It may surprise you that the area of the office you and I vaguely hand wave toward and call “HR” is actually made up of a variety of professional roles – some general, some quite specialized. For example, employee benefits administrators are responsible for overseeing your medical and dental insurance, commuter benefits, pension plans, vacation time, etc. This means they play an important role in attracting and keeping employees happy.
So how do these HR professionals keep up with the latest best practices, changing laws, and industry news? They turn to social media of course!
With that in mind, we decided to analyze 11,420 public tweets from 317 employee benefits professionals in January 2016 to help you better understand where they’re located, the topics they’re talking about, and what kind of content they’re consuming and sharing… because we knew you’d be interested!
Where Are Employee Benefits Professionals Located?
Benefits professionals are hard at work in cities big and small across the US. We found that the top metros for benefits professionals in each region were:
West: San Francisco/San Jose
Southwest: Dallas/Ft. Worth
Midwest: Chicago
Southeast: Atlanta and Tampa (tie)
Northeast: New York
What do Employee Benefits Professionals Talk About on Social Media?
Clearly healthcare and health insurance are the big-ticket items when it comes to employee benefits – and that’s reflected in the numerous related hashtags that show up on the word cloud above. It’s also nice to see benefits professionals talking about ways to bring those costs down for employers and employees with options like #HDHP #HSA and #FSA.
It’s also interesting to note there are several hashtags that point to an emphasis on #wellness and not just where it intersects with healthcare. We see conversations happening around the bigger topic of workplace wellness with hashtags #financialwellness, #fitness, #mentalhealth, #worklifebalance.
And lastly, while HR can sometimes get a bad rap for being techno-phobic, there’s a whole group of people who are working to show leadership through the adoption of new analytics and technology. This places benefits pros at the table for discussions around #cybersecurity and the responsibilities that come with managing more personnel (and personal!) data.
Which Publications are Popular with Employee Benefits Professionals on Social Media?
Mainstream publications that leverage the “contributor” model, like Forbes and The Huffington Post, rank highly across the different decision maker groups we analyze, and benefits professionals are no exception. These publications invite industry thought leaders to bring their perspectives to a new and bigger audience, while also letting the publication get into deeper areas of a topic than might be of interest to a general audience.
No surprise, benefits professionals also turn to industry publications. For instance, Benefit News, Benefitspro, SHRM, and Modern Healthcare all top the list for employee benefits professionals. Each of these provide a rich source of content on industry news, best practices, and/or compliance related information critical to the day-to-day responsibilities of benefits professionals.
What Can You Do with These Social Insights?
Whether you’re a benefits professional thinking about how to build your personal or employer brand or a marketer that sells to these HR professionals, here are some questions that social insights like these can help answer:
- Are you planning or participating in events where benefits professionals live and work?
- Are you monitoring and using the right hashtags to reach and engage this audience?
- Are you creating content that reflects the themes, topics, and conversations they care about?
- Are you reading and sharing content from their favorite work-related publications?
Want to learn even more about what HR professionals are up to on social media? Download our latest social insights report using the box below.
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