It’s almost time for year-end small group open enrollment and you need to drive engagement so that your employees can make informed decisions about their health insurance options.

We want to help you help your employees understand all of their options so that they can purchase a plan that is appropriate for their situation. So here is our advice for the open enrollment:

Listen to your workforce

Before you make any decisions, you should listen to your employees and better understand their needs and preferences.

With answers and feedback in hand you can create a benefits package which is more appealing to them, which in turn gives you a competitive edge when attracting and retaining workers.

Engage employees and solicit feedback through quarterly employee-benefits round table meetings. Invite employees from different age groups and different departments to participate in these meetings to ensure you have a good cross-section of your staff represented.

Give advance notice

You can start this month with simple reminders for them to start thinking about open enrollment and evaluate their current health plans. Send out memos and place posters in high traffic areas.

If you start with this in September or October, they can have time to assess their options, particularly if anything has changed in their lives like marital status, new children or health issues.

Costs are paramount

You can work with us to settle on plan arrangements that will be within your and your employees’ budgets (in their case, the plans also have to be deemed affordable under the Affordable Care Act).

Employees have a right to understand the costs, so let them know how to access the free transparency tools provided online by most medical carriers. Provide employees with a breakdown of medical and pharmaceutical cost increases to avoid sticker shock.

Get an early start

If your plan year starts Jan. 1, you should hold open enrollment meetings and dispense plan materials in October or November.

Avoid holding meetings in December. It’s too busy and the ramping up period is too short.

Communicate effectively

Your task is to get employees out of cruise control and truly assess all of their options.

This is especially true if you are making changes to cost-sharing, introducing new plans, introducing a wellness plan or health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts.

You should use a variety of different media to communicate with your workforce.

Use video, virtual and live meetings, e-mail communications and print materials to get through to your employees. While the attentive ones may think it’s overkill, using different forms of communication ensures that you reach the widest number of staff.

Get spouses involved

If you also offer insurance to spouses, you should communicate through your employees that they are also invited to join your open enrollment meetings.

You can also invite them to view any electronic material you may post online, like the aforementioned videos.

If they cannot make a general meeting, you can invite them to come in to meet with your human resources manager if they have questions.

Remind them of the Law

You can use open enrollment as a way to remind your staff of their responsibilities to secure coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Let them know that employees who refuse affordable coverage from their employer and opt to purchase it on a public exchange will usually not be eligible for government premium subsidies.

Ask us about the most frequently asked questions about the ACA and we can help you prepare a list of online resources that they can access to get answers to those questions you may not be able to answer.

The meeting

Send out meeting notices early to give your employees time to prepare and set aside time.

Try to make the meeting engaging.

You may want to consider video recording the session and also providing remote access to employees who don’t work onsite.

Provide enough time for the main presentation as well as questions from your employees.

More than half of employees regret the coverage decisions they make during open enrollment, according to a new study.

Part of the problem may be that the average employee spends only 30 to 60 minutes selecting their benefits during open enrollment, which typically lasts about two weeks in most workplaces, according to the study by financial service firm Equitable. For perspective, the average American spends 120 minutes a day on social media.

The findings in the study underscore the importance for continuing education and outreach on their benefits and providing your workers the opportunity to ask questions in a private setting.

The top reasons employees cited for regretting their decisions include:

• 25% said they failed to adjust their benefits to match their lifestyle changes.
• 20% forgot to make changes to their benefit selections by the deadline.
• 19% did not understand the options available or the benefits they selected.

It should be noted too that sometimes the regret comes after the plan year starts and an employee in a high-deductible plan, low- or no-premium plan has a health issue that crops up or an accident, and has to pay thousands out of pocket. At that point they may rue their choice, even though they would have paid more in premiums.

One of the more disturbing findings from the study is that nearly 25% of workers said they go to social media to educate themselves about employee benefits. The numbers were highest among Gen Z workers (43%) and millennials (37%).

On the other side of the spectrum, 67% of baby boomer employees and 60% of Gen X workers were more likely than younger generations to rely on information provided to them by their employer and benefits broker when making health plan and other coverage decisions during open enrollment.

How you can help

Employers can help their employees make smart health plan decisions by:

Not inundating them with lengthy educational materials. Often clear and concise materials are best, especially ones that use bullet points and infographics. Benefits experts recommend providing employees bite-sized information that can help them whittle down their choice.

The materials should give different scenarios for workers to help them decide on a plan, such as:

• A 27-year-old single female employee with no health problems, spouse or dependents.
• A 46-year-old married father of three young kids.
• A 58-year-old divorced woman with high blood pressure and asthma.

Keeping the open enrollment period short. Many brokers will tell you that the longer the open enrollment period, the more likely it is that employees will procrastinate on choosing their plan(s) and rush at the last minute. For best results consider a two-week period, and a run-up that includes education and outreach.

Helping them prioritize the basics. There are a few areas that they should review to make sure they choose wisely.
Some areas they can focus on include:

Retaining their doctor — Even if you are offering the same plan as last year, it’s a good idea to tell your employees to check the plan to see if their physician or their kids’ pediatricians are on the list of providers. Health plans make changes every year, so it’s important to check.

Getting the financial balance right — Many people end up spending more up-front on higher premiums in exchange for lower out-of-pocket maximums and/or deductibles, when they shouldn’t.

A young, healthy person that rarely visits the doctor may be better off with a plan that has lower premiums and a higher deductible, which they will not likely reach.

Worst-case-scenario calculation — Your employees should understand the implications if they suffer a medical crisis. For a full perspective, they can:

• Calculate the total premium they will pay for the entire year (their monthly premium contribution x 12), and add
• The out-of-pocket maximum for the plan.

As open enrollment is right around the corner, now is the time to make a plan to maximize employee enrollment and help your staff select the health plans that best suit them.

You’ll also need to make sure that you comply with the Affordable Care Act if it applies to your organization, as well as other laws and regulations.

Here are some pointers to make open enrollment fruitful for both your staff and your organization.

Review what you did last year

Review the results of last year’s enrollment efforts to make sure the process and the perks remain relevant and useful to workers.

Were the various approaches and communication channels you used effective, and did you receive any feedback about the process, either good or bad?

Start early with notifications

You should give your employees at least a month’s notice before open enrollment, and provide them with the materials they will need to make an informed decision.

This includes the various health plans that you are offering your staff for next year.

Encourage them to read the information and come to your human resources point person with questions.

Help in sorting through plans

You should be able to help them figure out which plan features fit their needs, and how much the plans will cost them out of their paycheck. Use technology to your advantage, particularly any registration portal that your plan provider offers. Provide a single landing page for all enrollment applications.

Also, hold meetings on the plans and put notices in your staff’s paycheck envelopes.

Plan materials

Communicate to your staff any changes to a health plan’s benefits for the next plan year through an updated summary plan description or a summary of material modifications.

Confirm that their open enrollment materials contain certain required participant notices, when applicable – such as the summary of benefits and coverage.

Check grandfathered status

A grandfathered plan is one that was in existence when the ACA was enacted on March 23, 2010, and is thus exempt from some of the law’s requirements.

If you have a grandfathered plan, talk to us to confirm whether it will maintain its grandfathered status for the next plan year. If it is, you must notify your employees of the plan status. If it’s not, you need to confirm with us that your plan comports with the ACA in terms of benefits offered.

ACA affordability standard

Under the ACA’s employer shared responsibility rules, applicable large employers must offer “affordable” plans, based on a percentage of the employee’s household income. For plan years that begin on or after Jan. 1 of next year, the affordability percentage is 9.86% of household income. At least one of your plans must meet this threshold.

Get spouses involved

Benefits enrollment is a family affair, so getting spouses involved is critical. You should encourage your employees to share the health plan information with their spouses, so they can make informed decisions on their health insurance together.

Also, encourage any spouses who have questions to schedule an appointment to get questions answered.

A new study’s findings that many workers have a poor understanding of their employer-sponsored health insurance benefits, presents an opportunity for businesses to extend targeted support to staff during open enrollment.

The “2023 Optavise Healthcare Literacy Survey” found that 32% of employees are not confident about understanding how their plan works, meaning that many of your staff may have trouble finding, understanding and using information and services to make health insurance decisions.

As the plan sponsor, you can step in to help them during open enrollment by providing them with tailored information and guidance.

Employees who don’t understand their coverage may choose plans that are not right for them, and because of their lack of knowledge, they are more likely to stick with the same plan and not explore other options during open enrollment.

To help your staff who may not be as up to speed on how their health plan works, your human resources team has a few options.

Focus on younger workers

The Optavise study found differences in health insurance understanding among the various generations in the workforce, with millennials and Gen Z workers having the poorest understanding of health insurance terms.

The study authors recommend a return-to-basics approach during open enrollment for these workers. That could include holding meetings for them to explain the basics of health insurance, particularly how plans with higher premiums will typically have lower deductibles and copays, while low-premium plans usually have higher deductibles and copays.

Also, if you have a multi-generational workforce or workers with chronic conditions, you’ll want to tailor your pitches depending on the employee. Your presentations should focus on multiple scenarios that explain which options are best, depending on your workers’ age, health and life circumstances.

One-on-one communications

The study found that workers don’t often turn to their employers first when they have questions or need information about health insurance or their health plans:

• 46% said they reached out to friends and family for information.
• 35% taught themselves about terms and processes by going online or reading other materials.
• 27% sought out information from their company’s HR department.

Given the often-poor accuracy of information from online sources, and that their friends and family likely aren’t experts on the subject, it’s a good bet that many people are getting bad information about health insurance.

While group training and providing online tools and printed material can help your workers, one-on-one meetings seem to be the most effective in helping workers:

• 84% reported they found one-on-one sessions very or extremely useful.
• 68% said online resources were very or extremely helpful.
• Only 49% found e-mail correspondence was very or extremely helpful.

You may want to urge your employees to schedule face-to-face meetings with relevant HR staff. One-on-one meetings let your employees ask specific questions. By having conversations about their current medical needs or family situation, employees can best determine the most reasonable option for them.

Focus on points of confusion

The study also asked workers what kind of information about their group health plans they wanted to know more about. The following answers provide a list of topics you may want to cover during open enrollment meetings:

• How to avoid surprise medical bills.
• How my deductible, copay/coinsurance and out-of-pocket maximum work, and what it means for my wallet.
• How to review an Explanation of Benefits and medical bill for errors.
• Researching health care costs, and why it matters.
• How to choose where to get care.
• How to choose a plan.

The takeaway

You can play an important role in educating your workers about their health coverage.

Smart employers will tailor their benefits communications, literature and meetings to meet the varying needs of their workers. It’s good to provide materials and education through various sources like a portal and literature, meetings — and in particular one-on-one meetings, which are seen as the most effective.

A personal approach can be especially helpful to ensure that your workers choose plans from which they will benefit the most in light of their budget and needs.

It’s almost time for group health insurance open enrollment and your top priority should be to drive participation by helping your employees make informed decisions about their options.

You’ll want to help your staff understand all of their options so they can choose plans that are best for their age, health and life situation.

This is an important exercise to ensure that any of your workers don’t pick a plan that costs them too much in premium if they rarely use their health insurance, or costs them too much in out-of-pocket expenses if they are frequent users of health care.

It’s a balancing act, since each employee has different needs. Here’s our advice for the open enrollment:

Listen to your workforce

Before you make any decisions, you should listen to your employees and better understand their needs and preferences.

With answers and feedback in hand you can create a benefits package that is more appealing to them, which in turn gives you a competitive edge when attracting and retaining workers.

Engage employees and solicit feedback through quarterly employee-benefits round table meetings. Invite employees from different age groups and different departments to participate in these meetings, to ensure you have a good cross-section of your staff represented.

Give advance notice

You can start now with simple reminders for them to start thinking about open enrollment and evaluate their current health plans. Send out memos and place posters in high-traffic areas.

If you start with this in September or October, they can have time to assess their options, particularly if anything has changed in their lives like marital status, new children or health issues.

Costs are paramount

You can work with us to settle on plan arrangements that will be within your and your employees’ budgets, and that comply with the Affordable Care Act’s affordability and minimum value rules.

Employees have a right to understand the costs they’ll be facing in each plan, including:

• Their share of the premium,
• Their deductible,
• Their copays or coinsurance, and
• Other out-of-pocket expenses.

Typically, the higher the premium on a plan, the lower the employee’s out-of-pocket costs are. The lower the premium on the plan, the higher the deductible and copays.

Get an early start

If your plan year starts Jan. 1, you should hold open enrollment meetings and dispense plan materials in October or November.

This will give your workers time to review all of their options and compare costs and coverages.

Communicate effectively

Your task is to get employees out of cruise control and truly assess all of their options.

This is especially true if you are making changes to cost-sharing, introducing new plans, or offer voluntary benefits, a wellness plan or health savings account or flexible spending account.

You should use a variety of different media to communicate with them. Use video, virtual and live meetings, e-mail communications, text messages and print materials to get through to your employees. Each generation will often have a preferred medium, so using a multi-pronged approach may be most effective.

Get spouses involved

If you also offer insurance to your workers’ families, you should communicate through your employees that their spouses are also invited to join your open enrollment meetings.\

You may also invite them to view any electronic material you may post online, like the aforementioned videos.

If they cannot make a general meeting, you can invite them to come in to meet with your human resources manager if they have questions.

Remind staff of the ACA

You can use open enrollment as a way to remind your workforce of their responsibilities to secure coverage under the ACA.

Let them know that employees that refuse coverage that complies with the ACA from their employer and opt to purchase it on a public exchange, will usually not be eligible for government premium subsidies.

The meeting

Send out meeting notices early to give your employees time to prepare and set aside time.

Try to make the meeting engaging with props, videos, printed materials and more. You may also want to consider recording the session so that staff who can’t make the meeting can watch it, particularly if you have employees that don’t work on-site.

Provide enough time for the main presentation, as well as for questions from your employees.

The takeaway

Open enrollment can be a hectic and stressful time for both the employer and workers. By getting a head start on planning and communications, you will be ahead of the game and your employees won’t feel harried into making a decision. That benefits both them and your organization.