Reaching out to employees regarding their benefits is a year-round endeavor, as we’ve discussed on the blog before. If you’re saving all of your communication energy for the Open Enrollment season, you’re missing valuable opportunities to engage your employees and get them thinking about their benefits now. Those missed opportunities can show up down the road, resulting in a mismatch of benefits, employees who aren’t getting the most out of their employment, and unnecessary spending.
Are you ready to draw up your pre-enrollment communications? Let’s talk strategy.
Real Life Advice
Every employee learns differently, but one commonality most humans share: we learn more from real-life stories and personal advice. Think about finding short anecdotes from employees and leadership who are engaging with their benefits and getting rewards back from them. These make great email and meeting topics. Additionally, encourage leadership to speak up about their interaction with benefits and how they believe benefits, both basic and voluntary, can be worthwhile for their teams.
Plan Events Ahead of Time
Give employees plenty of time to prepare for Open Enrollment on their calendar, including any in-person or online events which can help them. A minimum of four or five weeks is best for providing a heads-up on these events—calendars fill up fast, and employees with caregiving responsibilities, hobbies, or other commitments are going to need to know well in advance if the workplace is going to require another hour of their time.
Get Your Communications Drafted and In Production
It’s more than just emails and flyers, although those are important too. You can set up digital marketing materials easily with one of WBD’s communication packages, which include graphics and color schemes that set the tone for your entire Open Enrollment season. But consider other ways you’ll need to reach your employees, especially older ones who respond better to print than digital. Great options to keep enrollment dates top of mind include table toppers for break rooms, postcards to send to home addresses, and monitor memos to place on employee computers or by wall-clocks. These are great places to use some of those personal stories you collected.
Make Sure Your Benefits Site is Ready
Can employees go online at any point between your first communication and the start of Open Enrollment, and find the information they need ready and waiting? A user-friendly benefits platform is key to your Open Enrollment success, working hand in hand with your communications strategy to bring employees in, get them into a research frame of mind, and give them the tools to explore their benefits and find the most cost-effective, suitable plans for their unique needs. Explore the WBD Supersite for more on benefits platforms that will encourage engagement every day.