Benefits, benefits, benefits. It’s easy to see the benefits of benefits, but it’s a little harder to understand how it is exactly they work or how you go about offering them. Of course, the first step is creating a benefits package, but what comes after that? When it comes to enrolling in benefits, there can be a lot of questions, whether that be how to enroll or how much certain benefits cost. For employees, getting answers to these questions is vital in ensuring they’re enrolling in the right benefits for them. For employers, being able to answer these questions can ensure employees are actually enrolling in the benefits they offer. But how do you go about answering these questions? What’s the best method for ensuring employee understanding of their benefits?
These are all very good questions, ones that we here at Payday HCM have encountered time and time again. We’ve had several clients over the years ask us these questions, wondering, once you’ve created your benefits package, how do you go about ensuring your employees actually enroll in their benefits? On the surface, it seems relatively simple: you tell your employees they have these benefits and they enroll. Of course, it’s much deeper than that. Employees will have questions, some may need assistance with enrolling, or some may want to know how to waive their benefits. This is where a benefits enrollment meeting comes in.
In this article, we’ll be going over the elements that make up a good benefits enrollment meeting. We’ll start by covering generally what a benefits enrollment meeting is and how they work before diving deeper into some strategies you can employ to ensure you have an effective benefits enrollment meeting. After that, we’ll go over some things to keep in mind when hosting a benefits enrollment meeting, including what makes an ineffective meeting and tips for running a benefits enrollment meeting.
In this article, you will learn:
- What Is A Benefits Enrollment Meeting?
- How To Have An Effective Benefits Enrollment Meeting
- Benefits Enrollment Meeting: Things to Keep in Mind
What Is A Benefits Enrollment Meeting?
Before we get into the traits of a good benefits enrollment meeting (as well as what to avoid), we’ll first cover what a benefits enrollment meeting is and its purpose.
What Happens After You Create Your Benefits Package?
We talk a lot about creating the perfect benefits package for your organization. Maybe you’ve just finished the process: you did the research on what benefits your employees need the most, found a broker or agency that understands your business, and you’ve landed on a benefits package that fits your business’s needs. Now what?
Creating a good benefits package is only the first step in your organization’s benefits process. If you spend all the time creating a benefits package and nobody enrolls, then what’s the point? Once you’ve created your perfect benefits package, the task of communicating with employees about the benefits package and encouraging them to enroll begins.How To Have A Successful Open Enrollment
When it comes time to have your employees enroll in benefits, the process isn’t as simple as just having your employees enroll in benefits. They’ll have questions about their benefits or need assistance with the enrollment process—some may not know how to enroll to begin with. These things all go beyond just creating the benefits package.
There are many different strategies you can employ as a business to help ensure your open enrollment is as successful as possible. Mass communication (company-wide emails), printed materials, videos, and training sessions can all be successful methods for ensuring a smooth open enrollment process. This includes hosting a benefits enrollment meeting.
A benefits enrollment meeting can take many forms, depending on the business that is hosting it. Generally speaking, we can think of a benefits enrollment meeting as a comprehensive how-to meeting, explaining not only how employees can enroll in benefits, but also covering the important need-to-know information about their benefits as well.
How To Have An Effective Benefits Enrollment Meeting
Now that we understand more about what happens after the creation of a benefits package and where a benefits enrollment meeting comes into play, we can dive deeper into what makes a good benefits enrollment meeting.
The Elements of a Good Benefits Enrollment Meeting
A good benefits enrollment meeting involves more than just a meeting to review benefits enrollment. Before you begin, consider your employees’ needs and determine which strategies will be most effective in communicating benefits enrollment information to them. This includes things like printing out and emailing plan information, creating videos, and providing a forum to answer questions.
Your enrollment meeting should also be as accessible as possible to all employees within your organization. This means providing employees with the option to attend both in-person and virtually. You’ll also want to record the meeting and distribute it not only to employees who were unable to attend, but to all employees so they can review anything they may have missed.
What Do You Cover In A Benefits Enrollment Meeting?
Of course, having your benefits meeting accessible through multiple platforms is only helpful if the content of the meeting is actually substantive. There are a number of different things you’ll want to cover during the meeting in order to ensure your employees have a complete understanding of their benefits.
Important topics to cover during a benefits enrollment meeting include:
- Plan design
- Cost and utilization resources
- Who to approach with questions
- How to enroll in or waive benefits
It’s likely that you’ll have employees with different levels of understanding in your enrollment meeting. Ensure that you’re not only covering everything a new employee might need to know, but also any changes a more experienced employee may not be aware of.
Benefits Enrollment Meeting: Things to Keep in Mind
Finally, we’ll go over important things to keep in mind when planning and running a benefits enrollment meeting, including what makes an ineffective meeting and other things to keep in mind.
What Makes A Bad Benefits Enrollment Meeting?
It’s safe to assume that a bad benefits enrollment meeting is essentially just the opposite of all the things we described above. For the most part, this is true, but it’s still important to highlight the kinds of things to avoid when planning and running a benefits enrollment meeting to ensure your meeting is as effective as possible.
Ultimately, a good benefits enrollment meeting is something actually useful to your employees. Simply handing out a benefits enrollment packet with no explanation or no meeting, not providing a forum for employees to ask questions, and potentially hiding benefits costs or value are all things that will make the benefits enrollment process more difficult.
Benefits Enrollment Meeting Tips
When approaching your benefits enrollment meeting, there are several things you’ll want to keep in mind. For starters, it’s important to have a new meeting every year, as there may be changes to plan information or cost, or changes to your organization’s benefits package that employees may need to be aware of.
It’s also crucial to keep in mind the employee journey in terms of how an employee might choose their benefits as they’ve been with your business for longer. Some employees may start by waiving their benefits, but then, over time, they may need to enroll. Understanding these changes can help you make your meetings as informative as possible.
Finally, the whole point of a benefits enrollment meeting is to help your employees understand what benefits are available to them, how much they cost, and how they can enroll in them. Find ways to break down some of the more confusing elements of enrollment in ways everyone can understand. Real-life examples can prove particularly useful when explaining things like health insurance plans or other insurance benefits.
Enroll In An Effective Benefits Enrollment Meeting
Offering your employees a comprehensive and affordable benefits package is crucial, not only for retaining your current employees and demonstrating your commitment to their well-being, but also for recruiting new top talent. Creating the benefits package is only the first part of the process, though. Enrolling in benefits is almost just as important, but can often be one of the more confusing steps in the benefits journey, both for employees and employers. As an employer, though, you want to ensure your employees not only understand what benefits are offered to them but how to enroll in them as well. With the information provided in this article, you’ll have the tools you need to run an effective and informative benefits enrollment meeting.
While creating a good benefits package is certainly important, it won’t mean very much if no one uses it or takes full advantage of it. Successful benefits enrollment requires organization-wide commitment and dedication from upper management to ensure each employee understands what benefits are offered and how they can enroll for them. Of course, you might still be wondering, how much does all of this cost? Check out our article for a breakdown on the cost of successful benefits enrollment so you can ensure you're prepared for open enrollment.
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