As open enrollment season approaches, HR and wellness administrators are faced with the critical task of ensuring workforces are well-informed about benefits.
But basic awareness is only the first step in the cycle of benefits education that should persist year-round.
Following (and preceding) open enrollment, administrators are undoubtedly busy preparing and evaluating benefits programs. This review process is crucial to ensuring that enough high-quality resources are sourced to meet employee needs and wants, but also that they’re sufficiently competitive in an increasingly high-stakes job market.
However, it’s not always the benefits that need to be reevaluated—sometimes, it’s the way they’re communicated.
When reviewing and assessing benefits, it's easy to get lost in the weeds of the package itself—for instance, comparing insurance policies to ensure optimal coverage.
And while these details are invariably critical to the employee experience, many benefits platforms aren't strategically optimized to help employees learn about and access these benefits.
Even if an organization offers top-of-the-line benefits, it might still see low program engagement if resources exist in silos or an unintuitive benefits platform. As such, it’s important to consider how benefits platforms reinforce:
To further tailor benefits and ensure they align with employee needs and wants, program administrators will often solicit feedback on program features throughout the year. For example, conducting a benefits survey is one effective way to understand an individual employee’s perspective, assess common sentiments across the company, and identify areas for improvement.
Feedback surveys offer extremely valuable insight into how an employee can best make use of company perks, helping administrators develop personalized, flexible programs that prioritize real needs. But how exactly do they work?
The goal of an employee benefits survey is to gain actionable insights that can help guide evaluations and inform decision-making on current or future benefits plans.
Moreover, some employees may not even be aware of what is included in their benefits package, so these questionnaires provide a great opportunity to remind staff of what the organization provides.
Generally speaking, employee surveys ask about individual views and perspectives on benefits programs, such as which benefits they currently use, options they like or dislike, and things they’d like to see in the future.
With open enrollment just around the corner, now is a critical time to start spreading awareness about employee benefits. But that doesn’t have to mean scheduling a big, hour-long lecture with the entire company.
Instead, there are a number of impactful ways to encourage employees to actively learn more about their total compensation. And, spreading the word is made all the easier when your benefits platform has an integrated communication tool that allows you to target messaging, segment audiences, and add filters.
To prepare for this coming open enrollment period, here are a few strategies to keep employees informed, engaged, and satisfied:
Scheduling email reminders prior to the open enrollment period can help boost engagement as employees become more familiar with package details. Above all else, these messages should be timely, concise, and easy to understand, so any updates, changes, and important dates can be announced as soon as possible.
To avoid the trap of sending too many emails, leverage native communication tools in your benefits platform to send relevant reminders to specific audiences. After gauging which groups of employees need specific messaging or reminders, you can assign your own audience filters so the right people receive the most relevant updates.
While email is often the most trustworthy tool for important company-wide updates, it can be helpful to leverage multiple channels to meet employees where they are.
For example, employees who don’t work at a desk may find direct texts, flyers, or face-to-face meetings more effective. On the other hand, apps like Slack, Teams, or Google Chat might be more engaging and interactive for employees working on desktops.
Sometimes, communication can only go so far. In these instances, it might be best to incentivize benefits-related tasks, especially around open enrollment.
By offering rewards like giveaways, stipends, or gift cards, administrators can incentivize employees to take advantage of company benefits, whether it’s signing up for health insurance or taking part in a company initiative.
To ensure awareness doesn’t fizzle out once open enrollment is over, it’s imperative to continue making benefits central to your company's mission all year long.
While open enrollment is the most pressing time of year for educational purposes, employees can also enroll during onboarding or as a result of a qualifying life event. Regardless of when they sign up, year-round communications and easy access ensure that all employees remain informed about what their company offers and the important dates to know.
Combined with the valuable insight from employee feedback surveys, these strategies can help program administrators design better packages that not only include what employees need and want, but communicate it just as well.
If you’re looking for more strategies to enhance your employee benefits program, reach out to our experts. Our holistic approach and comprehensive wellness platform provides companies with a streamlined hub that offers easy, intuitive access to benefits information, incentives, employee engagement opportunities, and more.