While open enrollment is always a critical time for both employers and employees, the current environment especially poses unique challenges for HR and benefits managers. With much of the workforce still remote and on-site events cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional opportunities to raise awareness and educate employees about their benefits options are now largely gone.
Since open enrollment has gone completely virtual for many organizations, employers are now tasked with finding new ways to effectively inform employees about their options and help them make the right decisions for themselves and their families for the upcoming year.
To help with this process, here are four tips for employers to increase employee engagement and make the most out of a virtual open enrollment period.
1. Take the traditional benefits fair online
While online open enrollment has been the norm in recent years, employers still have relied on live events to engage employees and share information about available offerings. With employees remote and large gatherings cancelled, hosting a virtual benefits fair is one option to encourage employee engagement while everyone is apart.
To increase participation at your virtual benefits fair, consider the following:
Send out a poll to determine what days and times work best, and offer several sessions to ensure a majority of employees can attend. Once scheduled, be sure to send out several reminders and an agenda with the information that will be covered during the event.
Keep the virtual presentations short and straightforward, and only include key information, such as changes to any offerings or benefits packages.
Host breakout rooms within the virtual environment to allow employees to connect one on one with vendor representatives.
Ahead of the event, consult with your insurance partner about what resources are available to you. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care offers its accounts a variety of tools to help ensure their virtual benefits fairs are a success.
Additionally, if your organization is switching to Harvard Pilgrim, be sure to check out SmartStart to make the employee onboarding process seamless and hassle-free.
2. Get buy-in and support from company leadership
Involving company leadership in benefits presentations and webinars is a great way to show that your company genuinely cares about its employees and their well-being. It also highlights that company leaders are prioritizing their benefits and employees should do the same.
During open enrollment, connect with company leadership to ensure executive leaders are attending any virtual events. Having company leadership attend can provide remote employees an opportunity to connect with leadership, something more difficult to achieve in remote work. Senior leaders can help communicate the importance of open enrollment and the tools that are available to make the process as simple and straightforward as possible.
3. Use a variety of communication methods
Depending on their age, location and comfort level with technology, it will be advantageous to explore and leverage various communication options besides email.
Mail: While you don’t have the ability to physically hand out benefits information to your employees, consider home mailings that include information on different health plans, costs and available resources. Since many employees’ email inboxes are packed and busy, this approach can potentially avoid materials getting lost in inboxes or automatically being sent as spam.
Text: Another option is to send text alerts reminding employees about upcoming deadlines and how to access benefits information. With text open rates averaging 98% versus 20% for email, it is an effective way to reach employees and increase engagement.
Chat: The remote work environment means employees can’t drop by your office or catch you quickly in the hall to ask a question about their benefits options. Consider creating a virtual space on Slack or Microsoft Teams where employees can ask real-time questions and have an open dialogue. These platforms allow you to connect with employees individually and as a group, as well as facilitate Q&A sessions.
4. Make it personal
Your employees will likely have questions about their benefits, so encourage them to reach out and help them make informed decisions. Offering virtual office hours is a good way for employees to schedule time with you to share their thoughts and go over any questions.
To assist with the plan selection process, Harvard Pilgrim has partnered with MyHealthMath* to offer the option of personalized one-on-one decision support service to employer groups with Harvard Pilgrim coverage. While predicting how much coverage someone will need in a given year is not easy, MyHealthMath has proprietary technology that allows you to do just that.
Remember that these options don’t just affect employees but also their families. With large unemployment numbers and layoffs this year, more employees may be adding dependents onto their plan. Encouraging other decision makers in the home to participate in the open enrollment process ensures everyone has access to the information needed to determine the right benefits options for their situation.
*MyHealthMath is available to employers with at least 100 subscribers offering two or more Harvard Pilgrim plans, including an HSA-eligible plan. It is free to fully insured employer groups, but at a cost for the self-insured. Exclusions apply; please consult your Harvard Pilgrim account executive for more information.