Open Enrollment: A Continuous Focus on Employee Experience & Well-being
Rebecca Morris
Did you miss the live webinar? Watch the recording now and explore the eBook.
The open enrollment process provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate a culture of care, and that your company is actively listening and responding to employees’ most pressing needs. It’s a critical time for conveying the value of your benefits offering and helping employees engage with and optimize company-provided benefits. But open enrollment is not just about benefits enrollment season– done right, it is a strategic year-long process that helps improve the employee experience and well-being of your workforce.
BrightPlan recently hosted a webinar on this topic, and delved into the latest trends in employee benefits and how to maximize the value and impact of open enrollment - featuring Meghan Biro, Founder & CEO of TalentCulture, Dennis Wagner, Partner at Spire Risk Management, and Neha Mirchandani, CMO & Head of People at BrightPlan.
Here are some key takeaways from the session:
Employee well-being has taken a turn
Meghan shared how the impacts of the pandemic have brought employee well-being to the forefront. The pivot to remote and flexible work, additional caregiving responsibilities, and increased stress and burnout in work and life have affected employees at all levels and in every industry. Here’s a view into some of what employees have been experiencing these past few years:
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Worsening mental health: 51% of employees reported worse mental health since the start of the pandemic, leading to struggles at work including reduced motivation (49%), low team morale (45%), decreased productivity (44%) and poor work/life balance (30%).
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Increased financial stress: 72% of U.S. employees are stressed about their finances and 88% of employees expect their employer to offer financial support.
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Mounting caregiving responsibilities: More employees (63% of which are women) are in the position of caring for elders, and many are facing innumerable challenges: 26% are having trouble juggling work with caregiving, and 33% are burned out.
The power of wellness benefits
Neha shared how given the pressures that today’s employees face, many are feeling squeezed on all fronts: from physical to mental, financial to social to career. To encourage employees to engage with the benefits process, the rewards offered need to speak to their needs directly.
Today, with inflation at a record high and growing economic uncertainty, we’re seeing the impact of finances on employees’ mental and physical health. Increased financial stress is hurting engagement, performance, and by extension, business success. BrightPlan’s 2022 Wellness Barometer Survey found that employee financial stress costs U.S. employers $210 billion annually*.
Providing the right support and benefits to help employees overcome financial pressures means getting to the root of employee well-being and addressing their holistic financial needs. It’s also about recognizing that employees have different financial needs depending on their life stage — and being able to meet them where they are with the right support and resources.
Technology is an enabler
Neha discussed how technology is disrupting all aspects of the HR industry, including employee benefits. HR teams have transitioned from a manual and human-led approach to leveraging HRIS software and online benefits administration tools to automate nearly every aspect of the HR function. More recently, the proliferation of digital-led employee benefits has further empowered employers to deliver benefits at scale, and provide employees with access to the support they need, when they need it.
Alongside the growing popularity of telehealth, several new benefits employees can access digitally have transformed the way employers support their employees’ well-being, especially for a global distributed workforce. Some examples shared include:
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Wellness incentives: Connected devices that track employees’ physical activity, heart rate, and sleep quality are now a common component of virtually all employee wellness programs. In addition, through incentives, such as reduced healthcare premiums, employers can encourage behaviors that are beneficial to employees’ long-term health.
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Mental health apps: Digital mental health resources, including mindfulness apps and online therapy, have reduced the stigma of getting help and made it easier for employees to access the support that they need.
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Financial wellness programs: Today financial wellness digital platforms are disrupting the legacy, human-only led approach. With technology, these programs now have the ability to reach more people, delivering a consistent employee experience and offering support for employees across all life stages. By pairing a digital solution that offers 24/7 access to extensive learning, financial planning, and money management capabilities with seasoned financial planners, employees across all demographics can be better equipped to build financial confidence and achieve long term financial success.
Open enrollment is a year-long effort
Meghan explained how open enrollment has traditionally been seen as a discrete phase in a work year: an opportunity for employees to review their benefit options and make selections for the year ahead. But the new realities of how we work and the impacts of COVID-19 call for an evolved approach. Forward-thinking companies are transforming the benefits process and turning open enrollment into a thoughtful year-long focus — starting with listening intently to employees’ wants and needs. Here’s what the process looks like when employers and HR teams approach open enrollment as the pinnacle of a year-long cycle:
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Before open enrollment: Actively listen to employees and their pain points. Work with your broker and solution provider partners to curate the right benefits for your workforce.
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During open enrollment: Roll out the benefits you've carefully curated for your employees and actively connect and communicate with them in order to drive enrollment and benefits utilization. Help employees make the right benefits selections for themselves and their families.
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After open enrollment: Conduct clear assessments of what worked and what needs to be recalibrated for the coming year. Partner with your broker and solution providers to adjust and refine your benefits offering to provide more value and better meet employee needs.
Tap your brokers and solution partners
During the fireside chat, Meghan and Dennis explained how leveraging the power of brokers and benefits solution providers as strategic partners through each phase of the process can help boost the success of open enrollment over the course of the entire year. It’s often the brokers and providers who have their “ears to the ground” — they see what is working and what isn’t across various companies and employee populations, and can provide valuable benchmarking data and insights for all phases of the benefits cycle. They can also act as benefits advisors, helping to guide your employees to the benefits that can best support them and their families, increasing engagement and utilization.
Coming full circle
Employers need to continuously have a pulse on shifting employee needs by listening intently, providing the benefits that matter most and empowering employees with the awareness and knowledge to make the right benefits selection decisions for themselves and their families. This will help increase employee well-being and foster a culture of care. Not only is this a net positive for the company, it can also spark employees’ commitment to stay with their employer long-term.
For more insights on maximizing the open enrollment process, explore the eBook.
