Employee Benefit Open Enrollment Doesn’t Have to Be Stressful

If your open enrollment time period is just around the corner, you may be dreading the process. Sometimes employees don’t turn in their new paperwork on time, someone may have been left off the list to receive the info packet causing employee dissatisfaction, and/or the insurance company has just raised the rates again which means more money out of your employees’ pockets. All are stressful situations!

However, open enrollment doesn’t have to be that bad. There are ways to make the process less problematic. You may not be able to control the rising insurance costs, but organizing benefit enrollments and communicating changes to your employees can be much simpler.

Using a Human Resource Information System" (HRIS) can help simplify the process. It can help you plan, organize, and prepare HR letters. For example, when ordering new open enrollment packets or health insurance forms, you could simply run a list of active, eligible employees to find out how many to order.

Communicating changes can be easy, too. Nowadays email is a common, and sometimes preferred, manner of communication. However, if you wish to use multiple methods to make sure your employees have every opportunity to learn about and understand what’s going on, you could also have company meetings and send out hard-copy letters. Having a couple of company meetings where employees can show up and listen to a presentation is helpful because some people learn better with a visual and oral presentation, some people may not take the time to read through the packet of material otherwise, and some people may ask questions that might be common throughout your entire staff. A formal letter can also be helpful in reminding employees about open enrollment and encouraging them to take it under serious consideration. Most HRIS programs have a merge function that can be used to quickly create HR letters and mailing labels for your workers.

An HRIS can also help manage employee benefits during the rest of the year, too. Typically, these HR software programs have a built-in reminders system to alert managers when new hires are eligible for employee benefits. You can also run benefits by plan and benefit summary reports to see how many employees are participating in the plans you offer. And, you could quickly prepare census reports to help your insurance company prepare offerings that are appropriate for your workforce demographic.

With the progress of technology, managing employee benefit enrollments and communicating changes are a much simpler process. Now you won’t have to dread open enrollment or worry about missing an enrollment or eligibility date deadline