Transocean s Your Benefits Destination HSA Campaign

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1 Transocean s Your Benefits Destination HSA Campaign Erin Packwood and Jamie Colvin / Transocean and SimplyConnect Consulting LLC / Houston, Texas NEED/OPPORTUNITY In mid-2011, Transocean conducted an annual benefits program review. The analysis included a review of current plan costs, expected future cost trends, leadership interviews and focus group discussions with employees. As a result of the effort, Transocean found that: As of May 2011, the health plan was already US$900,000 over budget, and costs were continuing to rise. Without plan design changes, the company s health care costs were expected to increase at a rate of percent each year. Year-over-year cost increases could be brought down by 3 4 percent with the introduction of HSA medical options. Of the U.S. employees, 95 percent were in the most expensive medical option the highest cost for employees and the highest cost for Transocean. Of the employees in the most expensive option, 70 percent were spending more in paycheck deductions than in care received from the plan. Employees felt that there was really one medical option at Transocean, which made the package uncompetitive. Transocean needed to provide a way to save for medical coverage in retirement. Leadership was supportive of the change but very skeptical of HR s ability to properly educate staff and market the options to achieve enough participation in the HSA options to save the company money going forward. Operations leaders felt HR did a poor job as communicators communication was not received in a timely manner, relied too much on , was poor and uncoordinated, and demonstrated a lack of understanding about how to educate rig employees. Based on the findings, Transocean s benefits strategy was to: Keep the medical plan option that contained 95 percent of the employee population. Terminate the medical plan option that contained the remaining 5 percent of the employee population. Introduce two new HSA (or high-deductible health plan) medical options that would provide employees with more choice and a vehicle to save for medical costs in retirement. Update the dental and vision plan benefits. Conduct an active enrollment in which all eligible employees must log into the system and select their benefits, even if they were staying in their current plan. Transocean selected SimplyConnect to create a comprehensive communication campaign that would drive participation in the new HSA options. However, Transocean wanted to balance the promotional aspect of the campaign with sufficient and clear education so employees fully understood the type of plan they would be using in

2 INTENDED AUDIENCE Transocean s intended audiences included: The 4,400 eligible, highly-mobile, U.S. employees deployed all over the world. o Eighty percent of the population is male, with an average age of 43. o Eighty-five percent of this population works on offshore oil rigs in day rotations. o Seventy percent of this population does not have a work address. o Twenty-five percent work on rigs outside of the U.S. but have families still living inside the U.S. o Twenty-five percent are expatriate commuters who also need to make a one-time choice to participate in a tax equalization program. Spouses/families of the 4,400 eligible employees many of the spouses are the benefit decision makers for the family. Leadership and division management buy-in was critical for implementation and to champion key messages with employees. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES Before creating the communication strategy, the following objectives were set: Objective Measurement Drive enrollment in new HSA Twelve to fifteen percent of employees select one of the new options. HSA options by the 2012 enrollment deadline. Take action by the deadline. Ninety-five percent of employees complete the election process by the 2012 enrollment deadline. Use interactive learning Ninety percent of employees use the interactive learning modules resources. by the 2012 enrollment deadline. Improve the perception of HR Receive positive survey scores above an average score of 3.5 on communication. a 5-point scale. Accommodate different Provide employees three different ways to learn. learning needs. SOLUTION OVERVIEW Before diving into the communication approach, the communication team held discussions with field HR to further understand the offshore population. Through the discussions, they learned which key HSA questions and concerns would need to be addressed in the interactive learning modules and how marketing materials would work best on the rigs. For example, the team learned that the rigs are full of normal and boring operations posters and that hanging collateral is often seen as a chore. Therefore, the posters described below were produced on heavy ClingZ material, which require no tape, making it easy to place them in the living quarters and cafeterias. The team created a message platform to provide consistency across all the communication. Key messages included the following: Employees aren t given enough choice for medical coverage. Transocean has two new options to help you take care of yourself and your family today and in the future. Review your materials; go online and learn about the different options. Model your situation and make your election by the deadline. 2

3 If you are an expatriate commuter, be sure to make your tax election. Then the team created a multi-phased, multimedia approach: Organizational Readiness (May July): Given the extent of the change and the buy-in needed at the manager-level, the team started by making sure Transocean leaders and field HR were brought up to speed and allowed to review the full communication approach. This effort included: o Presentations to corporate and operations leaders. o Background on how an HSA plan works for HR. o A leadership e-card video message to reinforce key messages, their role and the employee communication plan. Announcement (August September): The team wanted to ensure that the changes didn t come as a surprise to employees during the enrollment season; therefore, the team: o Announced the upcoming changes in advance of the enrollment materials being distributed through a series of small teaser posters, large themed posters and a unique mailer to send to employees homes. o Opened mobile-friendly, online learning modules early so employees could begin learning about the new options. o Provided job aid and extensive training for field HR so they were prepared to help with employee questions. Education (September October): Once the final costs for the plan options were ready, the team: o Distributed enrollment kits to every home as well as extra kits to all rigs. o Launched new, mobile-friendly e-books that provided information on all benefit options. o Updated the marketing posters in work locations. o Utilized elevator advertisements for office locations. o Conducted face-to-face meetings in all work locations, including all of the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico (covered about 80 percent of the eligible offshore population). Reinforcement (October November): Since all employees needed to take action on their benefit elections, the team also created electronic banners for all the internal Transocean websites and sent reminders to employees homes so spouses could take action if their spouse was offshore. Given the large volume of material sent to the rigs and mailed to homes, the team created a unique theme for the campaign. Traditionally, Transocean had never used themes to cut through the clutter. However, the team wanted to reflect the reality of working at Transocean. A travel theme was selected to pay homage to the highly mobile workforce. For example, the announcement piece featured a helicopter, which is how all the offshore employees get on and off the rigs every few weeks. The team centered the campaign on the fun, online learning modules that would educate, debunk common myths and show step-by-step examples. The site also included an opening video message to reinforce the purpose of the campaign. The SimplyConnect team led all aspects of the campaign strategy development, writing, creative direction and production management. 3

4 IMPLEMENTATION AND CHALLENGES The budget included all consulting, production and distribution costs. Challenge The tax equalization choice was added to the effort in August. The offshore population was highly mobile, with day rotations. There were five subgroups with different rates included. There wasn t much time to implement the campaign. Six other enrollment groups outside of the U.S. also were experiencing benefit changes. Different learning needs had to be accommodated. There was a complex audience matrix. Implementation Impact The team quickly rallied to coordinate communication efforts to make it easier on the 940 employees who now needed to make two decisions. This included tough discussions with the tax team to convince them to change their original deadline of 15 October to coincide with the benefits deadline of 11 November. The team invested in a multimedia approach and made all Web-based solutions mobile-friendly so that employees could access the system from any type of device. An extra set of materials were produced for every offshore employee and shipped to the rigs so they could take advantage of offshore time. A flexible printed carrier system was created to allow for versioning of the paycheck deductions and the tax choice. The team created versions of the online e-book so employees didn t have to decide which rates applied to them. The team started some development before plan design approval; however, the bulk of the work was condensed and developed between July and mid-september. The team leveraged the travel theme and versioned the messaging and enrollment kits to save money and time. The team needed to quickly design and produce a wide variety of media to ensure every employee had the opportunity to learn the new HSA concepts. Transocean s complex employee groups resulted in a total of 21 different enrollment groups that needed benefits material during the enrollment season. 4

5 MEASUREMENT/EVALUATION OF OUTCOMES Objective Measurement Evaluation Drive enrollment in new HSA options. Twelve to fifteen percent of employees select the new HSA options by the 2012 enrollment Twenty-four percent of employees enrolled in one of the two new HSA options. Take action by the deadline. Use interactive learning resources. Improve the perception of HR communications. Accommodate different learning needs. deadline. Ninety-five percent of employees complete the election process by the deadline. There are 4,000 unique visits to the interactive learning modules. Receive positive survey scores above an average score of 3.5 on a 5-point scale. Every employee has three different ways to learn. Ninety-eight percent of employees took action and enrolled by the deadline. There were 5,627 unique visits to the learning modules. In addition, there were 7,114 hits and an average visit time of eight minutes. Survey response on the communication effort was averaged at 3.6. All employees received online learning, print materials and face-to-face meeting opportunities. 5