Intuit Ignites Annual Enrollment with New Benefits Website

Intuit is a leading provider of personal finance, small business accounting, and consumer tax preparation software for consumers, accountants, and small businesses. Its flagship products include QuickBooks®, Quicken® and TurboTax®. Intuit has been on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list for the last seven years.

Situation

Reaching employees can be simple. Send an email, create an intranet post, mail a letter, hold a meeting. But reaching employees’ families? That’s somewhat more difficult.

Intuit faced this challenge with its annual benefits enrollment. Employees make decisions about open enrollment with their families. So their families need to be just as informed (and inspired).

A people-centered company, Intuit has always believed in investing in its employees. For years, this early adopter of consumer-driven health plans has enjoyed exceptionally high participation in wellness programs and the 401(k) plan.

Challenge

Traditionally, Intuit communicated major events like enrollment by printing and mailing a 50-page Benefits Guide to employees’ homes. This thick book was expensive to print and failed to deliver long-term value. For example:
• Static information became outdated.
• Annual printing compromised the company’s views on corporate social responsibility.
• Computer-savvy employees wanted something more immediate and engaging.

In early 2007, Intuit partnered with Benz Communications to reinvent its annual benefits enrollment campaign—starting by tossing the manual.

Solution

Benz Communications, in partnership with graphic design firm Fox Parlor, helped Intuit see it could get a much better return on investment—reaching and engaging more employees and their families—by replacing the benefits manual with a benefits Website.

In the rush to eliminate paper, many companies take the easy way out. They create content libraries with text-heavy pages or they create slick, streaming-media Websites that lack staying power. Some companies even convert printed manuals into downloadable PDFs.

In contrast, Benz helped Intuit use technology to better serve its employees. The team created a captivating, visually appealing, and useful Benefits@Intuit Website, accessible beyond the firewall to anyone who needed it. The site leveraged existing resources and created new, action-oriented ways to promote plans and programs (including tip sheets like “10 Often-Missed Benefits,” a benefits planner, and wallet cards).

The new site actually contained more information than the 50-page manual it replaced. But, because it was better organized, employees could find information quickly. Best of all, the site could be used year-round.

The Website didn’t eliminate the need for a mailing. But now the print mailing supported the website. Instead of a 50-page guide, Intuit mailed a 4-page overview brochure with a fold-out plan comparison chart.

Other benefits communications included posters, e-mails and intranet postings.

Results

“Hi there! I received the benefits booklet for open enrollment over the holiday and wanted to say you did a great job with it—in information, layout and easy-to-find benefits info. I really liked the “What is Changing” which helps point one in the right direction right away. Mostly, I LOVE that it’s printed on recycled paper, in keeping with our WCGB [We Care and Give Back] values, and overall corporate social responsibility. Way to go!”
– Email from Intuit employee

How did employees react to this dramatic change? By sending a flurry of emails to the benefits team, of course.

Not with questions or complaints, but simply to say thanks.

The site made understanding and enrolling in benefits easier than ever. The numbers speak for themselves:
• Throughout the enrollment period, the Benefits website received 5,294 visitors with an average session length of about 15 minutes, exceeding expectations for traffic and time spent on the site.
• Visitors downloaded the “10 Often-Missed Benefits” PDF more than 1,000 times.
• Visitors viewed the home page Flash piece more than 5,000 times.
• More people completed the annual health risk questionnaire, an online survey that helps employees identify ways to improve their health, that year than any other year before.

Here’s how Intuit’s investment paid off:
• Intuit implemented the Website without significantly adding to its annual enrollment communication budget.
• Working within the company’s graphic identity standards, the site integrated with other communications.
• The site formed a foundation for future communications campaigns, including the 401(k) Change and 2008 Enrollment Campaigns.
• The online platform allowed the company to respond in real time to employee requests and feedback.

See how Benz Communications helped Intuit use this campaign to get long-lasting value:
• Intuit Employees Get Smart about Their 401(k) Plans
• Intuit Brings the People Experience to Its New Brand