Open enrollment season may be wrapping up soon, but employers, employees, and insurers will continue to be in hot pursuit of the perfect benefits match.
The open enrollment period has always been a critical time in the annual cycle of many businesses — mostly for employees who have some weighty decisions to make regarding benefits packages. While these offerings could have a significant impact on their current and future financial and physical well-being, the ongoing pandemic has raised our collective awareness of these needs to even greater heights, and the stakes of open enrollment have risen in turn.
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No matter how prepared a company is, open enrollment is complicated for both workers and management. With the pandemic making benefits an increasingly critical piece of the employment ecosystem, business leaders must be adequately prepared. Here’s what employers can do to simplify the open enrollment process while ensuring their employees come away with the most beneficial of benefits.
Take an active role
The fact that open enrollment can be daunting is not to say that employers must always be thinking of how to shake things up or revolutionize their offerings. Some companies already have a well-rounded selection of benefits to offer, but their employees are simply not fully aware of the benefits on the table, or they don’t understand the minutiae of what each individual offering might entail.
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Taking the time to examine pre-existing benefits, explain these offerings to employees in plain language, and determine which ones are worth keeping and which deserve a second look can be an easy way to simplify the open enrollment process for yourself and for those who work at your organization. By initiating this type of scrutiny, business leaders can attain a deeper understanding of their employees’ true needs – making it easier to align benefits and employee expectations down the line.
Keep it personal
What’s true in industries like eCommerce is also true in the benefits world: Today, personalization is the name of the game. The staying power of homogenous benefit offerings is limited compared to benefits that engage employees on an individual basis. Cookie-cutter benefits that aim to give equal assistance to everyone often end up making no impact to anyone’s day-to-day life. Two employees who hold the same position within the same organization might still have vastly different needs regarding insurance, retirement planning, healthcare and numerous other factors.
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When selecting which insurance or benefits offerings to serve employees, employers must take an empathy-driven approach — thinking of their employees as individuals (each having their own unique needs and preferences) rather than just a collective. By opening an ongoing dialogue with employees – one sustained throughout the business year and geared towards understanding the specific array of needs that benefits packages should meet – employers will be able to better understand what to look for when courting insurers and their offerings.
Keep it simple
Options abound in today’s healthcare solution landscape. And while there is a positive aspect to this wealth of options, it can often lead to “choice paralysis” for employees who need to filter out the bad from the good and ultimately decide what is best for them.
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This is where speaking with employees in an effort to help tailor benefits offerings can prove highly valuable. Doing so can help employers eliminate complexity and irrelevant offerings from the benefits process and direct employees only to those options that are most relevant to their specific needs.
By doing all they can to make benefits selection as smooth and well-informed a process as possible, employers will establish themselves as trusted advisers and resources for their employees — providing a major boost to talent retention efforts.
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Keep the consequences in mind
The changes wrought by the pandemic on our everyday lives are palpable, and our places of work, employment environments, and the ways we work are no exception. In the current jobseekers’ market, a confident and empathetic approach to company benefits – where offerings that address employees’ most pressing needs are effectively and clearly presented – can be the difference between a company that retains its best talent and attracts new employees and a company that can expect to bear the brunt of “the Great Resignation.”
Despite the negative bent of the “Big Quit,” it also gives business leaders a much-needed chance to recalibrate the way they approach insurance and benefits, employee relations, and workplace culture and morale overall. The business leaders who seize this opportunity will rise above the pack in these tumultuous times and steer their companies toward brighter futures, to the benefit of everyone.
