Ask ten employees what their benefits cover and you will get ten versions of “I think so.” Most people do not think about their plan until the day they need to use it, and by then they are digging through a booklet they never opened or emailing HR a question the booklet was supposed to answer.

That gap between what a plan covers and what members actually know about it is not new, but plan sponsors are now starting to acknowledge it openly and to look for better ways to close it.

The industry has stopped defending the booklet

At the Canadian Pensions and Benefits Institute (CPBI) Atlantic conference in Halifax earlier this month, three plan sponsors described the same turning point, as reported by BPM. Each had concluded that traditional benefits communication was not working, and each had found that the fix took more than a new template.

The approaches they described were thoughtful and creative. One employer with roughly 8,000 staff, when asked to fill a group benefits manager role, hired a communications specialist instead, since clear writing was the skill the team most needed. The same team assigns a different QR code to each channel, from lunchroom table cards to digital screens, so it can see which channels drive engagement. It also builds member personas from pharmacy data and workforce demographics, so that a frontline worker in their 20’s receives different messaging than an employee in their 50’s.

A regional utility, where most employees rarely read email, began sending calendar invitations for benefits sessions instead of posting announcements, and attendance grew from 40 or 50 people to more than 200. These are meaningful results, and the teams behind them deserve credit for treating benefits as something worth promoting to their people.

Better packaging is not the fix

Most of these tactics share a common thread. QR codes, branded swag and calendar invites are all ways of putting the same information in front of more people, and better distribution is a real improvement. What they do not change is what a member finds when they finally sit down to look.

The traditional booklet falls short for a structural reason. It is written to explain what the plan is, with its categories, percentages, maximums and exclusions laid out in order, yet members rarely come to it with that question in mind. 

“They usually want to know whether this year’s dental cleaning is covered, what a new prescription will cost, or whether their spouse’s physiotherapy is included.”

In other words, a booklet is built to describe a plan, while a member is trying to answer a specific question about their own situation. Better branding does not close that distance, which helps explain why awareness stays low even at organizations with strong communication programs. The information is available, but finding a personal answer inside it still takes an effort that most people only make when they urgently need to.

Introducing Core, a benefits assistant Orchard built

A more direct approach is to let members simply ask, and Orchard’s version of that rests on two pieces that work together.

What a straight answer looks like

• Members ask in plain language. They can type a question into Core, such as “Is my dental cleaning covered?” or “What is my drug deductible?”, and receive a clear answer rather than a page reference.
• It works in multiple languages. Members can ask in whichever language they are most comfortable using.
• It’s  available whenever a question comes up. Members don’t have to wait for a benefits session, an open enrollment window or a reply from HR.
• It does more than answer questions. Core’s full set of capabilities is covered later in this post.
• It holds everything a booklet holds. The information is organized around the topics members most often look up instead of the structure of the policy.

Together, these two pieces deliver what the conference speakers were working toward with personas and segmented campaigns, giving each member information that fits their situation at the moment they need it.

Turning multi-generational challenges into opportunities

The Halifax panel also spoke candidly about communicating across generations. Two of the sponsors described workforces that are mostly women, many of them in their 40’s and 50’s, and both have started building content around women’s health, perimenopause and menopause. One of them now packages related plan features together rather than promoting each one in isolation, so the message reflects where members are in their lives.

The panelists were equally clear that no single channel works for everyone. Younger employees tend to respond well to digital tools, while members approaching or in retirement often still prefer a letter in the mail, a phone number to call, or a familiar person on site who can walk them through the process with patience.

That range is exactly why on-demand answers and human advice work best together. A tool like Core lets each member ask about what matters to them at their own stage of life and in their own words, while Orchard’s advisors remain available for the conversations that are better handled by a person.

Why this matters to plan sponsors

Clearer communication offers more than a better member experience. When members can answer routine questions on their own, fewer of those questions reach HR. When members understand their coverage, they make use of benefits the organization is already paying for, which is the reason the plan exists in the first place. And when the plan is easy to understand, less of the budget goes toward mailers and campaigns that much of the workforce will never 

Members value a plan they understand, and that perception carries real weight in recruiting and retention, particularly for growing companies that compete for talent with much larger employers.

Your team can start using Core today

Plan sponsors have learned that a better booklet will not fix benefits communication, and the ones seeing results are giving members a straight answer at the moment they need it. Core gives growing Canadian tech companies that same advantage today, so their people understand and use their benefits while their HR teams spend less time explaining them.

There is no need to wait for a renewal or a meeting with an advisor to get started. Anyone on your plan can go to Core, select their insurance company, enter their policy number and start getting answers right away.