By Demi Hanes, Trüpp.
Open Enrollment season is almost upon us. Typically, this is a challenging time for HR professionals. A lot of effort goes into reviewing, selecting, and coordinating benefits and creating an open enrollment plan. All too often, coordinating and implementing employee communication gets rushed or compressed, leaving all that effort unnoticed. Follow these five tips to ensure effective communication and help facilitate a successful open enrollment process.
1. Communicate early with employees
Prepare your employees early enough for open enrollment to avoid making them feel rushed. Set up informational meetings for employees to attend and ask questions. Giving employees time to make inquiries and do research early saves time during the open enrollment process.
2. Don’t overwhelm employees
Communication is very important throughout the open enrollment process, but over-communicating is problematic. Excessive communication creates clutter and causes important information to be missed or ignored. The communication sent needs to be clear and concise. The idea is to simplify the information available in the carrier documentation they receive rather than repeat every detail.
3. Use simple and effective communication
When communicating about open enrollment, make the language as simple and easy to understand as possible for your employees. Explain important information with bullet points or by emphasizing key elements to clarify what employees need to know. Communication around enrollment should also be engaging and relatable.
4. Define key terms & FAQs
Provide employees with a resource that clearly explains technical terms and phrases. Creating an FAQ sheet is also valuable to ensure basic questions are answered for everyone. Avoid answering the same questions multiple times.
5. Ask employees their opinions
Open enrollment is a great time to facilitate employee retention by offering benefits that your team finds meaningful. Remember that employee communication is a two-way street. A simple and effective way to know how employees feel about the benefits you offer or additional benefits they might enjoy is to simply ask them. Before you even begin discussions with your broker, send out a benefits survey to learn what benefits your employees find useful to ensure you’re spending your benefits dollars wisely.
Open enrollment is a time-consuming process that creates a significant administrative burden on your HR and/or administrative team. Your time is valuable. Why not leverage our employee benefits expertise? Trüpp can successfully manage your entire benefits administration and open enrollment process by utilizing convenient online tools, managing employee communication, and showcasing your employer brand. Take a closer look at how Trüpp can help.
