Time to make Web portals less confusing*

Employees are having trouble navigating through reams of benefits information on the Web

*This is an expanded version of an article that originally appeared in the September 2007 issue of CAmagazine.

More and more organizations are nudging their employees into taking more responsibility for their healthcare and retirement planning via the use of websites. But according to consulting firm Watson Wyatt, they aren’t making it easy by providing the right technology and content for employees to navigate their way.

“Changing the way employees choose and use their benefits involves more than simply providing reams of information on a multitude of websites,” says Michael Rudnick, US national eCommunications and portal leader at Watson Wyatt. “Employees are much more likely to change their behaviour and become more discerning benefits consumers if they can find relevant, personalized and meaningful information. Employers who send employees links to five to 10 provider websites or HR applications and expect them to navigate the system will not see the results they are seeking.”

These developments come at the same time that employees of all ages are using technology — particularly the Web — seamlessly in their personal lives. And they expect their employers to provide a similar, consumer-grade online experience.

A Watson Wyatt survey of 2,000 employees in the US found that employees rank the Internet as one of their preferred ways to receive benefits information. This preference is relatively uniform across generations — 63 percent of employees ages 18 to 49 like to receive information via the Web, as do 60 percent of those ages 50 to 59 and 53 percent of those 60 and older.

Many organizations are trying to improve the user experience by moving to an employee portal that integrates content, applications and vendor sites and can be accessed with a single sign-on. Such integrated systems, coupled with simplified navigation and terminology and the use of multimedia, can make it much easier for employees to understand benefit plans and make the right choices for themselves and their family. “Content, data and applications from a plethora of internal and vendor sources are far more useful when integrated in a way that makes sense to employees and is easy to navigate,” says Rudnick.

Still, only 16% of the companies that took part in CedarCrestone’s 2006 “Workforce technologies and service delivery approaches” survey have established specific user-experience criteria to guide changes to their systems. CedarCrestone is an independent technology research firm.

To view the Watson Wyatt paper on which this article is based, please visit http://watsonwyatt.com/research/whitepapers/wprender.asp?id=2006-CA-0162