There are 3 open enrollment types: Which are you?

With OE behind you for another year, you might still have some late entrants to wrap up and ID cards waiting to be issued, but you’re probably past the pain. Unless you’re not. 

Unfortunately, many HR folks are still feeling the aftershocks of a crazy OE season well into the first quarter. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I’ve found that employers fall into three open enrollment types (and two aren’t ideal)—which one are you?

Type 1: Pushing paper

The telltale sign of this type is the pure exhaustion felt by the HR team. Here, we find employers still using manual enrollment. Everything is paper-based, which means HR has to spend an extraordinary amount of type chasing paper. Add to that your hybrid employees and those who are working from home, and now you need to print out and mail out countless packets, hound employees to return them, and do your best to decipher handwritten forms. Time is your most valuable asset, yet you’re unnecessarily spending it pushing paper instead of allocating it to other year-end and new year initiatives.

Type 2: Collecting but not connecting

In this type, we have employers that have some sort of system in place to collect employees’ data, but not automation to feed it to payroll or the multiple carriers they work with. As a result, there’s more work for HR, who are tasked with getting information out of the system to payroll and manually keying it into different formats and portals to multiple carriers. This duplicate entry is a huge time suck, making you wonder why your system is collecting but not connecting your employee information.

Type 3: Automated utopia

This is the gold standard type that all employers should aspire to. In it, employees log on in their own time from anywhere in the world to complete enrollment. They have access to tools within the system to help them decide on a plan and receive support and recommendations from their technology. Data seamlessly flows to all carriers electronically and payroll is automatically updated. HR is happy because they have time to focus on other initiatives to close out the current year and kick off the next one.

So, which type is your company? Did Type 1 or 2 hit a little too close to home? Or maybe you thought you were a Type 3 but quickly realized you weren’t quite there because the benefits administration technology solution you paid too much for sucked?

The bad news: The bar is set low for tech. The good news: You’re not stuck there.

There’s time to look at other options, and you can definitely get a better employee and employer experience that will save you time and, yes, money.

But don’t wait until September. You must start that planning process now, so you can commit the time and resources necessary to ensure your next open enrollment is better than your last.