For many HR teams, open enrollment marks the busiest season of the year. There’s a lot to do: make decisions about the upcoming plan year, communicate changes and essential details to employees, and ensure all the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted in time. With so much to focus on, open enrollment meetings are often overlooked—but done right, these can be your best opportunity to get employees on board with your benefits strategy. Keep reading for some simple tips to enhance your open enrollment meetings.
1. Know your audience
The first rule of effective communication is to know who you’re talking to. Spend some time thinking about your employee population and what works—or doesn’t—for them specifically. Do your employees value face-to-face conversations or prefer all things digital? Are they more concerned with affordable coverage or the quality of their benefits? When you understand what’s important to your audience, you can design your communication strategy around it, starting with your supporting materials. For instance, if you have a tech-savvy team, a printed benefit guide will likely end up in the trash once the meeting ends. A digital guide hosted online, however, might encourage employees to use it as a resource when they have questions about their plan.
2. Get a game plan
Even the most experienced public speakers rehearse to some degree. You may not need to practice your presentation in the mirror, but having an outline of how you’d like the meeting to go will help pave the way to success. Take a moment to decide what supporting materials you’ll need, how they’ll be distributed, and what points you want to cover. Past is the best indicator of present, so reflect back on your previous open enrollment meetings to determine what issues you can prepare for.
3. Use your resources
Open enrollment meetings don’t have to be a one-person show. Often, you can ask your carriers to send a representative who will explain their benefits and answer detailed questions, which is especially useful if you’ve switched plans or carriers. They will also be able to provide you with some supporting materials, including fliers for ‘bonus’ services and frequently asked questions. Most insurance brokers will also have someone available to provide support or even run the whole meeting. Bottom line: while you’re getting the renewal details squared away, ask the people you’re interacting with how they can help you present these details.
4. Think like Goldilocks
We’ve all sat through the marathon meeting that had no end in sight. Too often, our main takeaway from those meetings is a mental list of tasks to complete over the weekend. When you’re planning your open enrollment presentation, aim to find that third bowl of porridge; create a meeting that’s long enough to cover all the essentials, but not so long that employees start ruminating on all the other things they could be doing with their time.
5. Focus on Education
The best open enrollment meetings prioritize educating employees. This is your chance to highlight important topics and address the frequently asked questions you get throughout the year. Start by identifying what your employees need to know. Does a new plan function differently than they’re used to? Do they struggle to understand qualifying events? Are they using the ER for all ailments? Successful education means that your employees not only know their benefits and how to use them, but can also explain these details to a spouse or partner.
6. Prepare for Questions
You can’t cover every detail of your benefit package or insurance in general, so let your employees tell you what’s most important to them. Establish a method to handle employee questions, whether it’s live in the meeting or through email as they run into issues. Some questions can come with a lot of detail, so don’t feel you have to answer every question right away. An “I’ll get back to you” with a well-researched response is always better than guessing.
7. Offer Support
Just because the meeting has ended doesn’t mean your job is done! Have a support system in place throughout the open enrollment period. Whether it’s questions that didn’t occur to them until it was time to pick a plan or an employee struggling to get their enrollment submitted, a responsive and supportive HR team can mean the difference between a smooth enrollment and scrambling to get ID cards on time.
