During the recent WEX Health Clear Insights survey, it was found that lack of education and understanding is still a major problem for employees when it comes to making a decision regarding their different healthcare options. People receive tons of information every day from many different sources and on different devices, but this just leads to more noise that you must cut through to reach your employees. This also makes holding the attention of your employees even more difficult and means that educating them in the most effective ways possible is very important. In their recent survey WEX Health looked into the best tactics for educating employees and found many interesting findings.

One of the most astounding things that was found was that during open enrollment, three quarters of respondents said they spend less than an hour evaluating their employer’s different healthcare options. Deciding on a healthcare plan is one of the most important decisions an employee has to make as it not only affects them but also their family members and it is imperative that they have the best information available to make as informed a decision as possible. Unsurprisingly when asked about which kind of tools and resources people find most helpful, employees said that they prefer tools that yield personalized results like cost estimates, plan comparisons and savings calculations.

Another important part of employee engagement is motivating your employees to use the resources you provide and make the best health decisions they can. According to the survey, people prefer financial incentives such as gift cards, reductions in premiums and contributions to spending as the best way to motivate employees to access the resources you provide. The next two best ways are emails and online tools and resources. These are relatively inexpensive and very effective at reminding your employees the importance of making an educated decision when it comes time to decide on health plans for themselves and their families. Some other important techniques are giving your employees the ability to track their healthcare goals and the ability to access a service that can help them navigate the healthcare systems.

If you are able to combine these different techniques effectively, your employees will feel much better about their decisions and be much more likely to make the best decision for them.

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Findings are from the WEX Health Clear Insights Report. Credit WEX Health and Zogby Analytics for findings.