Open enrollment season is here which can get hectic for your business. Your employees will have a lot of questions about benefits, and maybe you do too. Here are some steps you can take to make sure your open enrollment runs smoothly:
Start Early
Since benefits can be difficult to understand, it’s important to start talking about benefits and open enrollment early so you have time to address all employee questions and concerns. You can begin open enrollment with a presentation or even an informational email to get your employees thinking about benefits and answer some questions early on. Make sure that the way you give this presentation reaches everyone in your company, including remote and hybrid workers and employees who work different shifts.
Explain Essential Terms
Not understanding the terms used to talk about benefits, like deductible, co-pay, and co-insurance can make open enrollment frustrating and confusing. Offer resources to your employees that explain common benefits terminology. If you need a refresher yourself, check out our benefits terms blog.
Have Frequent Communication
To prevent confusion or errors, make sure you’re communicating frequently with your employees. Remind your employees about open enrollment deadlines and any benefits packages changes. Not all employees retain information the same, so when possible, develop communication in many forms so that you can reach the maximum number of employees possible. This means creating videos and PDF tutorials, having online enrollment options and back-up paper forms, and providing mailed and emailed reminders. Remember, many employees are making benefits elections for their entire families and may need to discuss options with a spouse. Making tutorials and other materials available online allows them to share the information with other key decision makers.
Make the Process Clear
Another place where your employees may get stuck is the process of signing up for benefits. Thoroughly explain what needs to be done and what happens if an employee misses the deadline. If your company partners with Helpside for benefits, we have tutorial videos we can share with you and your employees to ensure understanding for everyone at your company. Reach out to us at service@helpside.com for the tutorials.
Open enrollment doesn’t have to be difficult. Some advanced planning can make it a positive experience for everyone. And if you aren’t a current client of Helpside, but you’d like to learn more about handing all of your benefits communications and enrollments off to Helpside, reach out to us at marketing@helpside.com to learn more about our services.