As open enrollment season approaches, it’s easy to get anxious about what lies ahead. Open enrollment is challenging enough on its own, and HR teams are under enough stress without the added workload open enrollment brings. More than two-thirds of HR leaders say that stress in general is on the rise. As HR deals with greater pressures around compliance and being a strategic business partner, open enrollment feels like yet another item on a to-do list that already feels too long.
But you can get through this season and help your employees make informed benefits decisions with the right tactics. Here are five ways to make open enrollment easier this year.
1. Work with your employee resource groups
ERGs are influential among employees, and they can be an important partner in spreading the word about open enrollment.
Meet with the ERGs to share the major updates to your benefits program, and discuss how the changes will impact each of your populations. With that information, you can create customized marketing materials that can be disseminated within each ERG.
ERGs are great for generating word-of-mouth marketing. By engaging with them and empowering them with custom materials, you can reach employees who view them as a trusted resource.
2. Call out key changes, and explain why things have changed
One of the challenges of open enrollment is information overload. Streamline decision-making for your employees by highlighting the most important updates to your benefits.
Many of those updates are price increases, and that’s not fun news to deliver. Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. Explaining the why behind these changes can help soften the blow. Employees don’t know that the popular healthcare plan you offered last year is no longer available. They’re unaware that you were actually able to negotiate lower rates from your carriers than you were originally quoted.
Give employees context, and you’ll build trust while making the changes easier to digest.
3. Empower your managers
A significant number of employees — 33% — say they want to learn about benefits from their managers. Like ERGs, managers are viewed as a trusted source of information.
However, many managers don’t feel comfortable guiding employees through benefits decisions. The world of deductibles, premiums, and out-of-pocket maximums can be confusing. While the HR team should handle more complex questions, managers can help address common employee concerns.
Train managers on your most frequently asked questions, especially the ones that you find yourself answering over and over. With informed managers handling basic questions that frees you up to work on other, more complex aspects of open enrollment.
4. Get feedback
With every open enrollment season, it’s common to try new tactics to improve communication. Make the most of your efforts by getting feedback on the process.
In addition to surveying the broader workforce, you can also reach out to your ERGs and managers to get their unique perspectives. By asking while the experience is fresh in employees’ minds, you can get their most honest, reliable feedback. And that allows you to keep doing the tactics that work and to adjust the ones that don’t.
5. Keep messaging year-round
While open enrollment may last for a couple of weeks, you can remind employees that many of your benefits are accessible year-round. This is a great time to promote your flexible benefits and set your employees up to self-serve.
Encourage them to access your benefits portal and familiarize themselves with your self-service tools. The more comfortable they are navigating their benefits options, the more prepared they’ll be when open enrollment season returns.
Open enrollment doesn’t have to be a total headache
Benefits are complicated, and there will always be some anxiety around open enrollment. With these tips, you can help make the process less painful.
Relying on partners like ERGs and managers will reduce the burden on HR and help you reach more of your workforce. Proactively communicating about key changes and the decision-making behind them will help employees process benefits information more effectively. And by keeping benefits top-of-mind year-round, you can help employees be more comfortable with self-service.
For more tips on navigating this open enrollment season, check out our Open Enrollment Survival Guide for the Modern HR Team Member.