After 2020 shook business models, disrupted plans and reorganized priorities, everyone was looking forward to 2021 as a year of stability, a chance to get back to “normal.” But it turns out that this year has been more of the same with the workforce in a state of massive flux amid “the Great Resignation.”
What worked in past years isn’t going to cut it now and HR teams need to reevaluate their approach. In the battle for employee engagement, retention and recruiting, one thing has become clear: technology is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have.
All through 2020 and well into this year, HR teams worked feverishly to update, upgrade and deploy systems to support the newly remote workforce. They designed (or redesigned) now-critical mental health check-ins, help desks and case management applications. But even with these improvements, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting nearly 4 million workers are leaving their jobs each month.
To further complicate the matter, one of the main reasons for this mass exodus is that employees don’t feel like their company understands or empathizes with them.
So companies provided additional benefits to support their employees, but employees are leaving because they don’t feel supported. There’s a major disconnect here, and we believe it boils down to one of two scenarios.
Scenario 1: Your employees are aware of the benefits you offer and use them to some degree.
This is great! You’re already over the biggest hurdle which often is just making employees aware of any programs and benefits you’ve carefully curated for them. In this scenario, we would use technology to improve retention and engagement by maximizing how we show our employees what’s important.
For instance, using our TotalRewards Builder, you might automate an email campaign informing employees about exciting changes to their health and wellness benefits. Using the analytics, you’d be able to view open and clickthrough rates to gauge interest and tailor your future messages to boost engagement.
Scenario 2: Your employees and/or prospective employees are not aware of the benefits and therefore don’t use or consider them.
This is a much trickier scenario because now the task is twofold. Do you continue to try and generate awareness around the unknown benefits, or do you cut them and reallocate offerings to what employees actually want?
To nip disinterest in the bud, you might use our CandidateRewards Builder to measure how potential employees interact with certain benefits and programs and tailor offerings that more closely mirror what you learned from the analytics in the employer dashboard.
Whichever scenario your company falls under, technology remains the key to stopping – if not reversing – the outflow of talent. We must think differently about the importance of employee benefits, and the way to gather intelligence around this is with a comprehensive total rewards marketing solution like TotalRewards Software.
Both of our technology-driven platforms (TotalRewards and CandidateRewards) empower you to stop guessing at what might resonate with current and future employees and gain invaluable insight into what they’re interacting with through real-time analytics. See what pages they’re staying on longest, what they’re reading, and which benefits they’re engaging with – and the ones they’re not – so you can continually adjust your offerings.
Sign up for a free demo of TotalRewards or CandidateRewards and experience the power that marketing and technology have to transform your recruitment, engagement and – ultimately – retention efforts.
After 2020 shook business models, disrupted plans and reorganized priorities, everyone was looking forward to 2021 as a year of stability, a chance to get back to “normal.” But it turns out that this year has been more of the same with the workforce in a state of massive flux amid “the Great Resignation.”
What worked in past years isn’t going to cut it now and HR teams need to reevaluate their approach. In the battle for employee engagement, retention and recruiting, one thing has become clear: technology is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have.
All through 2020 and well into this year, HR teams worked feverishly to update, upgrade and deploy systems to support the newly remote workforce. They designed (or redesigned) now-critical mental health check-ins, help desks and case management applications. But even with these improvements, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting nearly 4 million workers are leaving their jobs each month.
To further complicate the matter, one of the main reasons for this mass exodus is that employees don’t feel like their company understands or empathizes with them.
So companies provided additional benefits to support their employees, but employees are leaving because they don’t feel supported. There’s a major disconnect here, and we believe it boils down to one of two scenarios.
Scenario 1: Your employees are aware of the benefits you offer and use them to some degree.
This is great! You’re already over the biggest hurdle which often is just making employees aware of any programs and benefits you’ve carefully curated for them. In this scenario, we would use technology to improve retention and engagement by maximizing how we show our employees what’s important.
For instance, using our TotalRewards Builder, you might automate an email campaign informing employees about exciting changes to their health and wellness benefits. Using the analytics, you’d be able to view open and clickthrough rates to gauge interest and tailor your future messages to boost engagement.
Scenario 2: Your employees and/or prospective employees are not aware of the benefits and therefore don’t use or consider them.
This is a much trickier scenario because now the task is twofold. Do you continue to try and generate awareness around the unknown benefits, or do you cut them and reallocate offerings to what employees actually want?
To nip disinterest in the bud, you might use our CandidateRewards Builder to measure how potential employees interact with certain benefits and programs and tailor offerings that more closely mirror what you learned from the analytics in the employer dashboard.
Whichever scenario your company falls under, technology remains the key to stopping – if not reversing – the outflow of talent. We must think differently about the importance of employee benefits, and the way to gather intelligence around this is with a comprehensive total rewards marketing solution like TotalRewards Software.
Both of our technology-driven platforms (TotalRewards and CandidateRewards) empower you to stop guessing at what might resonate with current and future employees and gain invaluable insight into what they’re interacting with through real-time analytics. See what pages they’re staying on longest, what they’re reading, and which benefits they’re engaging with – and the ones they’re not – so you can continually adjust your offerings.
Sign up for a free demo of TotalRewards or CandidateRewards and experience the power that marketing and technology have to transform your recruitment, engagement and – ultimately – retention efforts. 
