By Bryan O’Malley, workplace expert at Care@Work and general manager of payments at Care.com
Open enrollment season is upon us, which means HR leaders everywhere are striving to make sure their employees are well informed enough to make the best choices about their benefits.
We know you’ve done your homework. Over the past several months you’ve thoroughly reviewed your benefits package, analyzed the latest trends, crunched the numbers, and delivered multiple rounds of recommendations. Through wizardry or sheer force of will, you’ve managed to design a multifaceted plan that meets the needs of your workforce while minimizing the impact of soaring healthcare costs on your employees.
But those preparations are only half the battle. Even the best laid plans depend on a level of employee engagement. So how can HR leaders get the most out of open enrollment? Here are a few tips.
1. Optimize Communication Strategies
Open enrollment is the busiest time of year for HR professionals, so it’s important to ensure those efforts are not met with a collective eye-roll from the employee base. Tempted as you might be to default to generic promotional copy, this is a critical period during which you need to hit employees with a wide array of messages through multiple mediums and appeal to their unique interests.
Make it work by using historical data to understand what are the most effective ways to reach your employee base. Ask: Do your employees respond better to electronic communications or posters around the office—and then initiate a multitiered outreach strategy that delivers information through the mediums that drive the most engagement.
Optimize e-mail subject lines, for example: “Stop Losing Money” vs. “Learn More About Your FSA.” Tailor topical text messages and push notifications for new parents, and tap internal social networks and vendor-supported in-app messaging to reach those independent Millennials.
Definitely don’t sleep on low-tech communication strategies. Posters in the kitchen, home mailings, benefits fairs, and desk drops are still effective strategies for informing employees about their benefits during open enrollment. The more you can do to diversify message delivery, the better chance you have of grabbing your employees’ attention.
2. Get Analytical
One of the growing trends is companies tapping predictive analytics to improve employee engagement, as well as benefits awareness. Diving into the data sets and predictive analytics allows HR leaders to direct targeted messages and relevant information to employees, based on life-stages and other variables.
The rise of human capital management systems has made open enrollment a lot more painless across the board. Letting employees make benefits elections when and where it’s convenient for them has simplified the process for employees and HR alike.
As the platforms get smarter, the analytics focus can lead to suggested actions and even cost savings for employees as they interact with their benefits through the platforms. These advancements can be big help for those employees who may take more passive approach to managing their benefits during open enrollment.
3. Promote Your Voluntary Benefits
Open enrollment doesn’t have to be all about changes to your health and dental programs—use this opportunity to promote other benefits that your company offers, such as wellbeing programs or family care benefits, like backup care and resource and referral services.
This is the one time of year when you know your workforce will have benefits on the brain, so it makes sense to promote those benefits that can propel your business and have a positive impact on your bottom line. Many leading companies have found addressing employees’ work-life needs with family care benefits helps to reduce absenteeism, improve productivity, and help to attract and retain the best employees.
If you’re introducing new or expanded family care benefits during open enrollment, consider leveraging a working parents group or other employee resource group to champion and promote the new offering.
Whatever methods you use during open enrollment, it’s important to track engagement and conversions, and report on the data. It’s a little more work-in up front, but you’ll be glad you did it when you’re repeating the process this time next year.
 At Care.com, the world’s largest online destination for finding and managing family care, Bryan O’Malley is a member of the senior leadership team focused on growing business clients, partners, and revenue. Bryan oversees the payments business for the company, which includes Care.com HomePay, the nation’s leading household employment specialist, the Care.com Benefits program, and other business initiatives. |