Chances are, you’ve already dedicated a lot of time and resources to prep for Open Enrollment (OE) – you’ve updated your plans, selected additional benefits, updated (or created) the enrollment guides, reviewed regulations and gathered resources on your offerings. Now you need to get the word out and get employees to actually read and take action on what you’re sending. But, how?
Get employees to pay attention during Open Enrollment
Your communication to employees is arguably one of the most crucial aspects of OE, but this important step is often an afterthought. Effective communications are necessary because healthcare has shifted from being employer driven to employee driven. Employees now need to review and determine which plan works best for them – there is no longer one plan for the entire company. Plus, dense information that’s hard to comprehend is compressed in a very short period of time, which doesn’t work well for people who are busy and easily distracted.
This means that the old communication process doesn’t cut it anymore. You cannot just set up benefits offerings and distribute without reinforcement and marketing. Employees need to engage in OE for it to be successful. If your communications fall to the wayside, you’re not going to get the participation you want. You’ll likely have to chase employees around during the last few days to get them to enroll or opt out—or even read your communications, a more common problem than you may think.
This may sound like a lot of work coming your way, but there are a few things you can do to make it easier on your employees during OE. Here’s how:
Make your communications simple. Employees are used to dense and confusing communications that they don’t understand during Open Enrollment. This is why most people don’t read the OE handbook or you get lots of questions about how different benefits work. If you try to make your benefits information, and the subsequent communications simpler, employees will have a much easier time understanding what they’re reading. Which will help them make a more informed decision without your help. A good recommendation is to make the reading level of your communications 7th or 8th grade.
Make communications short. People are busy. They don’t have time to read a 25 page OE guide in depth. Often, these guides are either just skimmed through, referenced for specific benefits, or not even read at all. While the OE guide is important in its current state as a reference, if you can make communications or blurbs about each benefits available to employees in a shorter and more fun format that they’ll enjoy reading, you'll be able to educate your employees on more of your offerings.
Market your Open Enrollment. Companies market their products and services all the time. Since healthcare and benefits are now employee driven, you need to be doing the same for OE. Simply marketing your benefits pre, during and post OE will help employees participate and know more about what the company is offering to them.
This might seem like a lot of work you have to do, but good news is Airbo does this for you already.
84% of Airbo customers use Tiles to drive participation and educate employees during OE each year.
Airbo has an extensive library of existing content for OE. This content, called “Tiles” has been created by experts, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel and create anything yourself. We’ve taken complex topics and made them easy to understand, interactive and actionable. You simply need to copy Tiles to your organization’s Board, edit them slightly to match your specific offerings, and send.
For an employee, the Tiles are simple, fun and educational. Each Tile has an image for visual learners, is written in simple language, and asks a question to prove comprehension. Plus, each Tile takes only a minute to read and interact with, so an employee doesn't have to set aside a large part of their day to read a dense communication when they've got lots of other stuff to do.
The Tiles also send employees to other resources, such as your benefits enrollment software, so you can get employees to the exact resources they need to visit in an efficient and timely manner.
Below is our marketing guide to help you drive participation in OE. We recommend that you follow this schedule to reinforce all of the great work you’ve put in for OE so far. The guide includes:
When to send the Tiles
Which Tiles to share
Why they’re important to share
A suggested subject line for the Tiles email
All of the Tiles can be found in Explore and copied to your board if you click on the links below.
A few things to remember:
Employees are not experts in benefits, so if you’re editing or creating your own Tiles, use simple language and try to keep them as short as possible.
If you're getting a lot of repetitive questions about one benefit, copy or create a Tile about it to answer the common questions instead of answering each employee one at a time This will get employees in the habit of using the Tiles to answer questions instead of coming to you directly.
If you’d like any assistance with planning out your communications for OE, please don’t hesitate to reach out!