The project management involved in open enrollment involves a lot of hats. HR needs a diverse range of skills to succeed, making it impossible to do alone. Aligning all of these skills, means managing this massive project with grace. It means having great team management. It means bringing together diverse stakeholders to focus on common goals. Goals that the whole company depends on. Goals like employee satisfaction and motivation, time efficiency, reducing healthcare costs, and, ultimately, helping the company succeed so it can accomplish its mission. A lot is riding on open enrollment.
Moreover, the process of planning open enrollment is not just complex. It also requires adaptability. And, when it comes to open enrollment timelines, deadlines are deadlines because you can’t be late. Therefore, with all its moving parts and unforgiving deadlines, planning for open enrollment demands a different kind of approach than most projects.
In our experience, HR leaders who truly succeed at planning open enrollment do the seemingly impossible. They somehow succeed at combining traditional project management strategies with a counterintuitive approach.
In this guide, we will walk you through steps to put together a comprehensive open enrollment implementation plan. And we’ll include an HR open enrollment checklist to ensure you’re fully prepared for the upcoming season.
As is true with almost all projects, transparency, clear communication, detailed planning, and clearly defining roles are a given. As usual, you’ll probably want to have a centralized dashboard in your project management platform for keeping track of all project items on a high level. And if you know how to set up a Gantt board, you can give all stakeholders a clear understanding of what needs to be done and when.
Obviously, you’ll need to define who is accountable and responsible for each task and who is responsible for ensuring each contributor is on schedule. And be sure to plan in some buffer time for inevitable mishaps, sick days, and other delay-causers.
These are all givens when it comes to managing projects and people. But in the next section, we’ll explore some ideas that are less well-known.
Here are six counterintuitive tips for creating a successful open enrollment project plan so your employees can enjoy their benefits more fully.
If you think you need four months to plan for open enrollment, give yourself five or six. Give yourself plenty of time to analyze data from previous years’ open enrollment surveys, plan your open enrollment communication strategies, set realistic goals, and consider new technological solutions.
This all means that your pre-planning will probably need to start right at the beginning of Q2 when you are deciding the goals of employees who will be working on the open enrollment project.
Starting early also takes some of the stress out of open enrollment for HR and lets you give company-wide stakeholders a running start…
Although getting all of the stakeholders involved early may seem premature, it can save a lot of heartache in the long run. Even though they won’t be actively involved in the execution yet, it’s valuable to get their buy-in early. Not to mention that they may have valuable insights and ideas worth considering before initial planning starts.
Not to mention the value of getting the team together to create a sense of teamwork and camaraderie.
Although it’s natural to want to plan everything from the get-go, doing so can come with a price. Instead, consider what aspects of the planning process will need flexibility in the future and leave those for later. That way, instead of getting locked into an inflexible plan, you leave room to make changes and pivot when you have the information you need to take on that next challenge.
According to a study by Atlassian, “80% of workers say most of their meetings could be done in half the time.” Having fewer meetings with clearly defined goals can leave more time for stakeholders to execute plans. As long as everyone is bought into the goals and are accomplishing their responsibilities, meetings should be more about meaningful discussions and collaboration points.
Some decisions should only be made by the project leader or as a collaborative group, but some can be made on the periphery. Giving team members the license to make some of the decisions on their own, in real-time, gives them more ownership and helps maintain the flow of progress.
Many HR teams tack on new technologies each year to accomplish new goals. And that ends up making it over-complicated to keep track of everything. The more technologies you have, the more difficult and inefficient it becomes to have them all work together. Not to mention the difficulties this poses to the employees who have to juggle each technology.
The ideal way to use technologies is to find ones that are easy to master and can fulfill many different needs. For example, Healthee allows employees to compare insurance plans during open enrollment and navigate their benefits all year round as a one-stop shop for their health and wellness needs.
Planning open enrollment is a complex task that benefits from both traditional project management and innovative, counterintuitive strategies.
Starting the process early, involving stakeholders sooner, delaying detailed planning to maintain flexibility, reducing the number of meetings, decentralizing decision-making, and minimizing the number of technologies used can all help improve results. These methods not only help streamline the process but can also enhance employee engagement and satisfaction. By implementing these strategies, HR leaders can manage open enrollment more effectively and contribute to the overall success of their company.
Additionally, considering tools like Healthee, which simplifies comparing insurance plans and navigating benefits, can further optimize the open enrollment experience for employees.
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