From DEI audits to AI tools, how AECOM personalizes benefits for 50,000 workers

After spending more than 30 years of his career in benefits, Bernie Knobbe has one vital piece of advice when it comes to workplace communications: Remember that employees are also people. 

Knobbe is the head of global benefits and well-being at AECOM, an infrastructure consulting firm with more than 50,000 employees worldwide. Since joining the company in 2014, Knobbe and his team have worked to modernize benefits offerings and focus on holistic well-being, but have also shifted the communications around these programs. They've stripped out technical and confusing terminology and instead focus on easy-to-digest messaging. 

"Benefits professionals are our own worst enemies," Knobbe says. "We don't know how to tell the story well, and there's resistance to change. The traditional benefits way of communicating is very insurance-sounding, or legal and compliance-oriented. But we need to communicate to people as humans and consumers." 

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At AECOM, one of the primary ways they've done that is through the creation of a global website focused on well-being and benefits. It requires no username or password, and is available to every global employee as well as their family members. The site breaks down benefits, EAP programs, and variances in benefit offerings from country to country. 

"People often don't know where to go for what, they don't often know the questions to ask, and they think benefits are scary, foreign or complex," Knobbe says. "We wanted to make benefits transparent and accessible." 

Beyond the easy-to-use digital hub, Knobbe is focused on pushing to further personalize benefits offerings and communications at AECOM. He recently spoke to EBN about the challenges facing today's workforce, and how employers should shift their approach to communication to boost wellness and engagement with benefits programs. 

What are some of the biggest concerns employees are dealing with today, and how should organizations be responding? 
The inflationary issues and creating affordability for people is paramount, and it's a global issue. But we really do have to think of compensation as pay and non-cash compensation, which is benefits and everything else. We have to remember that employees don't put it into categories — they don't think about pay versus benefits versus training and development and career pathing. They think of it as: What is this company doing for me?  

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The other challenge is these four generations in the workforce. We have people between 65 and 70 still working in the company, and they're adding value, which is great. But what do they want versus someone who's younger? It's really hard to have one benefit program that fits all. I used to work at the Gap, and we always said that one size never fits all, and that applies to benefits. You have to offer lots of choices and get your message out there.

What are some tools available to help employees do that? 
For 20 years or more, benefits folks have been coming up with personas to do this in benefits communications: Mark is 25 and single, Bernie is married with two kids at 40, etc. And they helped because an employee could pick one and sort of identify. But what's nice now is, all the artificial intelligence out there really does this for you in a better way. We can ask employees about their healthcare and retirement, and then the AI will guide them to recommendations and help them make the best decisions. 

There's a lot of concern right now around financial wellness and retirement preparedness. How can you personalize the idea of saving? 
Financial wellness is what everyone is talking about. I like to call it financial fitness — and I won't say "retirement" because it tends to turn off some newer entrants to the workforce, so I like to just call it planning for the future. Simply changing terminology will open people up to it more. 

The disparity in savings between females and males, depending on when they started their career, when they started saving, or if they took time off to have a family, is a real problem. And we have to get better at telling people that directly, that they're behind in savings. That message should be different from the one we give people who stayed the course on saving from day one of their career. The more we can personalize the message, the better. 

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How can employers start to understand how they need to shift their benefits messaging to suit their unique workforce?  
We're doing a DEI audit right now. We did a phase last year with our healthcare programs, and we're doing a second phase now to make sure that our employees can find the exact care they're looking for, if it's a person of a particular culture or background. You want a doctor who's LGBTQ? You want a doctor in the Black community? There should be the ability for you to connect with someone you can relate to. 

In addition to those audits, we're trying to move away from global messaging in benefits. For all of our employee resource groups, we've created one-pagers about benefits specific to those communities. So if you're a woman in leadership, if you're LGBTQ, if you're Black, here are some programs that may relate more to you. 

In addition to shifting benefits communications, how can employers change the conversation within their workforce? 
When I worked in companies with union shops, we always said: Who's that one person on the floor that, if you can convince them and educate them, they'll become your best cheerleader? You have to find those people that will do more for your communications than anything you create. Find those people. Find those managers. Communication should be organic, and it shouldn't always be top down.