Pulling off a successful open enrollment is like pulling off the Olympic Games. Ok, maybe it’s not quite that complicated, but like any big event — let’s say, a wedding or a play — open enrollment is the culmination of many months of careful behind-the-scenes orchestration. The part employees experience is just the tip of the iceberg.
Communication is one of the most critical elements of any successful open enrollment season. As a benefits professional, your job involves not only assembling an attractive and economically prudent benefits package but also empowering employees to make the best choices by educating them on their options.
Working against you is the unfortunate fact that most employees would rather do almost anything else than learn about and choose benefits. (Sorry, open enrollment just isn’t that popular.) So, if you hope to break through the noise, overcome employees’ dislike of open enrollment, and guide them toward better choices, you have your work cut out for you.
No matter when you’re reading this, it’s never too early to formulate an open enrollment communications action plan.
The Three Elements of an Effective OE Action Plan
From an HR perspective, open enrollment isn’t really one thing; it plays out in phases. We recommend breaking your overall OE action plan into three mini-strategies:
- The design phase. Starting several months before open enrollment, this is when benefits teams begin assembling the resources their employees are going to need to make informed, timely decisions.
- The distribution phase. Once the resources are ready, it’s time to get them into employee hands and educate, educate, educate.
- The decision phase. This is the period most employees think of as “open enrollment.” HR’s role is to guide employees while they make decisions and enroll.
Let’s dive deeper into each phase to see what needs to get done for a smooth and successful open enrollment season.
1. The Design Phase: Choosing and Creating Resources
Educational resources are the raw material of your open enrollment communications campaign. This is the content employees turn to to explore new or existing benefit options and learn about the enrollment process.
Traditionally, open enrollment is built around a single definitive resource: the standard benefits guide. But while the benefits guide still has its place — there are still plenty of reading-based learners among us, after all — its sheer bulk and density can discourage modern audiences suffering from short attention spans.
To expand your OE action plan beyond the traditional benefits guide, consider integrating innovative new resource types, such as:
- Benefits microsites, one-stop, mobile-friendly online resources for all things related to benefits and enrollment.
- Explainer videos designed to demystify complex benefits topics (such as HDHPs and HSAs) with compelling imagery and approachable narration.
- Virtual benefits fairs or showcases that bring all the positive aspects of the traditional benefits fair into an accessible online format.
It might also be a good time to jazz up your benefits guide. Visualizations such as charts, diagrams, and illustrations can break up the textual monotony and help visual learners quickly grasp complex concepts.
2. The Distribution Phase: Getting the Word Out
Your goal for the distribution phase should be to target as many employees as possible so that, ideally, when open enrollment arrives, it doesn’t surprise anyone. Planning for this phase involves selecting the right content distribution channels for your employee population.
Email is a given. It’s a pretty safe bet most of your employees have email, but whether they read their messages is another issue. The typical white-collar worker is buried under hundreds or thousands of unread emails, and many will refuse to read anything longer than a few sentences. (Again, those short attention spans.)
Clearly, a single, massive open enrollment email will languish unread at the bottom of most employee inboxes.
To rise above the constant daily deluge of messaging, try sending out short, timely blasts throughout the year. Choose topics that correspond with whatever is top-of-mind for employees at different times of the year — financial wellness during tax season, for example, or mental health benefits during Mental Health Awareness Month in May.
As for open enrollment season itself, here are three short and to-the-point OE email templates you can use to announce open enrollment and remind employees of the coming deadline.
Beyond email, other distribution options include:
- Text messaging (SMS). Mass texting might be the quickest way to reach the largest number of employees. Over 90% of people read their text messages within three minutes of receiving them. (Just keep your messages short and be aware of texting regulations.)
- Posters and flyers. A well-designed print publication posted in a frequently trafficked public area can still make an impression. Posters and flyers are good options for retail or industrial workplaces, where people spend more time on their feet.
- Kick-off events. Bringing everyone together for a launch event can help generate excitement for open enrollment. However, be respectful of employees’ busy schedules. Work with managers to ensure your events don’t get in the way of crucial work deadlines or add to employee workloads.
- Webinars. Optional online Q&As and presentations can provide access to expert advice on choosing benefits.
- Pre-recorded voice messages. Surprisingly, voice notes are surging in popularity. Some people find the recorded voice more personal than a text. If you’re not set up for this, ringless voicemail – where you leave a voicemail with your recipients but the phone doesn’t ring – is another method to deliver a voice message.
3. The Decision Phase: Offering Trusted Guidance
After the educational material has been distributed, the kick-off has been held, and open enrollment begins, the communications action plan is far from complete.
Employees will need guidance as they research their benefits and enroll. They may have questions. They may forget about deadlines. (Who are we kidding? Of course they’ll forget about deadlines!) Your role as a communicator during this crucial decision phase is to shepherd employees across the finish line.
Quick email or text message updates throughout open enrollment season can help keep employees on task and remind them that you and your team are available to assist. (Here are those email templates again.)
If you work for a smaller organization, one-on-one meetings with employees may be feasible. Even in larger organizations, video chat apps and scheduling tools make connecting for a brief conversation easier than ever before.
The next best thing to meeting personally with each employee is a decision-support tool. A decision-support tool is a digital app (generally mobile-friendly) that acts as a virtual benefits advisor.
Here’s how it works:
The decision-support tool asks employees a few non-invasive questions about their healthcare usage and then, based on the responses, projects their costs for the various plans offered.
The best decision-support tools apply cutting-edge analytics to massive member databases to provide accurate estimates and plan recommendations — and they do all this in a matter of minutes. The results are clear and cleanly designed to remove all the mystery and confusion from choosing benefits.
Start Planning for OE Now
In this article, we’ve covered the three essential phases of your open enrollment communications action plan: designing resources, distributing information, and guiding employees through the enrollment process.
How you approach and structure each phase is up to you. It depends entirely on your mix of employees and the resources available to your benefits team.
The important thing, however, is that for a successful, smooth, and satisfying open enrollment period you must have an action plan. So, whether open enrollment is a few weeks or many months down the road, get planning! (And if you need help, just let us know.)