During annual benefits open enrollment, your employees are asked to make important decisions about health, dental and life insurance, ancillary or voluntary benefits, and more. Yet, many workers report confusion and lack of awareness about benefits options and enrollment deadlines—often resulting in mistakes, frustration, and lost time for employees and HR representatives.
“Don’t assume employees understand the benefits options you’re putting in front of them. It’s important to be strategic about educating them,” said G&A Partners’ Director of Beneficial Jenifer Allbright. “A lack of knowledge can lead to employees choosing plans that don’t meet their needs.”
Managing open enrollment effectively empowers employees to make better decisions — and can lead to a better outlook on life and work. According to a 2023 MetLife report, “76% of workers who understand their benefits are happy and 82% believe their benefits give them a greater sense of overall stability.”
How to Communicate Open Enrollment to Employees
Open enrollment can be a complex process, especially for new employees. To ensure that everyone is informed and prepared, it's important to communicate the necessary details effectively.
Here are some benefits open enrollment tips to help your employees navigate the process:
Be Clear and Concise
- Provide straightforward details on what employees need to do.
- Use simple language and avoid unnecessary jargon.
Highlight Key Changes
- Clearly outline any new benefits or updates to existing plans.
- Focus on what’s new and how it affects employees.
Remind About Deadlines
- Regularly remind employees of important dates.
- Emphasize the importance of acting before the deadline.
Use Multiple Channels
- Share information via email, intranet, and office signage.
- Encourage managers to discuss in meetings and send reminders through texts or video messages.
These steps will help your team make informed decisions and feel supported throughout the benefits open enrollment process.
How to Prepare Employees for Open Enrollment
To ensure a smooth open enrollment process, it's important to prepare employees beforehand so they can make informed decisions.
Check out these open enrollment tips for employers:
1. Plan Ahead
After closing this year’s benefits enrollment period, take a short breather, then start planning for next year. Meet with your HR representative (or team) to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and to brainstorm improvements. Survey your employees for feedback on any difficulties they faced, what they need for a smoother process, and how they prefer to receive information about benefits, plans, options, deadlines, and the open enrollment process in general.
Additional steps to consider during your planning process:
- Set employee outreach and enrollment goals.
- Develop key messages and create clear, direct educational content.
- Plan a virtual benefits fair and distribute pre-enrollment flyers (both printed and online) and enrollment packets 6-8 weeks before enrollment begins.
- Conduct open enrollment through a benefits portal over about a three-week period.
- Collect feedback and suggestions throughout the process.
2. Make Resources Available Online and Clarify Technologies and Acronyms
Providing easy-to-understand tools and resources helps reduce employee confusion during open enrollment. Keep benefits plan information simple and accessible and consider offering interactive resources – like plan comparison tools – that explain deductibles and more.
When researching insurance and other benefits options, confusing terms and acronyms often arise.
For example, only 4% of health insurance consumers surveyed by Policygenius and Radius Global Research could accurately define all four of the following basic terms that apply to most health insurance plans:
- Copayment: A fixed amount you pay for a covered healthcare service or prescription drug.
- Coinsurance: The percentage of a covered healthcare service you pay after meeting your annual deductible.
- Deductible: A fixed dollar amount you pay for eligible services before your insurance plan begins reimbursing expenses.
- Out-of-Pocket Maximum: The limit on your share of covered healthcare costs in a plan year. After reaching this limit, your health plan covers 100% of all covered healthcare costs for the rest of the year.
Help employees make informed decisions by providing a glossary of common benefits terms and their definitions.
3. Bridge the Generation Gap
Employees have different needs at various life stages, so consider generation-specific concerns when designing your company’s open enrollment education and communication programs.
The youngest generation in the workforce, Generation Z (born 1997–2012), and new workers often find the open enrollment process confusing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that Gen Z will make up about 30% of the U.S. workforce by 2030, making it even more crucial to address their unique challenges.
“Healthcare plans, tuition reimbursement, wealth and income protection, and other benefits are foreign to candidates new to the workforce. If they’re not educated on options and how their plans work, they could make unfavorable decisions that negatively impact their lives and financial health,” according to Training Industry’s “The Importance of Educating Gen Z Employees on Benefits During Onboarding” by Frank Mengert.
Tips for helping Gen Z employees navigate their benefits offerings:
- Emphasize the importance of benefits education in your onboarding program.
- Educate them on available plan options and common terms like premiums, copays, and deductibles.
- Explain how health savings accounts (HSAs) and flexible spending accounts (FSAs) work, and the financial benefits they offer.
- Provide details on your tuition reimbursement or continuing education programs.
- If possible, offer customizable plans.
4. Announce Important Dates and Communicate Effectively
To help avoid one of the biggest roadblocks to open enrollment success—missed deadlines—build in multiple reminders about important dates. Give employees plenty of time to explore their options and send frequent reminders to ensure they have time to review and understand plans, complete their enrollment forms, and submit them before the deadline.
Ensure your employees know who to contact for questions about the open enrollment period and benefits offerings—like health coverage. Depending on your company’s HR structure, effective benefits and open enrollment communication may involve one-on-one meetings, office-wide meetings, webinars, or company-wide instructional emails to keep everyone informed.
5. Don’t Forget About Special Enrollment Periods
For employers, open enrollment isn’t the only time to think about benefits enrollment. Special enrollment periods are also triggered when onboarding a new employee or navigating a current employee’s qualifying life event (getting married, having a baby, etc.) To save time (and your sanity), it’s best to put as much effort into optimizing the processes for special and new hire enrollments as you do for your annual open enrollment.
6. Take Benefits Enrollment Online
Using an online benefits enrollment tool allows your employees to electronically input their healthcare options at a time convenient for them. Online enrollment also gives employees ample opportunity to review their benefit choices, check their selections, and make revisions, if necessary, which minimizes administrative errors.
G&A Partners’ online benefits enrollment system scales to your company’s size and needs and can create and send customizable electronic reports to benefits administrators or your HR team, so you can track employees’ benefit status and elections.
Digital online enrollment also allows employees to:
- Connect to the enrollment system anywhere, anytime, from any computer
- Access educational resources that explain your company’s benefits offerings
- Easily compare plans
- View employee-specific costs associated with each option
- Review and revise their benefits choices
- Access a team of benefits experts for assistance and information about coverage options and enrollment
Additional resources from G&A Partners to assist with open enrollment:
How does a benefits administrator assist with open enrollment?
A benefits administrator can significantly streamline open enrollment management by outsourcing to a professional employer organization (PEO). Whether just starting out, or growing your small business, PEOs provide expert HR support that alleviates the typical challenges of open enrollment.
How G&A Can Help
With G&A Partners, you get more than access to high-quality, affordable benefits. Our HR and benefits experts will provide guidance on today’s benefits trends, manage your benefits administration, and guide your employees through open enrollment with helpful resources and integrated technology to streamline processes. Schedule a consultation with one of our trusted business advisors to learn more.
