Communication as the Driving Force in the Employee Benefits Industry

If you’re an employee benefit broker, communicating with clients and improving the dialog between employers and employees is as natural for you as breathing. But how is communication organized within your company? The first step to a successful broker-client exchange is glitch-free communication inside the insurance brokerage itself, across all the company branches.

We’ve asked several employee benefit brokers how they establish connections with their colleagues and collaborate for better client engagement. Perhaps their experiences will help you improve communication with your colleagues and clients.

Shared Practices Lead to Stronger Performance and Higher Client Satisfaction

Many insurance agencies have branches and divisions across several states, with each employee benefits professional assisting their own set of clients. While a certain practice of creating benefit guides and presenting information to clients is applied within each individual branch, other divisions often tend to stick to their own approaches. Such miscommunication may result in higher performance and client retention at one branch as opposed to all the others.

What some brokers prefer to do is share practices and collaborate with their colleagues across the company often choosing the same tools and apps for better results. If one department has acquired employee benefits technology, it makes sense that the others should do the same. So instead of pushing forward while your colleagues are dragging along with outdated strategies, why not exchange ideas for mutual benefit?

Collaboration at work and fast communication are easy in the age of technology. Conference calls, mass text to employees, or in-person department meetings is what some of the industry giants do to discuss the solutions used and the progress made across different company branches. And to share the types of employee materials each department creates, some professionals display samples on internal online platforms or on digital shelves for their colleagues to see. FlippingBook is often the go-to format for digitized employee benefits guides made from plain PDFs, like the example below: 

OSU Benefits Guide

Create yours

Streamlining communications allows brokers and advisors to provide better services and more engaging content to their clients.

Networking at Expos Helps You Stay on Top of the Latest Industry Trends

Expos, conventions, trade shows are clearly a great way to network, learn from employee benefits experts, and see what the hottest industry trends are. The most progressive benefit brokers and advisors seek out new technology at expos and share ideas for improving benefits communication with their peers. After all, you’re all in this together–striving to provide the best possible experience to employers and employees. Exchanging knowledge at insurance conventions will help you see what the other brokers are doing and implement those practices in your own workflows.

You’ll find many industry professionals at events held by the UBA, SHRM, and others. It also might be a good idea to seek out conferences and summits that are focused on technology for insurance brokers. You’ll be able to discover tools and approaches you may not have thought of as well as build powerful partnerships there. For these purposes, Digital Insurance Summit and PERKS Conventions could be worth a visit.

In addition to attending expos, some employee benefit professionals join and participate in advisory boards. They get to hear from clients firsthand: what they’re seeing in the market, what they’d like to see in their benefit plans, and what they’d like their publications to look like. With this information in your arsenal, you’ll be able to enhance the services your provide and make customer satisfaction skyrocket.

Tech Education Is Beneficial for Insurance Brokers and Their Clients Alike

According to 2018 Broker Tech Trend Report, 52% of brokers claim that their success–as well as their clients’ success–depend on technology innovation. The world is going digital, and employee benefits professionals no longer want to stay behind. However, adopting new tools and solutions can cause a headache for both you and your clients, since the insurance business still heavily drives on tradition.

Now, if you’ve decided to take a digital leap and bring innovation into the game, make sure you understand the new technology you’ve acquired. If it’s an app, can you customize it for your clients’ needs? If it’s a tool for digitizing employee content, is the format comfortable to use and share? Adopt the new tool in your company first and educate your colleagues about it. If you’re familiar with a tool, it’ll be easier for you to bring clients on board with it.

Expertise and deep tech understanding are what clients expect from insurance brokers and advisors if they’re prepared to move their materials to a digital format. So make sure you and your team know the A to Zs of each new product you get for stress-free client adoption.

The employee benefits industry is evolving in response to the growing customer demand. Both employers and employees desire to be communicated to in streamline and effective ways, with the use of innovative technology and out-of-the-box strategies. FlippingBook could fit right in–it’ll help you keep up with client expectations and digitize documents for faster and simpler benefits communication.