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Preparing for Open Enrollment: Essential Steps Every HR Professional Should Take

Benefits Industry Insights

 

Hi there! This is Clarity Claire, your sidekick in Open Enrollment and Benefits Administration.

 

Open Enrollment is one of the busiest times of the year for HR pros, benefits administrators, and brokers. All of the hard work needs some planning in advance, so let's do it together.

 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through step-by-step on how to get ready for a smooth and efficient Open Enrollment. Let's get started!

Top 5 Steps Every HR Professional Should Take Before Open Enrollment

Step 1: Review Your Current Benefit Offerings

Before anything else, take an extensive review of your current benefit offerings. You need to know what is working and what isn't.

  • Survey Staff: Conduct surveys or benefit needs assessments in order to collect input from your employees about which benefits are currently being used and what they would like to see included or improved. This will not only help you realize the needs and priorities of an employee but also inform your decisions.
  • Analyze Usage:  Take a look at the usage rates for the existing benefits. Are there benefits that barely anyone uses? Are there popular benefits that could be enhanced? This information would be instrumental in making well-informed decisions on what to retain and what to alter.

Step 2: Update and Enhance Benefits

Now that you've gathered input, it's time to enhance your benefits on staff input and trends leading into next year. Develop a strategy with these tips:

  • Benchmark Against Industry Standards: Know what your competitors are offering so that you can stay competitive by hiring the best talent that's available.
  • Cost-Benefit Analysis: Consider the dollar cost of new or enhanced benefits compared to their impact on potentially making staff more satisfied and therefore more likely to stay. This will drive solid business decisions.
  • Involve Stakeholders: Involve the leadership team and other department advisors in the process of making the final decisions. Their interest and knowledge will be very helpful.

Update Your HR Administration Platform

This is an ideal time to see if your team would like some new solutions like a Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA) or maybe your HR would love an improved benefits platform like Clarity Complete.

 

Clarity Complete is a completely integrated, flexible benefit administration, and compliance tool, giving an all-in-one end-to-end employee benefit solution. This product below enables seamless connections to insurance carriers, payroll companies, and other consumer-directed plan benefits, such as  HSA, FSA, DCA, HRA, among others.

Step 3: Implement a Clear Communication Plan

One of the most important aspects of a successful Open Enrollment is effective communication. Below are the top three things to include in an effective communication game plan:

 

  • Segmenting Your Audience: Different workers have different requirements. Segment the audience and structure the message accordingly. For example, new hires may want some basic information, while experienced employees would also like to be privy to new products and services that are available for them.
  • Multiple Channels: The communication can be multi-channeled through emails, webinars, and in-person meetings to reach everyone, irrespective of their favorite mode of communication.
  • Provide Clear Deadlines and Instructions: Clearly mention deadlines for important dates, with clear instructions on what is expected. Employees must be very clear as to what exactly they are supposed to do and by when.

Step 4: Train HR Staff and Prepare Support Resources

Proper training and support are important for facilitating an easy Open Enrollment process that will enable employees to understand their options and make informed decisions about their benefits. It helps to minimize confusion and makes the process easier on everybody.

Benefit Education is Important

Did you know that 82% of employees say that “understanding how to use their benefits would give them a greater sense of overall stability?” Proper education is the link that helps give employees the confidence they need. Consider implementing the following:

  • Training Programs: Design comprehensive training programs for the HR staff to upgrade knowledge and efficiency. They must be correctly equipped with all relevant information regarding benefit packages, such as health insurance, retirement plans, etc., so that they can confidently and correctly reply to all questions of the employees and create an informed and helpful work environment. There should be provisions for refresher courses and updates; in case of policy changes, there must be a maintenance standard of service.
  • Support Resources: Create detailed support resources that can be in the form of FAQs, guides with step-by-step methods for when items go amiss, among others. Ensure that the support resources span across a broad spectrum of topics and issues faced by the employees in their roles. Most importantly, make these very accessible by housing them under a single platform or an intranet site, and possibly update it regularly for relevance.

Step 5: Create a Timeline and Checklist

An effective timeline and checklist can help guide you through Open Enrollment management and help keep you on task and accountable.

  • Create a Timeline: You should come up with a very elaborate timeline indicating all the key dates and deadlines that help one keep organized, ensuring nothing is dropped.
  • Develop a Checklist: This involves tracking the progress using a checklist. It gives an overview of the tasks at hand and the completion time.

Making for a Smooth, Successful Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment is arguably the most important time of year for HR pros. But if you have the right preparation, you can move through the season with ease. You can start paving your way to a smooth and successful Open Enrollment period by reviewing your current benefits, enhancing those offerings, developing a clear and concise communication plan, training your staff, and implementing a timeline and checklist.

 

Looking for more ways to prepare for Open Enrollment? Watch our most recent webinar, “Streamlining Employee Benefits Strategies for Simplicity and Success.”

 

Remember, Clarity is here to help every step of the way. Want more one-on-one support? Schedule a call with a Clarity Rep today.

 

Happy enrolling!

Clarity Claire