The time has come to create a more transparent open enrollment communication strategy.
If you were to ask most employees about their open enrollment experience, what would they say?
Surprisingly, many don’t know what open enrollment is. Many don’t know how it works. And all too many don’t know how to get the most out of it.
According to MetLife’s 2023 Study on Employee Benefits Trends, “62% of employees say understanding how to use their benefits would give them a greater sense of overall stability while 50% say having a better understanding of their benefits — what’s offered and what’s covered — would make them more loyal.”
That means most employees don’t understand their benefits. Moreover, employees who don’t understand their benefits desperately wish they did (although they’re not always willing to invest time in researching it).
HR leaders aren’t just tasked with choosing new health plans to meet their employees’ ever-evolving needs. They also must communicate intricate health plan details to employees of varying health literacy and implement a seamless open enrollment period without letting anyone fall through the cracks.
All this stress and responsibility means an open enrollment communication strategy is essential for HR leaders involved in employee benefits communication. By planning how they’ll communicate plan changes and thinking through employee activation emails ahead of time, HR leaders can avoid the last-minute stress of low employee enrollment and a barrage of health plan questions in the final hours of open enrollment.
In this guide, I will share with you the strategies we at Healthee have learned and developed to ace benefits communication. Here, we’ll focus specifically on your open enrollment communication plan.
Having a great open enrollment communication plan will help contain healthcare costs, prevent unnecessary healthcare costs, improve employee satisfaction and engagement, improve DEI, and give your employees and their dependents the healthcare they deserve. They desperately need your help.
Here are some more reasons to invest in your open enrollment communications strategy:
Making sure your employees understand their benefits options and can navigate them is a crucial aspect of their health literacy. A 2022 study showed that employees with low health literacy were significantly more likely to revisit the emergency department than those with adequate health literacy.
Second only to employee salaries, health benefits account for the largest company expense for most companies. In fact, according to the Keiser Family Foundation 2023 Employer Health Benefits Survey, in 2023, family coverage cost an average of $23,968 per year and single coverage cost $8,435 per year. And costs are on the rise. But, while every employer is highly meticulous about the expenses related to paying salaries, many are bleeding health benefits expenses unnecessarily.
According to an Aflac study of over 2000 employees, most employees spend less than half an hour per year learning about their benefits. On the other hand, many employees don’t understand their benefits, as mentioned. Why? Some employees don’t have the patience, some don’t have time or take the time, some are just overwhelmed, and many feel inadequate that they don’t ‘just know’ how these things work.
That means your communications must be engaging and get the point across quickly and clearly.
Now for the challenge. It’s not easy to get employees to engage with the content you’ll painstakingly produce to help them. According to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, 80% of employees never open benefits communication.
That leads us to the next consideration: your audience.
To succeed in communicating with your employee audience, you need to know who they are. We recommend learning who they are and their demographics and then bucketing them into persona groups. This will help immensely in targeting your communications in a manageable way. Moreover, knowing who your employees are should also be considered when choosing healthcare plans to have on offer in the first place.
Here are some more reasons to invest in your open enrollment communications strategy:
Here are some things to consider about different issues your employees may have that you’ll want to be considerate of:
Each company’s employee population is different. Considering your employee population and demographics can help you target your communications to them.
Once you know your employees and their demographics, you can create personas.
Today, many companies use AI virtual assistants to assist each employee according to their exact healthcare needs. For those who don’t, categorizing employees into persona groups is all the more important. Doing so makes the process of communicating to all employees more manageable.
Once you’ve defined your employee persona groups, you can then consider:
This section focuses on the key elements of open enrollment communications, such as what to say and specifying your goals. Part six will focus on how to go about putting it all together.
Here are some more points to include in your communications:
Remember, what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to your employees. For example, according to a Voya study, 54% of millennials have a lack of understanding of their benefits’ features. So, be sure to communicate the fundamentals.
Here are some fundamentals to educating your employees about open enrollment. Feel free to copy and paste them directly into your communication messages.
Open enrollment is the time of year when you can:
Open enrollment happens just once a year, and what employees decide will affect them throughout the year, so be sure they understand that.
Probably not. Only employees who have what is called a “qualifying life event” mid-year will be eligible to change their health plans. Changes of circumstances that are considered a qualifying life event include:
Even if you expect to have a qualifying life event within the next year, choosing the most appropriate health coverage during open enrollment is still a good idea.
Yes. Employees may not realize it, but even if you don’t want to choose the same health plans this year, you still have things to do.
For example, Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) are not automatically renewed. You have to “re-elect” your FSAs each year because they are exempt from taxes. According to the IRS, “You can change or revoke your [FSS] election only if specifically allowed by law and the plan.”
Now that we’ve covered what to communicate, let’s explore where to distribute your messages effectively.
Section two above discusses how to define your audience and their needs and then create persona groups out of them. Once you have decided on the personas you’re focusing on, it should be pretty simple to consider what channels will work for each. Make sure to consider how best to engage each of them.
Here is a list of recommended channels to use, depending on your personas:
In our experience, short, clear messages in tools like Slack can be more effective than long emails.
Also, be sure to set up tracking wherever possible. For example, if you can track email open rates, remember to set that up with IT beforehand. And remember to consider what channels have worked well in the past and why.
Automation in HR is a game-changer. If done right, it can help employees get what they need quickly and efficiently, and save HR enormous amounts of time.
For example, one Healthee case study shows that employees selected their plans in an average of just nine minutes using Healthee’s personalized AI platform.
As much as possible, personalizing communications to each employee’s specific situation and needs can make all the difference. Figure out what each type of persona wants and needs to know.
This is another reason we highly recommend using an AI-powered employee benefits platform like Healthee. A good AI-based platform can personalize each employee’s experience, show them exact costs, and communicate expected prices based on their specific situation.
A well-planned communication strategy that launches early enough will help avoid last-minute rushes. Additionally, it will give employees sufficient time to learn about their options and make a decision they’ll be happy with.
Moreover, your timeline for creating all of the communication content should put you in a position to have everything ready well before open enrollment starts.
Here’s an example of a generic timeline. You’re welcome to use any parts of it that may fit your company’s specific needs.
Initial notice announcing open enrollment and letting employees know about the upcoming stages and important dates. Also, let them know about any technology they can use to compare plans.
Don’t work too hard, though. Here’s an email template for announcing open enrollment to employees to give you a head start.
Share detailed information about each benefits plan, including any changes from the previous year. Share explainer video, FAQ list, and resource guides to help employees understand their options.
Conduct workshops or webinars to explain the benefits plans, teach how to use plan comparison technology, and answer questions. Also, one-on-one meetings with HR representatives should be available to answer employees’ personal questions.
Remind employees about the importance of reviewing benefits options and getting answers to their questions early. For employees needing to update their personal information, it’s best to get that done now.
Send a final reminder with all key dates and deadlines, emphasizing the urgency to enroll.
Send regular and frequent reminders throughout the enrollment period, addressing common questions and providing assistance. Mention the running countdown of how many people have already registered to show urgency.
Send out a post-open enrollment survey to find out people’s preferences and hear suggestions for improvement.
Following a timeline helps prepare employees for open enrollment and encourages high participation rates and employee satisfaction with their benefits choices.
Here are some tips on how to put the plan together.
This section will help you bring everything together by looking at past data, setting goals, monitoring success, leveraging technology, and making health benefits communication an ongoing process.
During open enrollment, track as much of your objective success as possible. Track open rates, click-through rates, and event attendance.
Additionally, getting subjective feedback from employees can be no less important. Collect feedback forms and surveys to discover how their experiences were.
As mentioned above, while keeping an eye on the numbers and percentages of employees who completed their open enrollments, you can share that data with the company. Add an element of motivation by sharing the open enrollment rates by department.
As a general rule, goal setting should ideally be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
So the first step is to define what you want to achieve. Example goals could be to have:
Your goals should build on previous years’ data and align with the company’s goals. Look at which employees didn’t open their open enrollment emails last year and consider why that is the case. Are there departments that engage less with your communications? If so, why is that, and should you explore ways to improve their results?
We also highly recommend studying the results of any post-open enrollment surveys from past years.
Remember to keep track of your goals and data from year to year to build on each year’s success.
Automating email campaigns, reminders, and follow-up messages can save HR significant time and busy work.
And to ace open enrollment, consider implementing an AI tool, such as Healthee, for personalized recommendation and decision support. With the right tool, you can reduce your busy work by over 80% while providing even better employee support.
Keep health benefits at the top of employees’ minds year-round with helpful tips and updates on a regular basis. Educating employees about things like FSAs and how to use them will empower your employees to get the most out of their health benefits, and it will make open enrollment season smoother and even more successful next year.
Having an effective opening roommate Communications strategy and plan is essential for ensuring each employee understands their benefits options and what they need to do to get the most out of open enrollment season. By following the ideas above, you’ll have the power to streamline the process, improve engagement, and ultimately improve each employee’s overall well-being.
At Healthee, we’re committed to helping companies like yours optimize their health benefits and open enrollment processes. With Healthee, users can check how different plans would work for their and their dependents’ specific healthcare needs — as easily as making a purchase on Amazon.
To take your healthcare benefits strategy to the next level, consider integrating Healthee into your benefits management approach. Our platform saves time, reduces administrative burden, and enhances the employee experience.
If you would like to learn more about how Healthee can support your HR team, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
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