4 ways to take the pain out of benefits enrollment

Every year, companies conduct open enrollment for employee benefits. But unfortunately, all that practice hasn't made the process perfect: benefits enrollment continues to be a source of frustration for management, HR, and employees. Companies understand they need to upgrade their HR systems and employee benefits technology, but what else is getting in the way of fixing open enrollment season? A lot. Benefits offerings, pricing, regulations, and post-pandemic employee needs are in flux, and employers don't know how to respond. They also need to focus on finding talent and managing their business, which means benefits strategy and implementation could suffer without a little help. At the same time, engaging employees in a meaningful benefits enrollment experience is a challenge when many are already overwhelmed by the complexity of benefits offerings.

The upside? All these issues provide an opportunity for a broker to demonstrate value to clients. And while each company, enrollment scenario, and benefits solution is unique, you can help lessen and even eliminate pain points by adhering to these four principles:

1. Anticipate

You have unique, detailed knowledge of your client and the larger benefits ecosystem. Use this knowledge to anticipate issues, problems, and opportunities before clients bring them up to you. Then, help them establish clear improvement objectives and proactively prepare a list of technology, product, and process enhancements tailored to their specific needs.

For example: COVID-19 epidemic has also changed perceptions around benefits offerings. There's more awareness of the need for emotional and mental health support and benefits that support financial well-being. And with pet ownership up, more employees are interested in getting pet insurance. Little things like that can have a surprising impact on employee morale, and employers notice.

Next, make sure the client has implemented a benefits enrollment platform. Even if they're already using a platform, they may not be taking advantage of all its capabilities. So, for example, you can help them operationalize mobile enrollment, which is likely to spur engagement with younger employees. Or, the client may be dissatisfied with their current platform's capabilities. Be prepared to offer an alternative. It's also possible that the platform just isn't meeting their needs: some platforms require more internal bandwidth than the client can provide, resulting in counterproductive administrative bottlenecks. So offer a more suitable alternative.

2. Collaborate

Your client ultimately owns their company's benefit offerings, but they can't go it alone. With all the challenges facing HR departments in the wake of the pandemic, they want to leverage their brokers' consultative expertise. So be the partner they need. If they're looking to change a plan design (e.g., by adding an HDHP option), take the next step by helping them understand how it can impact other benefit options. There may be benefit-related notice requirements (e.g., for leave) that they are unfamiliar with. Be proactive, and ask if they need help.

The fact is, there are myriad regulatory compliance issues related to eligibility, legal notices, reporting, and privacy that are directly and indirectly related to the products and services you provide to your clients. While you are not an attorney tasked with ensuring client compliance, you can help by making clients aware of issues that need to be addressed and collaborating in implementing processes that help keep them compliant. For example, point out and help ensure that employee communications include relevant action dates and indicate which products need to be re-enrolled annually and which do not. In addition, help clients ensure all dates and details are consistent across enrollment materials to reduce confusion and include all legal disclosures when applicable. The extra effort will help more employees take advantage of their benefits – and you'll benefit as well.

Employee attendance and absence give you another collaborative opportunity. While it's not a benefit product per se, it does impact how benefits such as health and disability insurance are administered. Bringing in a third-party solution to oversee absence management is a great way to demonstrate added value that benefits the entire organization, especially if your clients operate in more than one state and/or have multiple employees in hybrid work situations. Outsourcing absence management can help ensure consistency and objectivity in the treatment of employees, which is key to compliance with labor laws such as FMLA and the ADA, as well as varying regulations across states. Any company large enough to be covered under FMLA (generally, 50+ employees) could benefit by outsourcing these leaves, short-term disability insurance claims, and other health-related issues to an external leave management resource.

3. Communicate

Become a central part of your client's plan to guide employee benefit decisions. Benefits communications and education have evolved dramatically since the beginning of the pandemic because they had to: companies were forced to move beyond in-person meetings and paper enrollment to reach remote employees.

But modern ben admin platforms have moved far beyond emails and pdfs, and many are now at the point where they include advanced system capabilities more commonly associated with digital marketing, including:

• Audience personalization: Employers can talk directly to employees based on demographics like age, location, existing lines of coverage, and more.

• Multi-format messaging: Communications can be delivered or initiated as texts, emails, and push notifications based on each employee's personal preference.

• Automation of communication tasks: Benefits-related communications can now be automatically triggered, personalized, and delivered by events such as onboarding, marriage, age, and so on.

• Real-time insights: Platforms can deliver near-instant feedback to HR and brokers, helping them assess the effectiveness of their engagement efforts.

Clients may not know enough to look for communications solutions like these, but they are often eager to implement them when brought to their attention.

4. Facilitate

Employees still have problems navigating their benefit offerings and putting together the pieces that make the most sense for their families. While employers may be tempted to respond by focusing on just a few core benefits, in a tight labor market, that can end up hurting critical recruitment and retention efforts.

The solution? A more accessible, holistic benefits package personalized to each employee's needs. That means moving away from focusing on internal HR needs and communicating to workers on their terms (e.g., via a platform that allows multi-format messaging). More importantly, it means reimagining benefits in terms of the employee's "whole person" needs. A simple example of more holistic benefits packaging could involve pairing a high-deductible health plan with wellness programs and voluntary benefits such as critical care insurance. Then, follow it up with communications that educate employees about the combined benefit of better overall health, lower premiums, and financial protection from large medical bills.

It's easy to imagine how employers could further simplify things by creating a series of recommended benefits packages designed around the needs of different employee personas or groups, such as "young parents" or "nearing retirement." While either group would still have access to all eligible benefits, do empty nesters really need to know about dental plans that offer orthopedic coverage for minors? “To make it even easier on Employers, consider what support your carriers can offer in helping employees understand their benefits and how they fit together. Some carriers have guided decision-making tools and programs that provide in person, virtual, or digital decision support for employees. For example, Guardian offers Nayya, a platform that leverages artificial intelligence and data science to simplify the benefits enrollment experience.

At the end of the day, the best way to take the pain out of the enrollment process is by focusing on what's most relevant for each person who signs up for benefits.

Learn more about group benefits opportunities for brokers from Guardian.