Another part of the toolkit to help make enrollment opportunities more effective is the use of stories. In his book “Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story,” Peter Guber observes that motivating people to act in the way we want often depends on our ability to touch a chord through a story. Stories resonate on both the logical left brain and the intuitive right brain.

Stories can be interwoven into enrollment in many ways. One is the negative:

Let's consider Susan. I used to work with her. When a voluntary disability income protection plan was offered, she decided it was too difficult to understand and too expensive, so she didn't buy coverage. A few months later, she found out she needed surgery and would miss several weeks of work. She was turned down by the underwriters. Susan saved a couple of hundred dollars by not buying the product—and lost thousands.

The other story approach is the positive:

Jack was one of my coworkers. When we were offered a critical illness plan, Jack knew nothing about the product. But when he thought about it, he realized he knew quite a few people at work who had gone through a critical health issue, and most of them talked about all the expenses that their medical plan did not cover. He found he could purchase a $20,000 benefit for just over $25 a month. The benefit may have saved his family from going bankrupt when he had a critical illness event just a few years later.

When you think about how to influence employee behavior during enrollment, think about how techniques like fascination and storytelling can bring life to the benefit options being offered. They can help make enrollment experience more fulfilling for everyone.