Smart Benefits: 5 Steps to Open Enrollment Success
Monday, November 16, 2020
It’s open enrollment season again.
And in this cycle, with the coronavirus to contend with, careful planning and thoughtful execution is more important than ever. To help you prepare for success, here are five tips to boost employee engagement in your health insurance offerings.
1. Reflect. Before you embark on this year’s efforts, reflect on the previous open enrollment period to identify where things went well and how they could be improved for this year. Then set your objectives for the period, such as increasing participation in a specific plan.
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2. Communicate. To help employees understand their choices so you achieve your enrollment goals, be proactive with communication. Determine who you want to reach, key messages you want to communicate and the type of media you’ll use – especially important this year with so many remote workforces. While you may have relied on in-person meetings in the past, you may want to consider virtual meetings, email communications, or a PowerPoint presentation with audio voice over. Brainshark is a popular option for the latter approach.
3. Educate. If you’re offering any new plans this year, be sure to educate employees on their additional options, including deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, so they can evaluate carefully and make the best purchasing decision. Your broker, vendor and health plan representatives should support this work so be sure to hold these partners accountable to add value and increase employee understanding and engagement.
4. Go Passive. During the pandemic, with employees facing challenges at home and at work, many employers are planning to keep the same plans and offerings to provide stability. When an employer maintains the same plans, the vast majority of employees don’t change options. Rather than requiring an active election, consider a passive enrollment that automatically re-enrolls all employees in their current plans with the same dependent elections unless they actively request a change. This approach minimizes the work for both employees and your HR team. One thing to keep in mind is that contributions to Flexible Spending Accounts and Health Savings Accounts can’t be passively rolled over from year to year but must be actively re-elected so if you choose to the passive enrollment route, remind employees of this step.
5. Start Over. Once this year’s open enrollment period is over, it’s time to start planning for the next one. So follow up the period with surveys to gauge what was clear or confusing and identify any concerns so you can develop a strategy for driving the greatest satisfaction in the process going forward.
Sam Slade is Managing Director, Employee Benefits, at The Hilb Group of New England, where he delivers consulting and brokerage services to local employers. He has extensive experience in all aspects of employee benefits, including underwriting, plan design, communications, compliance, and analytics, with a particular focus on alternative funding and self-insurance. Sam lives in South Kingstown with his wife and three sons.
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