With open enrollment quickly approaching for many businesses, it’s important to take the time to review your current health care offerings and benefits plans. Regardless of your team’s size, investing in health care is essential as it significantly impacts the health, wellness, and happiness of your most valuable asset: your employees. Choosing the best health plan and benefits can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.
Open Enrollment
Open enrollment occurs annually, providing individuals the opportunity to enroll in or change their health care plan or other benefits. Individuals can review or update their existing coverage to meet their current needs; they can enroll in a new health care plan, modify their coverage levels, adjust their contributions, add beneficiaries, and more. Common benefits that individuals update are dental, retirement, vision, and more.
Open enrollment is a crucial period for employers and employees, as it is the only time when changes to health care plans and benefits can be made. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as experiencing a qualifying life event like having a child, getting married, or getting a divorce.
With rising health care costs, individuals are prioritizing utilizing affordable health care and benefits plans. This trend enhances the appeal of employers who offer comprehensive benefits packages to potential employees. In fact, 57% of U.S. workers have taken a new job if it provided better family and reproductive benefits.
Tips For Open Enrollment Season
As an employer, reviewing current policies or selecting the right health care plan for your employees during open enrollment can be overwhelming. However, there are a variety of strategies that can help you prepare and streamline the open enrollment process.
Make a schedule
Due to the hard cut-off date of the open enrollment period, marking your calendar with important dates and deadlines is essential. This year, open enrollment for HealthCare.gov begins on November 1, 2024, and ends on January 15, 2025. Consistently communicate with your employees about your important dates to ensure they are well-prepared and ready to submit their information to secure coverage for the upcoming year.
Offer personalized benefits options
As an employer, transparency and open communication are vital to a seamless open enrollment process. While there are many different coverage options and plans for your employees, it’s important to understand your employees’ priorities, their thoughts on their current plans, and updates or changes they’d like to see made. This can be done with an employee survey, a meeting, or a company-wide email. Offering a benefits plan that satisfies your employees will likely result in a more engaged, productive, and happy workforce.
In recent years, employees have been more strategic and thoughtful about their benefits selections. Employees are taking a more holistic perspective toward their health, and they want a strong, comprehensive benefits package to mirror that. Seventy-nine percent of employed individuals express interest in receiving support to maximize their workplace benefits dollars across retirement savings, health savings accounts (HSAs), health care insurance, and voluntary benefits.
Research coverage options
To ensure you are offering the best plans to your employees, it’s important to review your current coverage options and research potential alternatives. It’s crucial to check available providers and ensure they match your employee’s’ needs in terms of cost, services, and amount of coverage. To enhance your research process, consider the following steps:
Conduct employee surveys
By conducting an employee survey about your current coverage offerings, you’ll gain a greater understanding of what your employees are looking for with their health care options. When you utilize this feedback, you’ll be able to choose the best coverage that align with your employees’ wants and needs, potentially improving employee happiness and retention.
Compare coverage
As an employer, it’s crucial to benchmark health care coverage with federal standards to ensure that employees receive comprehensive and competitive benefits. It can also be helpful to compare your health care offerings with other companies in the same industry, to determine how your company’s current coverage compares to competitors or if any changes need to be made.
Keep your employees educated
As an employer, you need to make sure your employees understand their available coverage options, potential updates they can make, and possible costs. Open enrollment can be challenging, and providing resources to help employees better understand the process and the benefits available to them can significantly enhance their satisfaction with their plans. Providing resources like webinars, emails, guides, and insurance marketplace updates is a great way to keep your employees informed about the latest open enrollment information.
Open Enrollment Assistance
It’s never too early to start thinking about open enrollment. Ensuring your employees have a seamless enrollment process may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. With a professional employer organization (PEO) like Group Management Services (GMS), you gain access to a dedicated HR team to help answer questions about open enrollment. GMS can also help reduce costs and administrative burdens while providing your employees with quality medical coverage. With our in-house master health plan, you can also avoid large swings in usage and renewal rates.
For more information about how GMS can help you navigate open enrollment, contact us today!