5 Ways to Enhance your Open Enrollment Meetings

After spending so much time planning your open enrollment (OE) meeting, it is important to have high participation and attendance.

Your annual open enrollment meeting is a time when your employees can make changes to their medical, vision, or dental insurance plans. This includes adding, dropping, or changing their benefit choices.

Having a fun and engaging presentation for your open enrollment meeting announcement might stimulate excitement while increasing employee happiness at the workplace. Enhance your open enrollment meetings with these simple tips!

MAKE IT INTERACTIVE

Listening to the same person speak for a prolonged period can get boring. Try to bring in some external guest speakers, like someone from the HR department, to help make it an engaging open enrollment meeting.

Make sure to bring handouts, throw in plenty of jokes, run a quiz with prices and leave plenty of time for questions. Maintain eye contact and don’t read off the power point – It will make a huge difference.

Another innovative way you can connect with your employees is by adding more technology into the mix. For example, consider enabling text push notifications regarding your open enrollment meeting, as well as adding videos or online chat features.

BREAK IT INTO SHORT BLOCKS OF INFO

Healthcare is complicated stuff. While your well-written open enrollment information may contain some very helpful content, employees might get bored before they finish reading it. Additionally, large blocks of information might seem overwhelming.

Dividing the presentation into smaller, concise blocks of information might help your employees grasp everything better. Make sure to include all the important information, condense it as much as possible. It is easier to keep everyone’s attention this way and will help the presentation go along a lot quicker.

MAKE IT VISUALLY APPEALING

Use pictures, video clips, and GIFs to provide a break from the power point. Not only will it snap their attention back, but it gives you a break from talking and explaining more technical things. Graphics such as charts to show savings and plan comparisons might help employees visualize what you’re saying, which makes them more receptive and likely to take advantage.

Providing FAQs can also be another good way to convey enrollment information and answer any questions your employees might have during this process.

SHOW PEER TESTIMONIALS

Find some employees who really have taken great advantage of their benefits and have them come up during your open enrollment meeting. Talk about how much they saved or how good the program was for them.

Ask them what worked, what didn’t, what they recommend, etc. Some employees might mention that the information from last year’s open enrollment meeting was too much, and wasn’t broken up enough in a way that they can better understand.

Others might mention that they had more than enough notice to make any changes to their plan. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, it is helpful in making the necessary changes to improve your open enrollment meetings.

INCENTIVIZE IT

Finally, give your employees a reason to go. Raffle a gift card, provide lunch, or give them a prize upon completion. Although the phrase “employee benefits” should draw their attention, unfortunately most people don’t understand how much they could benefit from them. Giving them other reasons to attend the seminar will increase attendance and enrollment.

Make sure to leave plenty of time for questions in the end. Some of the most common questions asked by employees during or after an open enrollment meeting include:

• What is the difference between a PPO and HMO?
• What is coinsurance?
• What is an out-of-pocket maximum?
• What is an embedded deductible?
• What is the difference between my premium and my deductible?
• Is there a difference between an HSA and FSA?
• What is a Qualifying Life Event?

It is important for employees to understand everything regarding their insurance plan before making such an important decision on coverage for themselves and their families.

ACTIONS TO TAKE FOLLOWING YOUR OPEN ENROLLMENT MEETING

Where do you go from here? There’s a very good chance that employees will still have questions about the open enrollment process and how to apply what they’ve learned during the meeting.

It’s important that you’re available to guide employees through the enrollment process and this is a great way to utilize Strive. You can use Strive’s resources to provide employees with a portal where they can access all the information discussed during the meeting.

You can even provide virtual trainings and step-by-step guides to walk them through everything.

While employee benefits are a heavy topic, you can make it fun and interactive and ultimately, a lot more effective with an open enrollment meeting and Strive. Schedule a demo today!