Open Enrollment Checklist

Ensure Success with 7 ‘Must Do’s’

Help ensure a successful benefits renewal season this year by following this helpful checklist of “must-do’s” for open enrollment:

1. Conduct a review of what worked well last year and what didn’t work so well.
Companies can improve every renewal season by building on what worked and knowing where the organization can improve in the open enrollment process.

2. Ensure a thorough analysis of this year’s benefits compared to last year’s benefits has been conducted and documented.
Use a one-page information sheet that outlines the differences in short but accurate bullets, defining key terms and publicizing contact names and numbers, important websites and details of all information needed to complete enrollment.

3. Commission a Benefits Review Committee to anticipate the top 10 questions employees will have this coming benefit renewal season, and develop recommended detailed answers to each question.
Anticipating the questions employees will have gives the organization a “leg up” on how to assist employees and ensures that the answers are consistent, regardless of who is answering the questions.

4. Brief all HR and Benefits staff members on the insurance offer details as well as any differences from last year.
This support will assist employees with questions. The most common frustrations for employees are: the constant change in plans and choices, benefit materials that are confusing, open enrollment seeming like a rushed process, and benefits personnel who are uninformed or unable to help.  Curb these frustrations with staff who are knowledgeable and ready to assist.

5. Engage a wide variety of communications.
Delivery of insurance materials to employees can occur through a number of available channels in addition to online portals maintained by the employer or the insurance carrier. Consider new options like Text2Engage (mobile messaging) and social media to provide reminders and support.  Technology is the latest and greatest, but don’t overlook more inexpensive—and effective—methods to prepare and engage employees like putting notices in paycheck envelopes, posting one-page reminders in employee break areas, and making videos available via YouTube or Facebook or monitors in offices and cafeterias. Organizations that have a multimedia approach to communicating with their employees are typically the most successful.

6. Identify and notify ALL employees who are qualified for a health insurance offer (full-time and full-time equivalent) that they are being offered insurance.
Applicable Large Employers (ALE’s) must track all part-time and variable hour workers to determine if any of those employees qualify for health insurance offers in accordance with the Affordable Care Act. Ensure data from monthly snapshots of actual hours worked for each month of the measurement period has been carefully monitored so that at the end of each measurement period, all part-time and variable hour workers who qualify for health insurance are identified and their health insurance offer is documented. See related article Open Enrollment? “Ensure and Document Offers to Meet ACA Requirements.”

7. Develop an employee feedback tool after open enrollment has been completed.
Ask employees to complete a brief survey to collect their opinions on the open enrollment process. Keep the survey brief by asking open ended questions or questions with a Likert scale, such as:
– How do you feel about your understanding of our company’s benefits?
– How aware of the benefits process are you?
– How would you rate the effort required by you to sign up for benefits?

BONUS: Improving Open Enrollment Next Year

Want to ensure an even better open enrollment renewal process next year? Add this item to this year’s open enrollment checklist:
Schedule a “debrief session” for all benefit and HR staff immediately following open enrollment while the activity of the event is fresh in everyone’s mind.
Take time to step back and assess internally how well it went AND start thinking about what can be done to improve next year.