Pre-Open Enrollment

For HR teams Open Enrollment actually starts months before employees start signing up for their benefits.

The pre open enrollment period is when HR teams should complete all their planning, develop their collateral, and implement the technology that they will utilize to help ensure their season is a success. In this section we discuss how to position benefits as a financial resource, answer frequently asked questions about the pre-open enrollment period, and highlight the key action items HR Teams should be aware of.

Employees want tools and resources to navigate increasing financial pressure and rising healthcare costs. To meet this need, offer benefits that empower employees to take a proactive approach to their healthcare and financial wellness.

To meet employees’ needs, benefits offerings must:

• Have built in flexibility for today’s remote workforce, including teleleath
• Offer a choice of providers and services, including mental health
• Enable employees to save for the future and prepare for the unexpected

To prepare for open enrollment, build on your mid-year review and look over benefits performance and data in order to understand how you can update your benefits mix.

Step 1: Assess how employees are engaging with your current benefits offering and adjust accordingly

Review your data from employer dashboards and reports to understand benefits utilization

• What are employees using the most? The least?
• Are employees contributing to their HSAs or FSAs?

Collect feedback from employees

• Satisfaction level with current benefits
• What did employees like or dislike about the open enrollment process?
• Common questions and concerns you can preemptively address this year?
• What is most valuable to employees? For example, HSA and 401(k) matching, tuition reimbursement, lifestyle spending
• What benefits would employees like to see added? For example, Medical Travel Accounts, Lifestyle Spending Accounts

Set up a meeting with and review plan performance data from your benefits provider

• Request comparisons to other companies’ performance
• Compare your benefits utilization to industry benchmarks, such as the Devenir report for HSAs

Drop options that are ineffective or low popularity and add options employees want

• Add a high deductible health plan (HDHP) if you don’t have one already and health savings account (HSA) to encourage savings on premiums and increased ability to save
• Increase HSA, FSA, HRA, or 401K contributions to incentivize employees to participate
• Provide access to financial planning and counseling to encourage ongoing financial wellness
• Increase access to mental health counseling, including telehealth options
• Add or increase Lifestyle Spending Accounts to support employee wellness and easy employees’ financial stress
• Add a Medical Travel Account to support employees’ access to healthcare they need, no matter where they live

Step 2: Make an open enrollment plan and gather materials that you need

Set measurable goals for employee engagement

• Engagement metrics can include email opens, webinar attendance, content downloads, and time spent on resource websites

Create an employee communications plan to maximize engagement

• Break your plan out week by week

Create an employee communications plan to maximize engagement

• Break your plan out week by week

Schedule virtual benefits information sessions

• Ensure these are at different times of day to accommodate different schedules and time zones

Create an internal website for open enrollment to drive employees to a single, centralized source for information

• Include all information and resources employees need in one place
• Ensure it is visually appealing, well organized, and easy to navigate
• Keep site active even after open enrollment for ongoing education

Send out open enrollment preview communications to employees to highlight:

• Open enrollment timing and what to expect
• New plan options
• Invitations to sign up for information sessions

When should HR teams start planning for open enrollment?

If your benefit plan years track the calendar year, you can start preparing for open enrollment in the spring. Work with benefit providers and administrators to collect data on plan usage and employee engagement rates and distribute employee satisfaction surveys. The surveys should aim to determine which of the benefits are providing a value to employees and where there are holes in the current suite of benefits offerings.

When do most companies offer open enrollment?

If your benefits or fiscal year follows the calendar year, most companies with this schedule offer open enrollment in the fall.

How long does open enrollment typically last?

The open enrollment period differs by company, but is typically between two and four weeks.

How should HR teams determine the right benefit mix for their company?

Getting the right benefits mix is crucial to company success. It must marry affordability with employee support and can feel like an artform. The best way to ensure your benefits package is as comprehensive and valuable as possible (for your budget) is to:

• Drop any underperforming benefits.
• Use the quantitative and qualitative data you collected from benefits providers and employee surveys to identify holes in coverage.
• Work with your benefits broker to fill the holes in coverage.

What’s the best way to set goals around open enrollment?

First, the goals you set should be both measurable and achievable (for example, 60% employee participation in benefits). Second, your open enrollment goals should help you achieve broader company initiatives including those related to recruitment, retention, cost containment and business goals.

How do we choose the right technology to support our open enrollment efforts?

There are many ways HR teams can use technology to support their open enrollment process. A good rule of thumb is that any tool you choose should be:

• Easy to use
• Make managing the process easier
• Make enrolling in benefits easier for employees

Areas where technology can be hugely beneficial include:

• The enrollment process (online/digital benefits enrollment is essential)
• Data management
• Communication

How do we develop an effective communication strategy?

An effective employee communication strategy should include:

• One source of truth for the open enrollment period. It should include essential dates, key benefits and eligibility information, how they sign up for their benefits and any other essential information. This can be an internal website, an internal shared drive folder, a Slack channel, etc.
• Multiple channel communication. People learn about information in different ways, so make sure to cast the widest net possible. That means: emails, internal chat, physical brochures, live and virtual Q & A events, and town halls.
• Leveraging of materials benefits brokers and benefits providers have already created.