CASE STUDY

Alaska Railroad

Alaska Railroad Corporation employs a variety of individuals with a wide range of education and skill sets. The average employee age is 42 and their workforce is 80% male and 20% female. They have about 1,000 benefit-eligible employees, with 700 union and 300 non-union.

Situation

Alaska Railroad Corporation is having trouble managing increased health plan costs and knows their current plan design is unsustainable. In an effort to address this, they created a Cost Containment Committee of both union and non-union employees to develop ideas together to restructure the plan design to be sustainable.

The Committee expressed a concern that employees need to first understand the benefits they currently receive. Benefit materials were disparate and not in a cohesive guide. They also wanted at least 60% of employees report that they read the guide.

Solution

The benefit team immediately gravitated toward the concept of a “benefit journal” with a leather-bound cover. The text and tone is conversational, leveraging travel-related metaphors to describe the various benefits available from the Railroad.

Results

  • Professionally developed communications helped increase employee appreciation of employer-provided benefits.
  • 65% percent of employees said they read their enrollment guide
  • 80% of employees answered, four out of five questions correctly on a benefit survey that would actually “quiz” employees about their plan understanding.