Touch-Up Your Open Enrollment Strategy With These Tips

With Open Enrollment period just around the corner, employers and their benefit partners have started tweaking their strategies so that all employee needs are met successfully.

Open Enrollment is a crucial time for both employers and employees, where employees are given a chance to re-evaluate their existing plans or enroll for a new one and employers get to select a balanced cost-effective and efficient solution facilitating the enrollment process. But, with the constant change in benefits offerings and their complex nature, open enrollment is placing new demands on the employees as well as employers. Thus, a re-engineered enrollment plan will come handy in such critical situations.

Drive Meaningful Connection With Employees Through Effective Communication

1. Utilize variety of channels — Different employees respond to different media. Therefore, employers must analyze these means and let employees know what is going to be unveiled in the upcoming benefits meetings.
2. Consider Gen Y workers — As the benefit plans are not specially designed for millennials, thus, they tend to pay less attention and suffer in the later stages, feeling dissatisfied. Employers must put special efforts in communicating with them by making them understand the importance of these offerings according to individual specific needs.
3. Open the floor for some face time — Conduct an orientation meeting where employees can clear their queries and get detailed information regarding the benefits you’ll be offering. If possible, make small groups to address the information effectively.

Engage & Update Employees

1. Make meetings compulsory — To make employees more engaged with their benefits offerings, make benefits meetings compulsory. Another way is to opt for active enrollment method rather than using the passive approach, so that employees need to review their plans before enrolling.
2. Keeping them short and interactive — Don’t overload your employees with too much information; this might result in their disinterest. Deliver only what they are required to know for the plan year.

TeemWurk Benefits Administration

Go Green! Go Paperless! Go Digital!

1. Adopt a benefits administration technology — Drop the old traditional paper processes and make use of an efficient benefits admin system. This will help in streamlining the overall process, while making it faster and error-free.
2. Enhance the ease through a mobile app — Providing all benefits information right at the employees’ fingertips will help them discuss plans at their ease regardless of their geographical location.

Keep The Momentum Going! Make OE An Year-Long Strategy Not A Last Minute Call!

1. Start Early — Planning early will help in updating yourself and your employees with latest modifications in the benefits laws or certain plans. Also changes in eligibility requirements and carrier pre-requisites can be fulfilled effectively.
2. Audit last year’s strategy — It is also important to analyze where things went wrong in the previous year. Make a note of all the pain-points so that the coming open enrollment can go as smooth as you wish it to be.

Overall, an effective and successful open enrollment requires hassle-free communication and well-in-advance preparation. By catering all the above mentioned requirements, employers are sure to experience highly satisfied employees, unmatched enrollment process and more enjoyable experience.