Beyond open enrollment: Enabling employees through year-round benefits communication

The Great Resignation has been quite the challenge for organizations across industries. While it has inspired workers to seek more flexibility and options to reimagine their work life, it has placed employers under immense pressure to rethink how they attract and retain talent.

Naturally, one way they’re attempting to do this is by offering employees competitive benefits. But in an environment where the current labor market’s needs and expectations are constantly evolving, it has become more difficult than ever for organizations to create a package that meets their unique requirements. Moreover, the remote work environment has made it more challenging to effectively communicate with existing employees and keep up to date about their benefits options.

Related: Benefits fatigue: Guiding our way out of confusion

As such, it’s becoming increasingly critical that HR and benefits teams adopt the right strategies and processes to enlighten candidates about their offerings and educate employees on how best to take advantage of them. They must retain momentum from open enrollment season, which is when employee engagement typically spikes, and learn how to better leverage effective communication in the long-run to put their benefits offerings to work for them. Here’s how.

Acknowledging the post-open enrollment drop off

Open enrollment season is one of the busiest times of the year for HR. Oftentimes, multi-pronged communications strategies are needed to create those vital, two-way channels to share health insurance information with employees. Employers often implement these measures during OE season. But after a few months of effective communication, outreach unfortunately tends to drop off, which can leave employees confused and frustrated.

Beyond open enrollment, employees lack full awareness of their benefits – especially when it comes to some of the more complex benefits they have available to them, such as healthcare. In fact, 62% of U.S. workers say they only have a basic understanding of their healthcare options and benefits. In ordinary times, this would pose a significant challenge for HR teams needing to educate their colleagues on their healthcare options. But during this historic worker reshuffle and incredibly competitive jobs market, it could have detrimental effects on growth.

Hiring skilled talent is already more complicated than ever before, so employers need to bridge the existing knowledge gap in order to support and retain employees. Because the truth is, having a solid understanding of an organization’s benefits package can be enough to convince an on-the-fence employee to stay – which could mean the difference between increased communication or more resources spent on recruitment. Meanwhile, a well-communicated benefits plan could also persuade a top job candidate to accept your offer. Therefore, it’s imperative that every organization and its HR team practices effective and informative communication year-round. Those who do will likely see a great return on investment.

Empowering employees to optimize their benefits

This year’s open enrollment season highlighted just how important proactive communication is when it comes to effectively engaging your employees. According to the aforementioned study, 46% of surveyed employees said that their employer had not yet started to communicate information about open enrollment on November 1st—the first day OE began. Considering how high the stakes are for workers during open enrollment, this is extremely worrying.

The reality is that a lack of proper and timely communication around this event could have serious financial and emotional implications for employees looking to change their coverage. The fact that nearly half of all employees had not received communication about it before the period began should be alarming. Given the importance of open enrollment, it’s fair to assume that less relevant events, such as updates or changes in coverage, new benefits, or detailed information pertaining to savings accounts, are also lacking thorough communication.

Between HSAs, FSAs, HRAs, PPOs, HPOs, HDHPs, EAP, wellness stipends and even more benefit options, there are an exorbitant amount of details that employees need to know to get the most out of their health care benefits. Luckily, there are three recommended methods for elevating benefits communications in a way that empowers employees to understand and utilize the benefits they have available to them.

1. Proactive communication: It is the benefits team’s responsibility to proactively communicate changes, updates, and reminders regarding benefits. By supplying this information upfront, employees will feel less in the dark when comparing the benefits they’re using versus the benefits that are available.

2. Self-service hub: When questions do arise, there should be one accessible location that houses all of the information for every benefit. Doing so will supply employees with comfort knowing exactly where to go to get information regarding their benefits.

3. A dedicated contact: When employees’ can’t find an answer to their question on the hub, they should have a reliable, designated contact within the organization to go to with benefits inquiries. Responses should be timely and helpful, and like all internal communications efforts, employees should feel like they’re able to engage in honest two-way communication.

When organizations are able to do these three things, they can drive increased loyalty and satisfaction by delivering better employee experiences. Employees will have complete reassurance that they have adequate information about their benefits, which in turn enables them to make the best decisions for them and their families. Employers stand to reap the rewards, too. This type of engagement could open up an incredible opportunity for them to reevaluate and ultimately upscale their benefits experience. Further, it could lead to a rather remarkable return on investment in the form of better employee satisfaction, higher retention, and a boost in reputation which in turn, would help them attract the best talent.

Using technology to elevate the employee benefits experience

Today, many organizations are needing to communicate from either a fully remote or hybrid capacity, which can be difficult, especially when you consider that 23% of employees report that their employer still relies on in-person meetings to communicate around open enrollment.

Organizations looking to provide a frictionless benefits experience to a distributed workforce would be wise to implement intelligent messaging technology that meets the needs of today’s employees by leveraging personalized, two-way communication. Many of these technologies provide scalable automation and easily adhere to communication channels that are already being used, such as text messaging, DM platforms, and even existing internal communications hubs.

Supportive technologies can assist benefits teams by applying systems that present employees with thorough and proactive communication, timely inquiry responses, and an abundance of knowledge when it comes to benefits details. Furthermore, using these technologies can help create an effective communication strategy that equates to more engagement and loyalty from employees. By giving employees immediate visibility into their policies, and facilitating more streamlined and personalized interactions, their unique needs can be met quicker and the employee organization relationship will be strengthened.

Communicating the complex benefits landscape to a distributed workforce is no easy feat, but shifting benefits communication strategies to enable employees to take advantage of all of their benefits not only around open enrollment, but year-round could offer huge rewards for organizations looking to support their employees and increase retention. By supporting employees beyond open enrollment, and effectively communicating every benefit that is offered, employees will feel loyal and secure year-round.

Ford Blakely is senior vice president of Medallia Zingle.