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If there’s anything more challenging than finding great people to work for you, it’s retaining them. If you’ve had trouble getting employees interested in your company’s benefits and programs, you’re not the only one.
Virtual benefits fairs are not new in firms with numerous work sites and many remote employees on different shifts. A virtual benefits fair is a branded event that takes place online and is set up like a physical benefits fair. Employers ask benefits providers to set up a virtual booth on their platform and upload relevant educational materials like brochures, videos, and presentations. Also, interactive tools like chat rooms and webinars allow companies to connect their employees with the right people in real time and answer their questions immediately.
Virtual benefits fairs frequently contain virtual booths where visitors can interact with employers, sponsors, and benefits providers and watch webinar presentations, webcasts, and other activities. Attendees can interact with benefit providers via live chat, Q&A, discussions, polls, and other features. However, because most virtual benefits fairs are customized, the number of features and sessions available vary from event to event.
You can host the benefits fair virtually or in-person. Both have pros and cons. Keep reading to dig deeper into what each type offers.
A virtual benefits fair provides enormous value to businesses. Here are four reasons why businesses choose them over physical events:
Employees benefit from a better end-user experience when they look for benefits online. Instead of physically sitting through l training sessions, registrants can direct their own learning. Virtual Benefits Fairs provide “on-demand” education, allowing employees to choose which virtual booths to visit, what content to examine, and which webinars to attend.
An online fair has no time constraints, allowing employees to learn at their own speed. They may consume content and make judgments in peace because multimedia is available around the clock. A virtual benefits fair, on the other hand, enables an experience tailored to each employee’s interests, significantly increasing their involvement.
The cost of physical events is very high. The costs of venue rents, travel logistics, and printing alone may add up quickly, especially when similar events repeat throughout the year. A virtual arrangement, on the other hand, ensures significant cost reductions. Employers can reduce traditional expenditures connected with onsite events while also avoiding the inconvenience and effort of organizing them by allowing guests to meet in a virtual area to hear about perks.
Physical training sessions and clinics are frequently challenging to quantify. Organizers mainly focus on managing the event’s logistics; therefore, they forget to measure how much value was delivered to employees and how the training material was evaluated. Feedback is restricted to a post-event survey, which rarely provides practical information.
Virtual benefits fairs improve that by allowing businesses to learn how engaging these events were. Detailed metrics like attendee patterns, webinar engagement numbers, booth visits, and frequency of information downloads assist companies in determining which benefits are popular and which material requires attention.
Companies sometimes have staff distributed across multiple places, making actual fairs for each of those marketplaces impracticable. However, the online nature of virtual benefits fairs allows employers to gather all of their employees in one virtual area for benefit learning.
Of course, administrators have a significant challenge with a one-size-fits-all system. For example, healthcare and insurance firms in North America will most likely differ from those in Europe. Fortunately, top virtual event platforms handle this issue by personalizing attendees’ experiences and displaying only vendors who operate in their geographical region.
Virtual benefits fairs are a great way to get in touch with employees. Think about these best practices for virtual benefits fairs to make the most of your next one:
Getting direct employee feedback through an annual survey or quick poll is one way to get them on board with a benefits fair. Ask them what they’d like to get out of the benefits fair in the end, what kinds of vendors they’d like to see, and if there are any other ways you could make it more helpful for them.
You can find out what your employees want and need by going straight to the source. This will make it better for them and, hopefully, get them more involved. Plus, you can use that information to talk to employees in the future.
Benefits experts don’t have to work in isolation from each other. It’s okay to ask for help, especially for an event like a benefits fair that requires a lot of planning and logistics. So, use this chance to put together a group to plan. Keep it small but ensure that it represents the different parts of your organization. You can give people specific tasks with agreed-upon due dates to help make sure the event goes smoothly.
Ensure that vendor representatives cover your whole benefits program. This helps attract a broad pool of candidates with varying interest levels in the same benefits, which is essential in attracting a larger pool of applicants overall.
You can use unique branding to bring your benefits fair to real life. Branding can help you give your benefits program a name, which will help you show the value of your benefits in a way that makes it easier for your employees to connect with them. Also, it makes talking fun and easy to understand. Regarding your benefits fair, you can use your brand to your advantage by developing an exciting theme that runs through all the activities and giveaways. This will help you get more people to come.
Some employees require a little push to learn more about their benefits. Offering gifts is one method to accomplish this.
Vendors frequently bring their own entertaining goods, but you may supplement them with prizes. Another possibility is to include a grand prize, such as round-trip airline tickets, which are frequently purchased with corporate credit card points. Consider giving employees a small booklet with stamps for each vendor they visit to keep them motivated. The more stamps they gather, the better their chances of winning a prize.
Virtual benefits fairs have grown in popularity recently as businesses move traditional benefits fairs and in-person training online to broaden their reach, cut expenses, and enhance employee happiness and retention. So, how exactly do you put virtual benefits fair?
A virtual benefits fair requires extensive planning and preparation like a conventional benefits fair. So, when it comes to hosting a virtual benefit fair, these simple procedures will ensure its success:
A virtual events platform will, in essence, do all the hard work for you. Using a tool like vFairs, you can register attendees, create virtual booths, enable live chat, share downloadable content, stream live video presentations, and set up virtual meeting rooms for follow-up conversations. Think about how your event looks and feels, and then choose the platform to help you reach your goals. This is a glimpse of what vFairs can do:
Now that you’ve decided on a platform, you can start thinking about how the event will unfold. Depending on the kind of experience you want to provide, you might want to include things like:
Scheduling your virtual benefits fair involves two steps. First, analyze the event’s flow. You should avoid organizing live lectures or webinars simultaneously to maximize attendance. If this isn’t possible, employees can download the presentations to watch on their own time. Consider whether the event will be a single day or spread out over several days. Don’t drag out the event too long, or people may lose interest. Second, plan the event’s date, so staff can consider their options. Avoid scheduling the fair around company deadlines or holidays.
Now that you’ve organized the event, it’s time to promote it to your staff. Begin by assembling a brief information package so that employees understand what to expect from the benefits fair and can begin to prepare any questions they may have. Distribute event information to your staff in as many ways as possible. To promote anticipation and excitement, use all applicable event marketing tactics at your disposal. In particular, you should:
When the virtual benefits fair is over, you should collect as much data as possible and analyze the event. Remember that figuring out what did and did not work at the event is the only way to make it better next time. Fortunately, vFairs offers a built-in analytics feature to help you make the most out of your event.
vFairs is a leading virtual, hybrid and in-person event platform. A vFairs virtual benefits fair makes employee benefits accessible and enjoyable for a remote workforce. You can keep it active all year round so that employees and their families can access it worldwide.
vFairs offers interactive webinars, group and 1:1 chat, a resource directory, and Q&A sessions. You can give your staff simple access to benefits information such as what they are and how to use them effectively. Overall, vFairs provides special features for employers that can help you get the most out of your benefits fair. Let’s take a look!
vFairs allows you to restrict access and boost security at your virtual benefits fair. You can identify which credentials should gain access to your event, use Single-Sign-On, and implement 2-factor authentication. You can also restrict access to only company employees.
vFairs offers your benefit vendors stunning custom 3D halls and highly customizable booths. They can add custom graphics, banners, and links to social media pages and websites along with relevant resources. Benefit providers can have branded booths. Overall you can populate your space with animated avatars via the self-select avatar library.
vFairs allows you to connect employees with benefit providers via chat, audio and video calls. Employees and their families can connect on group chats with benefit providers. They can get quick access to benefit details with interactive exhibit booths.
vFairs virtual benefit fairs let you boost event engagement with scavenger hunts and games. You can lead your employees to important event areas and cover maximum virtual space through a virtual leaderboard. You can also host info sessions with live, semi-live and pre-recorded webinars.
Moderated Q&As can help address employee concerns. You can also make your fair exciting with leaderboards and games. In-event alerts and notifications can keep employees updated.
You can also integrate with social media walls, simulation rooms, etc, to make the event more exciting!
At the vFairs virtual benefits fair, you can also upload benefit details, terms and conditions, and more to your resource vault. Employees can download resources to their virtual briefcase as they navigate the fair.
You can also share event info, agenda and more via a branded landing page. Your global workforce can access the event and browse through the resources at any time at their own convenience.
You can easily track real-time metrics like employee turnout and engagement at your virtual benefits fair. Moreover, you can access booth visits, resource downloads, and webinar views. vFairs lets you analyze employee journeys and use feedback surveys to measure success. You can also run post-event reports analyzing your benefits fair’s ROI.
vFairs is a leading event management platform that can help you organize a successful virtual benefits fair. You can contact us today to get started. Our dedicated project management team will help you with every step of the process.
We propose that your organization set up a vFairs virtual benefits fair at least four weeks in advance. Everything from event planning and software setup to event design and content upload is covered.
With so many options, each virtual event platform has unique features that can help you organize a successful virtual benefits fair. vFairs, however, is a highly recommended option. vFairs has created a name for itself in the events industry, receiving high marks in G2 ratings. G2 Reports has named vFairs the industry leader, with an average rating of 4.7/5.
You can run your vFairs benefits fair all year and even beyond.
Hira Yousaf
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