If open enrollment season is typically a stress-inducing time for your company’s HR staff and employees, you should consider replacing slow, disorganized, and inaccurate paper-based enrollment with a single streamlined system through Cello HR’s HCM software. In this article, we’ll provide our recommendations to make enrollment hassle-free and efficient, including how to upgrade your strategy, achieve easy self-service access for employees, and simplify administration for you and your staff.
Before your company introduces another annual round of open enrollment offerings, consider soliciting employee feedback regarding each of the following concerns:
Although this type of surveying can yield some unanticipated results, not all feedback will relate to introducing new benefits. In fact, you might find that one benefit or perk you offer is consistently underutilized and unwanted by your staff, creating the opportunity to eliminate it or replace it with a benefits feature that your employees will appreciate and utilize. Although you are primarily soliciting feedback regarding open enrollment, this process can also yield some interesting insights about your company culture and your employees’ confidence in HR processes more broadly.
When it comes to gauging employees’ enrollment experiences and their suggestions for future improvements, a survey can help you determine how to provide more timely messaging, improve employee engagement/utilization, deliver trainings, and streamline the enrollment process.
Once you’ve processed your employee feedback and evaluated the efficacy of past plans and approaches, prioritize communicating any changes or modified offerings to your employees. Our advice is to offer benefits-related messaging year-round. At bare minimum, it’s best to announce meaningful updates to benefits, available plans, as well as deadline reminders by email at least a few weeks before the official start of enrollment season. As one foundational resource, a digital or physical brochure can go a long way to offer a comprehensive view of company benefits, including outside of enrollment season.
Many companies also offer consolidated, one-stop video training sessions that give new employees everything they need to understand benefits, the enrollment process, and all of the resources that are available to them to simplify the process. Whether you choose to include FAQs or contact information in your brochure, training session(s), or otherwise, it’s also good to duplicate some of this key information on the company website.
Benefits-related training sessions are particularly helpful during hiring and onboarding processes, which is one of many reasons why companies use Cello HR’s HCM software solution to centralize training, enrollment, and other benefits support in one place for their business.
Remember that all of these communications, resources, and tools represent an opportunity to demonstrate your company’s commitment to the wellbeing of employees inside and outside of the workplace.
Although offering easily accessible training and resources can improve engagement and enrollment, events and incentives can also heighten awareness and boost utilization. In terms of incentives, many companies offer gift certificates for employees who enroll early or meet other predetermined deadlines.
Similarly, when your company can provide an educational event or a one-day benefits fair, it’s a cost-effective way to showcase new benefits and perks and promote examples of how your company can help employees achieve work-life balance. By adding additional “on-site” incentives like catered food and raffles/contests to win gift certificates, your event is likely to measurably increase enrollment and also (as an ancillary benefit) increase company-wide connection and camaraderie.
Another added benefit of using HR software is that your business can automate enrollment eligibility to immediately inform your employees if they do (or do not) qualify for a particular form of coverage. This can spare your employees the time and potential frustration waiting for approval or denial. Automating eligibility processing through an HCM solution also safeguards your business against penalties for any illegitimate insurance claims. In general, HR software can majorly assist with ensuring that each benefits-related process is compliant with applicable state and federal regulations.
Transparency is also key in presenting your employees with any potential out-of-pocket expenses. With accurate information, employees can anticipate the financial impact of deductions, deductibles or other expenses. This helps them make informed, responsible decisions based on their personal or family circumstances.
Whenever possible, promote benefits offerings in relatable, real-world contexts before and during the open enrollment process. You can, for instance, show how employees in your company have used paid parental leave or other benefits that might apply to current employees. Similarly, to encourage new hires and attract job prospects, leverage employee testimonials that demonstrate your company’s commitment to work-life balance and your unique benefits and perks. In an increasingly competitive hiring market, new hires welcome an onboarding and benefits enrollment process that involves as few steps as possible – one that provides them with easy access to the incentives and support that attracted them to your company in the first place.
Although we’ve explored how to improve overall employee engagement and benefits utilization, without a software-based solution that simplifies the enrollment and benefits management process, your company could experience ongoing compliance issues, processing delays, dissatisfied employees, and overwhelmed HR staff.
Cello HR offers a one-stop solution for your benefits management needs. Our software allows you to accomplish all of the following and more:
Ready to simplify Benefits Administration and improve employee engagement? Contact us today to start our collaboration.