It’s no secret that benefits can often be confusing and complicated to understand. In fact, a recent study by Harris Poll found that 54% of people don’t fully understand what their current health insurance offers.
As an HR administrator, you act as your organization’s gateway to the vital benefit information your employees need to know. That’s why it’s so important that you prepare yourself for the questions and conversations you’ll be approached with throughout Open Enrollment season as you help employees understand their benefits.
Take a look at just a few of the tools, techniques, and resources you can use to help your employees understand their benefits and make simply smarter benefit decisions!
Eliminate Confusion and Maximize Usability During the Benefits Process
The majority of employees (72%) believe that the benefits process is so complicated that they would rather just have an expert pick the best plan for them. To meet this growing demand and help decrease the health insurance knowledge gap, it’s important to educate employees on what’s available to them.
The best way to help employees make informed decisions about the benefits they need most is to bring clarity to your benefit offerings and foster conversations that build confidence. Employees want to know the basic advantages, how the benefits will impact their lives and how much they will cost. You can convey these key messages to your employees with these simple steps.
- Streamline Communications
Positive and reassuring language is the key to eliminating intimidation employees might feel during the benefits process. Develop concise and to-the-point messages that are easy to understand and drive your employees to take action. Clear action steps at the end of every message help ensure your employees know exactly the next steps they need to take and when they need to take them. Consider cheat sheets or a glossary of terms to further develop benefits education in your organization. A quick guide of the need-to-know terms or employee benefits can greatly reduce uncertainty and lead to smarter benefit decisions.
- Offer Personalized Assistance
An employee’s lack of comfort in the benefits process can cause them not to ask the important questions they need answers to. To break down some of those barriers, try to offer personalized assistance catered to your employees’ various stages of life. This can be accomplished through training sessions or webinars that address Open Enrollment concerns and explain the features of your benefit offerings. Show your employees that your organization goes the extra mile by hosting open office hours for employees to schedule a time to review enrollment and renewal questions. You can even make a checklist of options and selections for employees to use to build their benefit confidence.
3. Use Creative Tools
When an employee is already unsure of the right plans to choose, the last thing they want to do is sort through stacks of benefit explanations and read material that may or may not apply to them. Employees will respond better to creative tools that can visually explain the key benefits of each plan. Use tools like videos, renewal simulations, infographics or flyers to assist in benefit conversations. These creative tools can help employees visualize the benefits they have at hand and give them more context into how each benefit will impact their life.
Solutions Tailored to Your Employees’ Needs
When it comes to open enrollment season, you want solutions that are not only personalized for your employees' individual needs, but that also meet the administrative needs of your organization. Juggling regulation changes, employee benefit plans, new offerings, and employee questions can quickly take a toll.
At Clarity, our goal is to take the confusion out of the benefits process for you and your employees. We help employees understand their benefits by utilizing best-in-class benefit technology that truly transforms your organization so you can channel your efforts into providing the best benefits offerings and assistance to your employees.
Learn more about Clarity’s tools and technology and how they can help streamline your Open Enrollment communications and the entire benefits process this season!
