A solution to reach employees wherever they are.
Though they’d originally turned to Airbo to help them tackle the disruption caused by COVID-19, UM Minnesota quickly realized that the platform wasn’t just a crutch to get them through the pandemic, it’s a tool that could transform the entire way they engage with employees.
Here we look at how the team at the University of Minnesota Physicians embraced a benefits education platform to not only kept their employees engaged but drastically reduce inefficiencies at the same time.
About University of Minnesota Physicians
For more than 20 years University of Minnesota Physicians has provided high-quality care for patients across the state of Minnesota and beyond. The organization owns and operates clinics at 40 different locations, employing more than 1,200 physicians and 2,400 support staff operating at the forefront of clinical care and research.
The challenge
“We used to go out on the road and speak directly to people in the workplace, but after 2020 we just couldn’t do that anymore. So we decided to invest in a solution that enabled us to reach employees remotely.”
The previous way UM Minnesota engaged with employees was inherently inefficient. With locations across the state, the organization had to put on a roadshow, traveling to workplaces and holding meetings so that they could educate people on the benefits that were available to them. The problem with this is obviously the cost and disruption caused by the travel - in fact, the team estimates that they could spend up to half of their working month on the road as they conducted meetings at locations across the state.
When they were no longer able to do that they had to find a solution that enabled them to reach their people remotely and connect them with the information and education they needed. That solution was Airbo.
But a solution that was originally introduced to help cope with the changing way in which we worked, quickly began to deliver a string of other benefits. That’s because Airbo took all of UM Minnesota’s education and engagement materials and put them in one place. Not only was this information now more easily accessible, but it was also easy to digest as Airbo translated it into the kind of short, visual and interactive content that UM Minnesota’s employees know and love from consumer apps.
The end result is that Airbo hasn’t just helped to reduce the inefficiencies that UM Minnesota was experiencing, it’s actually helped to boost engagement.
Explosive engagement
“Airbo blew away the number of people we could engage with face to face.”
The problem with in-person interactions was that they limited the number of people that UM Minnesota could engage with.
However, since switching to Airbo the engagement has been explosive. Because it is always on and always available, the platform has helped to increase engagement and awareness across the board. UM Minnesota saw a 100% increase in employee enrollment in the first year of using the platform and an impressive 50% increase in employee engagement too. And these trends look set to continue as Airbo becomes more engrained into the employee engagement and onboarding process.
Airbo also enables UM Minnesota’s HR team to track progress in real-time, and using the in-built analytics they’re able to see exactly what information employees are accessing or what issues they need to resolve. This has cut down on the number of emails and phone calls the HR team gets to resolve issues because the information is available right there at the touch of a button.
Tailored information
“The feedback we’ve got from employees is that it’s easy to access the information they need, when they need it.
Because of the diverse nature of their work, UM Minnesota employs a wide spectrum of people each with different benefits that they can access. With a workforce that ranges from executives and directors to physicians and frontline support staff, it has traditionally been difficult to target communications so that the right people are getting the right information. Indeed, whether it was through the staff intranet or in-person meetings, there was no easy way to tailor the information that was on offer so that employees were accessing the advice and education that would benefit them the most.
However, thanks to Airbo, UM Minnesota are now able to deliver targeted communication to employees so that they get the information they need when they need it the most. This tailored approach not only boosts engagement now, but also empowers the HR team to better communicate large-scale changes such as changing medical providers.
