• by Diane Schwartz , October 28, 2022

The reality of today’s workplace is that no matter how many benefits you introduce, most of your employees are not benefitting from them, because they may not be aware of everything that’s available. If you’re involved in the wellbeing of your employees and concerned about them quietly quitting or happily resigning, this is a serious issue.

The pandemic accelerated the need for employers to care for the “whole employee”: their mental health, physical wellbeing, their financial success, their social belonging. It’s a herculean task requiring both HR and the skills and knowledge of an often-overlooked area of an organization: communications.

Employer branding strategies will not succeed without the strategic guidance of your communicators, whether within your company or agency partner. They have wide reach within your organization and have the storytelling skills to communicate narratives that appeal to employees and future talent.

The challenge of communicating benefits is heightened by the reality that for most organizations, their employees are dispersed. They are exhausted and dealing with unprecedented mental health and financial strains. They are in the office on certain days and working from home the other days.

A cross-departmental benefits communications team comprised of experts in marketing, HR and communications will ensure that current employees are aware of benefits, get excited about them and share their positive experiences with those outside the organization.

An integrated approach to benefits communication will best position your organization to tackle quiet quitting and the Great Resignation.

The focus on these catchphrases that rattle the C-suite and put pressure downward have the silver-lining effect of putting the employee first  people before profit. That 4 million people are quitting their jobs every month is a clarion call to corporate leaders that they need to be paying better attention to their most important stakeholder, the employee. Communicators, by training, understand this.

Those in employee communications (also referred to as internal communications) have always known that the number-one customer is the one doing the work every day at their company. And those in PR, or external communications, know that what’s communicated and implemented within the porous walls of an organization will impact the reputation of the company, the brand and senior leadership.

The pandemic, along with the social and political strains of the past three years, has elevated the communicator to a more strategic position. The C-Suite is rethinking the org chart -- should marketing report into communications, should communications report to the CEO? This is real progress for the communicator. More importantly, it’s helpful to employees when they are kept informed, updated and engaged. When the stories of their peers are shared company-wide and they see that the marketing messages reflect more accurately the company they work for, employee morale increases.

In a sense, communicators are the authenticity-whisperers to senior leadership. If they have the ears of the C-suite, they’re advising them to trust their employees more, give them the space to succeed and listen to the feedback (however painful) so that a major benefit of working for their company is being heard.