Services
Benefit
Statements
Benefits Statements are one of the most important areas of company – employee communication. Companies spend great sums on benefits but most employees do not appreciate the value of their benefits. Benefit Statements will ensure your employees understand—and value—your benefit program.
What is a Benefit Statement?
A benefit statement is a personal summary of an employee's benefits, including an estimate of the cost to provide those benefits. It highlights the value the employee receives from the company over and above the regular paycheck. Plus, because the statement can be used to confirm such information as benefit elections and beneficiaries, it helps verify the accuracy of benefit records.
From Basic to Amazing
Depending on your budget and imagination, your benefit statement can be anything from a basic one-page summary (illustrated to the right) to a medium level complexity report to a personal portfolio with lots of bells and whistles. Production can be as simple as black ink on one sheet of white paper to fold-outs or multi-page reports with special covers and bindings. Paper selection, colors, fonts and artwork can create a unique appearance. Or our graphics experts can match the look, tone and style of your other benefit communications.
While we are happy to produce the simple statements, for one client we produced an entirely customized statement that was not only graphically integrated into the look and feel of their other communications, but was specifically programmed to reflect a wide range of benefit possibilities depending on the level and location of employee.
We programmed the statement so that the benefits provided to senior executives would not show at all on a staff statement. This is a far better approach than showing the staff member something like "car allowance" and then $0.00 for the benefit. It's better not to show car allowance at all, and we were able do that using many dozen "if-then-else" instructions in both Excel and Word.
The Cost
Cost depends on the scope of the work: the amount of computer programming needed and the complexity of statement production (art work, printing, assembly, and distribution). Four factors play a key role: the number of employees, the number of benefit plans, the complexity of the benefit plans, and the production approach you select. We're happy to meet with you at no obligation to discuss options and provide an estimate.
Plan Your Statement Now
Benefit statements usually summarize the year that has passed, so they generally print after the close of the calendar year. To be effective communication tools, you want to distribute your statements as soon as possible after year-end. As with any first time effort, there's some "behind the scenes" work that must get started.
Now is the time to develop your benefit statement. Remember, it takes time to make decisions, develop content, define information fields and data sources, and run tests. If you wait, you may miss the window of opportunity to give your employees benefit statements for another whole year.
"Our employees include kid's marketing, promotions and communications professionals who consistently produce award winning work. We knew the company was not getting the appropriate level of credit for our way-above-average benefit plans.
LCI designed benefits statements with a kid's theme that matched our culture and promoted our plans effectively. Each page of each statement was unique so that the employee saw only the benefits that applied to him or her. Even our in-house programmers were impressed with the sophisticated programming.. The statement was easy to comprehend and appealed to the "promotions and marketing" mindset of our employees. We are confident our employees now understand and appreciate the investment that we make in this critical aspect of our overall program."