The NASPP Blog

It’s hard to believe December is already upon us. Aside from being a time of the year that is filled with holidays and way too much dessert, it’s also the season when we begin to prepare the communications we’ll be sending to our stock plan participants about year-end things like tax withholding and reporting. In today’s blog, I offer up 5 things you can implement now to make this year’s communications stand out.

1. Simplify. That one word alone is probably all I need to say. It’s like wading through a cluttered home or office. When there is too much clutter in communications (clutter = non-essential information), the participant may not know which details deserve their focus. Once you’ve got your communication drafted, review it again and again. I challenge you to see if you can reduce the size by at least 25%.
2. Use a catchy title. You may have created the best message in the world, but if the title or email subject is a snooze, then it may not even make it onto the participant’s radar. A great communication deserves a great title. This one you can do in just a few minutes – look at all those communications you’re refreshing and see if the title/subject deserves a refresh, too.
3. Go mobile friendly. If you aren’t already preparing communications that are mobile friendly and quickly digestible, consider doing so. See if your company already invests in an email service that you may be able to use for sending emails using mobile friendly templates. Millennials make up over a third of the workplace these days, and if you’ve got them in your demographic you’ll need to ensure your communications are accessible from a smartphone and able to be quickly consumed. And, let’s face it – millennials aren’t the only ones with smartphones – the need for information to be accessed while mobile extends across multiple workforce generations.
4. White space is your friend. It used to be that white space on a page looked b-o-r-i-n-g. There was a tendency to fill up that space with all sorts of information – even if it wasn’t critical information. Avoid the urge to drown out the core message by overuse of graphics, words, or colors. Think of your communication as the masterpiece and your background as the frame. Review your communications to see if you’ve been guilty of overdoing graphics, call outs or colors. These elements all have their places – but if they are overdone they will simply clutter the page and overshadow the important points of the message.
5. Use stories or creative elements to give life to a concept. It’s really tempting to copy and paste plan language into our communications. While that sometimes may be necessary, and certainly sharing plan terms may be an integral part of a communication, it’s also important to elevate the tone of the communication to one that is not so heavy in nature. If the scope of the message involves explaining a concept that has lots of fine details (e.g. the mechanics of tax reporting), see if you can bring it to life using case scenarios or stories. Some of the most popular presentations I’ve seen have been ones that promise to deliver a “case study” approach. Participants seem to resonate much more with a message or set of instructions when they can connect to a scenario.

The bottom line is that communications don’t have to plain, boring, or feel like an old routine. Additionally, if you are a person who has a creative gene, crafting the message and its delivery process can serve as an outlet for innovation. As always, I’d love to see your communications that have incorporated some of these ideas.

-Jenn