Benefit Personas
Reframing Benefits Around What Motivates Employees

What drives one of three employees who receive the same diabetes-management benefit message to actually use it? They may all understand how the program works. But the one who enrolls may be motivated by different factors from what drives the others. One may want more control over their health. Another may want to stay healthy enough to keep up with their grandchildren. A third might simply want to avoid a stressful bill or one more complication when life already feels full.

Benefits communication often misses that distinction. Employers and vendors usually explain what a program is, how it works and where employees can access it. Education is necessary, but understanding a benefit does not automatically give someone a reason to act.

“Education isn’t inherently motivational,” says Mark Head, president. “All it can do is tell you here’s what this is and here’s how it works.”

Benefit Personas operates in the space between education and action. Its Targeted Motivational Messaging methodology uses a six-persona psychographic model that uncovers how to better connect with different employees. It then reshapes existing benefits communication around those motivations. Instead of giving everyone the same reason to engage, it speaks to the reason that most likely matters to each person.

Finding the Why Without Asking

The model sorts employees into one of six motivational types, based on research involving roughly 25,000 respondents who answered about 400 questions covering physical, financial and social well being. Data scientists identified recurring patterns in how different groups approach decisions, information and personal priorities. Researchers then mapped consumer behavior patterns that correlated with each type and used those correlations to extend the model across a broader population.

With only a name and address, Benefit Personas can identify an employee’s likely type through an API or eligibility file, much like pulling a credit score. Employees do not need to complete a survey or assessment.

What changes next is the language. A person focused on long term security may respond to a retirement message showing how savings can build over decades. Someone who lives more in the present may not care much about a distant payoff, but may respond better to the peace of mind that comes from taking one small step today. The benefit stays the same; the reason to act changes.

Once a type is known, Benefit Personas adapts communication around those motivational differences. Benefit administration platforms, enrollment firms, health management providers and point solution vendors can continue using their existing systems. Benefit Personas takes the emails and texts they already send and tailors them to each persona.

“Vendors can grow in two ways. They can sell new cases or increase the conversion rate within the book of business they already have. Improving conversion is considerably faster than another sales cycle and it’s far less expensive,” says Head.

Changing the Message, Not the Infrastructure

A clinic aiming to raise Cologuard screening rates split 5,200 patient records into two equal groups. A standard one size fits all email produced a 27 percent response rate. Persona matched messaging produced 39 percent, a 12 point lift later covered in an HR Tech Magazine feature. In a separate open enrollment project, a benefit counselor firm serving roughly 5,000 employees expected 2,400 appointments based on experience. Persona matched outreach produced 3,200 appointments, a 33% increase.

Better Reasons to Engage

Head believes benefits teams already have strong programs. The larger challenge is getting more people to use them. After 44 years in the industry, he sees psychographic profiling as a way to close that gap.

Benefit Personas keeps adoption light. There are no setup or implementation fees; clients can start with materials they already use and Head says up to 50 percent of his fees can ride on results. While core benefit program sign-ups are tied to Annual Open Enrollment, most health management programs are open for new participants throughout the year.

The larger ambition is to make psychographic profiling as familiar in benefits strategy as decision support or health management. Moving engagement from 40 percent to 50 percent, Head points out, can improve HR performance measures and eventually move the needle on health plan costs as more employees use available resources more effectively.

Most employers offer strong benefit options, but that’s only part of the answer. More impact emerges when employees begin to “hear” a reason to use them that feels personally relevant.