Open enrollment is defined as the annual period in which employees can make changes to their benefits for themselves and their dependents. For many companies, this period occurs at the end of the calendar year for the following year. Despite the fact that this enrollment period is a mechanism by which employees can take advantage (or fuller advantage) of employer subsidized benefits, HR teams still face challenges in getting employees to participate in the open enrollment period and often turn to enrollment incentives to encourage employees to participate, and do so on time.
Introduction: What are incentives for open enrollment?
Incentives for open enrollment can often encourage employees to participate in benefits education, comply with company deadlines and use self-serve resources rather than requiring HR teams to conduct one-on-one sessions with employees to answer individual questions. Open enrollment incentives can be offered in a programmatic way or as more of an ad-hoc component to benefits fairs, educational webinars or to the “first X number of employees to complete enrollment.” However, you chose to incorporate incentives into your open enrollment plan, they are a great tool to boost employee engagement and satisfaction with the process.
Why Providing Incentives for Open Enrollment Should Be Your #1 Priority This Year
Open enrollment is a key company initiative for any HR team. It’s critical for both the company and the employees to get the process right. Making it clear and easy for employees, and ensuring compliance with organizational deadlines, makes for a smooth process and a successful benefit year transition. So why should incentives be your first priority this year?
As more companies make their hybrid or remote work environments permanent, open enrollment can be more easily tuned out. The emails can be missed, the Slack messages can be marked as read and ignored, but when open enrollment becomes interactive and engaging, everyone at the company pays attention, even from their zoom screen. Open enrollment benefits brighten up the process and the motivation of incentives drive employees to be on time and engage with HR in the process of learning about their benefits and maximizing the ‘employer’s offerings.
Incentive ideas for enrollees don’t have to be complicated, and adding incentives doesn’t need to slow down your open enrollment planning. Adding in enrollee benefits could be as simple as adding a few gift cards as giveaways for employees who answer trivia questions during your open enrollment information session, or a quick e-gift card to the first 15 employees at the company who enroll. Using the material incentives, paired with peer recognition, can bolster engagement in (on-time) open enrollment across an organization. So make sure you pair the incentive with a public shout-out.
What Kinds of Rewards are Best for Employees?
When determining good incentives for employees during open enrollment, there are three criteria to use as you sift through all of your employee reward ideas:
- Easy to deliver: Making employer incentives for open enrollment easy to deliver to employees is key. In a distributed workforce, or a hybrid model where some employees are in-office and others are working elsewhere, the incentives and rewards have to be easily delivered.
- Valuable enough to change behavior: Open enrollment incentives are designed to change how employees act during the enrollment window. Whether that’s sign up faster, participate in education sessions or ensure compliance with company benefits policies, in order to change behavior the incentives have to be valuable. Budgets vary for programs like this, so ensuring you can create value without unlimited budget is important to balance when designing your open enrollment incentive program.
- Flexible to fit your audience: Incentives don’t work if there is no perceived value to the recipient. Providing small rewards during the open enrollment period for encouraged behavior and engagement only works if what you give to employees means something to them. Since your employee base is likely a diverse group, ensure that the rewards you provide during open enrollment have enough variety or are flexible enough to meet the needs of your whole staff.
How to Create Excitement During Open Enrollment
Open enrollment isn’t typically looked at as an “exciting time” for employees. Another thing they have to do for their employer (and themselves) on a deadline. It can be complicated and overwhelming and something many employees do largely uninformed about their options. Creating excitement around open enrollment with incentive campaigns is a way to make open enrollment about employee engagement and bring your whole workforce together around a common goal.
In addition to adding incentives to your open enrollment plan, add fun to open enrollment by including:
- Lunch and learns - An opportunity to provide a meal (or a gift card for remote employees!)
- Creative Communication- Emails are great, but everyone loses HR emails in their inbox. Cross-post communication in Slack channels, ensure department heads and managers are passing information to their teams and make it fun! Benefits are important but if communicated clearly, they don’t need to be boring.
- Health Fairs - Another interactive option that brings benefits providers and even health care and wellness providers together for employees to ask questions and for the providers to share information.
- Programmatic Incentives - Don’t just give out one round of spot rewards at the first open enrollment education session. Plan incentives throughout your open enrollment period, so it feels like employees’ never lose the opportunity to earn a reward.
Conclusion & Wrap Up:
Open enrollment is inevitable for employers and employees. Adding an incentive program to the promotion plan during the open enrollment period can add an element of levity, fun and true employee engagement to an otherwise mundane and sometimes arduous process. When adding open enrollment incentives, ensuring they are timely, easy to deliver and impactful to your whole employee pool are key to getting a return on the incentive investment.
