Overcoming the top obstacles to total rewards communications

For comms pros who seldom collaborate with HR, total rewards may be a nebulous concept. Commonly used as a catch-all term referring to salary, benefits, employee recognition and learning and development opportunities for career growth, each organization’s total rewards will, and should, differ depending on its employee value proposition (EVP).

While 60% of respondents ranked EVPs the top way to support employee wellbeing in Ragan’s 2023 Communications Benchmark Report, many said that the strongest programs also included executives sharing wellness best practices in leadership meetings and HR leading more in-person events.  These comments are a reminder that communicating your total rewards is not just the responsibility of HR, but also of every leader and every internal communicator.

Most understand how clearer HR and benefits communications can improve employee engagement, retention and performance in theory—but what does that look like in practice?

To know how we can improve our total rewards communications, we must first look at some of the top challenges.

A general lack of employee understanding about total rewards