As the dust settles on another benefit open enrollment season, most employers are finding out that despite months of planning and strategizing on how to increase employee engagement through their benefits:
Employees continue to be confused about their benefits and end up picking plans that don't match their needs, which they will only find out at the worst possible time
Not as many people went through open enrollment as they expected
Very few changed their plan selections from the prior year primarily due to bullet point #1
Many employees waited until the end to complete their enrollment, indicating that they probably didn't give it much thought.
Most employees did not even look at most of the plan options they were provided
As HR organizations do the autopsy on this OE season, they will revert to tried and failed solutions like the following:
Sending out more emails that no one reads
Setting up more OE meetings that either most people don't attend or don't pay attention to
Mailing out more educational/marketing materials that are too dense for most people to understand or too long for people to sit through
HR teams have failed to understand that trying to make their employees benefits experts is not the answer. They must make it REAL for them. They have to make them understand how these benefits will impact their lives and how different choices will impact their health and pocketbooks. Solutions that do this in a consumer-friendly way will win the space. This means solutions that:
Present the benefits in an easy-to-understand and engaging manner
Explain the impact of different choices on their individual circumstance while also explaining how different life scenarios could impact their choice
Reiterate the importance of making sound choices
Don't take up a lot of the employee's time (This is key. You can't expect someone to sit through anything more than 15 minutes at a time)
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