It’s almost here! Open enrollment is right around the corner. So, how do you make sure your employees are listening, learning, and participating?
The best way to avoid confusion and maximize engagement is to make sure your employees are armed with all the resources they need to make an informed decision and choose the benefit options that best meet the needs of their families.
Here are some tips to increase engagement for this year’s open enrollment…
Educate
Does this sound familiar? We harp on this one a lot, but it’s so important for your workers to understand their benefits and how they all work together, especially when you offer voluntary benefits that supplement their health insurance.
One helpful tactic is to show employees how they used their benefits last year to help them see if they’re over or under-insured. Tools that predict out-of-pocket costs are also helpful ways of identifying any financial risk exposure. Voluntary benefits like accident or life insurance can often help fill these gaps.
Communicate
It’s important to communicate the right information, but it’s equally important to communicate it at the right time via the most appropriate channel. There are many tools available that can allow you to target certain information to segments of your workforce at specific times, for instance only those who still haven’t signed up for benefits as the deadline looms.
Multi-media communications that use video, text, and other components are great examples of an integrated approach. It’s also important to base your delivery method on what your employees prefer. You want to make sure they read your messages and, even more importantly, take action on them.
Optimize
The more you can do to make the enrollment process seem less like a chore, the better. We can offer a benefits management platform with all the bells and whistles to make enrolling in benefits as painless as possible.
With the ability to see who has and hasn’t submitted their benefit elections (and who hasn’t even logged in!), you can tailor your follow up communications to remind the right people at the right time to keep your enrollment period on track.
Reward
One way to make open enrollment more fun is by offering prizes and incentives. Have drawings or offer gifts to those who complete their enrollment by a certain date. Stagger your incentives so that you can stretch them out over the entire enrollment period. Draw names for gift cards or other free perks, and then enter all the names into a drawing for a grand prize.
Benefit options are more complex and confusing than they’ve ever been. Make sure your employees are confident in the choices they make and have the coverage that best meets their needs. This both increases employees satisfaction and elevates the value of your benefit offerings. The end result is time and money saved for both you and your employees.