6 best practices for effective open enrollment communications   

Open enrollment season is here, a time when employees make decisions that will impact their financial, emotional and physical wellbeing for the year ahead. It’s also a time for employers to support and empower their employees by offering diverse and highly relevant benefits. When effectively communicated to employees, a comprehensive benefit plan can increase employee loyalty and engagement. 

No matter where we are in the calendar year, one word every benefits advisor and employer should embrace is communication. Communication is always critical, especially in this time of declining employee loyalty. Employees appreciate their benefits if, and only if, they understand their value and relevance. That is most likely to happen when communication best practices are embraced by both the broker and employer. 

We have found that the following six key practices help make employee benefit communications most effective: 

1. Start early. Use the months leading up to open enrollment as a time not only for strategic planning with your clients, but also to educate employees on their voluntary benefit options. Employees are overwhelmed during the open enrollment window and may struggle to absorb all their options. Several weeks before open enrollment, taking time to offer more information and education will greatly increase employees’ understanding of benefits offerings and relevance to them. “Coming Soon” emails with supporting educational content and FAQs can also be very effective. Webinars (live or virtual) facilitated by your vendor partners are another impactful tool. 

2. Utilize multiple delivery methods and content formats. Employers need to reach employees with varied learning styles and work environments. Communication methods to reach an employee on a factory floor versus a remote worker should vary substantially. For example, communications at the workplace such as posters, flyers,  and group meetings (live or virtual) coupled with hard copy or electronic communications sent to the home are good options for employees regularly entering a “brick and mortar” workplace. Meanwhile, electronic communications, on-demand videos, and educational websites can be effective for someone working remotely with access to email and the company’s intranet throughout the day. Regardless of workplace environmental considerations, using a wide array of communication mediums and messages is always a good idea, as employees have varied learning styles.

3. Develop an evergreen communication plan. Current events and trends are excellent opportunities to educate employees about how their benefits can help them address challenges (e.g., COVID, elder care, inflation, identity theft, reproductive health, student loan forgiveness/resumption). It can also be impactful to target messaging differently for generational cohorts based on which issues are likely most relevant to them. They have different personal challenges, incentives for working, and view benefits differently. 

4. Create more benefit champions within your client groups. Many HR and benefits leaders have others within the company who are perceived by employees as reliable resources for information about their benefits package. Sometimes this is someone in the HR or benefits department, but it can also be a site leader, manager, or another person with local influence.  Educating these individuals about the benefits being offered can make them effective and positive ambassadors. It’s highly effective to invite these individuals to a brief video orientation on each benefit with the opportunity for Q&A before open enrollment.  

5. Provide demos of your client benefit enrollment platform to your vendor partners.  When your vendor partners can see firsthand how your client presents and organizes benefit enrollment materials, they can provide a more tailored communication plan that fits the client’s framework. This reduces the amount of work you and your client must do to revise vendors’ “off-the-shelf” brochures and text copy.  It will also enable your vendor partner to suggest additional educational content or tools that fit the platform and navigation experience your client’s platform provides. Said another way, there is no substitute for walking briefly in the employee’s shoes. 

6. New hire communication. Thoroughly review the process and materials your client uses to facilitate benefit communication and enrollment for new hires.   Often the tools and activities used to educate employees during open enrollment aren’t available on demand for new hires. But with a little planning and collaboration with your client and vendor partners an informative suite of educational materials and decision assist tools can be created as a turnkey package for new hires which will improve enrollment results and employee engagement at this formative stage of the relationship.

Additionally, at least once per year, schedule time with your client and vendor partner for a stewardship meeting to review enrollment results, plan utilization, service experience, and to set a communication strategy for the coming year.

Employees who value (and use) their benefits are more likely to be productive and engaged.  And that enrollment only happens with good communication and advocacy from you and your clients. When employers embrace and advocate for the benefits they offer, it will yield great enrollment results.

David MacLean is Vice President of Strategic Growth at LegalShield.