4 Tips to Help Employees Understand Their Family-Building Benefits

Effectively communicating new or existing benefits with your employees is key to supporting recruitment and retention initiatives. Not only are you providing an important resource, but you’re demonstrating to employees that your organization invests in their health and wellbeing. Specifically, employers who successfully communicate family-building benefits to employees are more likely to be recognized as family-friendly and supportive of LGBTQ+ members, which can help drive DEI initiatives.Open enrollment season in particular provides a variety of opportunities for employers to ensure that employees can get the most out of their benefits. However, it’s important to inform your employees about their benefits year-round.  Here are four tips on how to help employees better understand their family-building benefits:

Step 1:  Clearly Communicate Benefit Offerings

Family-building, and fertility benefits in particular, can include complicated benefit structures.  Make sure your HR team understands exactly what your company is offering and can explain it clearly, as it’s important to describe all the benefits in a way that’s accurate and easy to understand.  Also, be sure to include information about any offerings in addition to fertility treatment, such as surrogacy or adoption, if applicable.  Any communications should emphasize who to contact for more information in order to make it easier for employees to utilize their benefits.

Step 2:  Communicate Through Multiple Channels

Employees may prefer to learn about their benefits in different ways. Some employees will read an email, a flyer, or an employee newsletter that highlight the family-building benefits, while others may prefer the personal touch of a small group session. Since infertility is a personal subject for many, be sure to indicate how employees can obtain details about their benefits in a private way. To ensure that all employees have the opportunity to learn about their benefits, use a variety of methods to communicate the benefit offerings, such as:

• Distribute a flyer summarizing the benefits, including contact information for the employee to learn more.
• Include the benefits in your company’s internal newsletter.
• Hold town hall meetings about the benefit offering.
• Host individual Lunch and Learn sessions, which can be an informal and friendly way to spread the word.
• Make sure the family-building benefits are part of any personalized dashboards your HR team creates for employees.

WIN provides personalized communication materials to make informing employees of their benefits even easier, including a custom portal page and educational flyers.  The WINFertility Companion App also lets employees review their benefit information directly from their mobile device, offering a private and convenient way for employees to engage with their benefits. WINFertility can also host live educational webinars, allowing employees to attend anonymously to learn about their benefits and ask questions in real time without revealing their identity.

Step 3:  Make Employees Feel Valued

Open enrollment is an important time of year to help employees get the most out of their benefits, but promoting family-building benefits year-round ensures that all employees have the most up-to-date information. When adding new family-building benefits, you may want to consider holding a town hall meeting to kick it off, followed by smaller meetings or events for interested employees.  Ultimately, whenever you distribute communications about family-building benefits, you can support recruitment and retention efforts by making sure employees understand that they are valued, and your company is offering these benefits as a way to support them and their future families.

Step 4:  Be Mindful of the Difficulties of the Journey

Building a family can be a demanding journey, often likened to a roller coaster ride of emotions. Some employees may already be on a difficult family-building journey, while others are just taking the first steps and are worried about what the process may entail. Providing family-building benefits helps you give employees peace of mind that there is emotional and financial support for their fertility treatment, or other options to build a family like adoption and surrogacy.  Overall, HR staff needs to be sympathetic to employees’ needs and be able to direct them to additional resources that can help them through their journey. To provide more comprehensive support, the expert guidance of WIN’s Reproductive Behavioral Health – trained Nurse Care Managers allows employees to develop healthy coping strategies that can improve their mental wellbeing along all of the ups and downs of family-building.Click here to learn more about how WIN can help you in supporting your employees through the course of their entire family-building journey.