It’s officially that time of year. School is back in session, fall weather will be here shortly, and open enrollment is weeks away. As HR teams and communicators plan for open enrollment and best supporting employees, consider implementing these six best practices.
1. Identify Your Audiences
The responsibility of communicating open enrollment doesn’t just sit with the open enrollment team. From the C-Suite to people leaders, all leaders need to be effectively informed about open enrollment key messages, timing, and any changes that are likely to impact employees. In your communication cascade, account for the following audiences, identifying the key messages and timelines that are most important:
C-Suite
Benefits Team
People Leaders
Employees
Tip: Create a key messaging document for each of your targeted audiences to ensure that you have the right messaging each time you communicate.
2. Consider the Optics
Take a look at your benefits guide. Is it a visually representation of your employees? Companies often differentiate themselves by offering competitive compensation and benefits packages. If your benefits guide is generic enough that any company logo could be added to it, you are missing a huge employee branding opportunity to sell the value of your company’s benefits.
Tip: Include diversity in photos that accurately represent your team demographics 6including manufacturing, in field, or corporate team members.
3. Empower Leaders to Be Advocates
People managers are great resources to reinforce key messages, timing, and actions that employees need to take. Creating brief talking points and a presentation for leaders to share with employees during team meetings helps to ensure that employees are hearing consistent messaging around open enrollment.
Tip: People leaders at different locations may require different materials. For instance, leaders in manufacturing facilities or onsite are likely relaying messages to employees that have little to no access to emails. Providing them
4. Lead with Your Why
Most employees know that open enrollment comes once a year and so capturing their attention can be challenging. It’s important to lead with why your company has selected specific providers or benefits to employees including addressing elements like rising inflation and health care costs, expanded benefits offerings, and how the company is meeting employee requests around competitive compensation and benefits.
Tip: Keep your why short, simple, and use common place language. Benefits can be confusing for employees, especially when industry language is used.
5. Go Beyond Emails
The average office worker receives 121 emails every day. HR teams are competing against significant noise when they rely on email to be the primary communication channel. Instead, be creative about how you kickoff open enrollment. From health fairs to benefits boxes with samples from vendors, healthy snacks, and material on open enrollment, there are many creative ways for employers to show their commitment to providing health and wellness benefits to employees, while adding a bit of excitement and energy.
Tip: Identify all the channels that your company currently uses to communicate to employees and ensure that there is a plan for each channel, adjusting the messaging to fit the channel.
6. Communicate Beyond Open Enrollment
A lot goes into open enrollment, with a primary goal of getting employees to act and complete enrollment. But communication can’t stop there. Businesses invest significantly in benefits for employees but there is no benefit if employees don’t leverage their benefits. Once open enrollment completes, consider featuring a benefit each month to remind employees of the tools and resources available to them.
Tip: Consider how you can tie employee engagement to your benefits features, like bringing a mobile mammogram station in, sharing healthy recipes, or having vendors present virtual or onsite for lunch and learns.
Open enrollment is just around the corner. Use these 6 tips to engage with employees and tie in a bit of culture along the way. Looking for more support?
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