlook

For employees, things aren’t looking much brighter. Inflation has just about everyone watching their bank accounts, stressed about price increases across core necessities like gas, groceries, utilities, and rent. The inflated cost of living has many employees thinking about new roles that promise higher salaries to help manage their finances.

This means that HR leaders are now also being tasked with ways to help employees cut-costs and fight inflation, in order to retain their workforce. Since increasing salaries isn’t always an option, one way you can do this is through benefits. Benefits can be the single most important financial decision employees make each year — but unfortunately many employees don’t know how to select the benefits that are best for them, and often don’t choose the most cost-efficient plan for their unique needs. Recent research from our team at Nayya uncovered just how unconfident employees are when it comes to benefits and compared it to HR's assumption about benefits understanding:

![Screen Shot 2022-09-23 at 4.30.47 PM.png](https://nayya.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/e00624b30c8814f82de73d9858a91d25.png)

And this lack of confidence only increases with younger generations:

![Screen Shot 2022-09-23 at 4.31.02 PM.png](https://nayya.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/0f7e1ee2e929198ee5840174aec53cc6.png)

## Making better benefits decisions

It’s clear that employees everywhere struggle with making informed and confident benefits decisions. Parsing through the benefits guides and 'doing the math' on their own makes choosing the benefits that meet their unique mental, physical, and financial needs nearly impossible. Everyone faces different circumstances and their benefits need to respond to whatever life may bring.

Incorporating a decision support tool into benefits enrollment can make a world of a difference for employees who struggle to understand and select benefits. Decision support can empower employees to choose the benefits that best fit their needs. As Anne Burkett put it, you need to think of employee benefits in terms of “mind, body, and wallet.” If employees can’t select the benefits that best support their mental health, physical health, and financial needs, it’s going to be HR’s job to incorporate better benefits education to support them—or risk losing them to the Great Resignation. 

## Giving employees what they want

When thinking about benefits in terms of employee retention, there are 2 core aspects. One, which we’ve already discussed, is better educating employees so that they truly understand the benefit choices they’re making—giving them the ability and knowledge to choose the right plans for their circumstances. The second aspect is one that was brought up by Anne Knight: making sure that your employees know what benefits are available to them, and ensuring that the benefits you’re providing are what your employees actually want. You could offer the best benefits package in the world, but it won’t do anything to help employees if they don’t know about the offering. And it won’t do anything to retain employees if the package isn’t in line with their wants or needs. New unique benefits are working wonders for employee attraction and retention, things like “paw-ternity leave” (the ability to take some PTO when you adopt or rescue a new pet), and other clever benefits don’t pose much risk to an organization, and can really make the world of a difference for employees who are evaluating benefits packages.

For example, [a recent article from Benefits Pro](https://www.benefitspro.com/2022/02/25/pet-benefits-may-be-a-key-to-retaining-talent-412-127259/) outlined employee thoughts around pet-related benefits:

_“Pet benefits being a motivating employment factor was especially true amongst younger consumers, with 49% of Gen Z and 45% of millennial respondents saying they would be motivated to stay with a company that offers pet benefits or leave for one that does._

_When it comes to the type of voluntary pet-related benefits employees want, they expressed interest in several different offerings: 40% told Nationwide they would like to have pet insurance available; 29% would like paid time off to care for a pet; 27% would like a pet-friendly office; and 14% would like their employer to offer “paw-ternity” leave to take care of a new pet.”_

Don’t hesitate to poll your employees to make sure you’re in line with their needs, interests, and goals when it comes to benefits!

## Check out the slides

This panel outlined a path to stellar employee experience and financial success as they relate to benefits. If you’re interested in the presentation slides, [you can access them here.](https://7047256.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/7047256/2022-content/HR%20Tech%202022%20Panel%20Deck.pdf)

Check out the highlights from our panel with ADP and USI, "Forging a Path to Help Millions Make Smarter, More Informed Benefits Decisions."

Thank you for getting in touch!

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