Early Preparation Is Crucial for 2025 Open Enrollment
With the 2025 open enrollment season around the corner, employers have an opportunity to develop attractive benefits offerings and proactively communicate with employees to win them over. Early preparation can help show employees they are valued, convince top performers seeking job changes to stay in their current positions and attract new talent. Consider these steps for thoughtfully kicking off open enrollment efforts:
- Tailor benefits offerings. It’s critical for employers to first understand which benefits and perks provide the most value for their workers.
- Determine key messaging. For example, key messaging might focus on new or updated benefits offerings. Since many employees don’t fully understand their benefits, employers should detail their offerings so workers understand everything they could potentially lose by changing jobs.
- Communicate with employees. An open enrollment communication plan should start early and provide ample educational resources. Learn more about open enrollment-related communication in the next article.
By starting open enrollment efforts early, employers will have ample time to tailor their benefits offerings and thoughtfully showcase all employee perks. Contact us for additional employee benefits resources, including enrollment guides, videos and presentations.
5 Tips for Effective Open Enrollment Communication
Educating and informing employees about their benefits package is an integral part of open enrollment. However, Voya Financial reports that one-third (35%) of employees don’t fully understand any of the employee benefits they enrolled in during their most recent open enrollment period. Effective communication is critical to educate and inform employees about new, returning or expanded benefits options. Consider these five communication tips:
- Start early so employees have ample time to understand their benefits, consult with family members and determine their needs for the following year.
- Select a mix of appropriate channels that are relevant and engaging to the specific workforce.
- Keep it simple by highlighting only what’s necessary to understand the benefits and the information to help them decide if they need them. Consider delivering digestible, bite-sized information with videos and emails.
- Avoid HR or benefits-related jargon when possible to help make benefits easier to understand.
- Personalize communication by segmenting the employee audience (e.g., remote, on-site and nonwired) and tweaking messaging to resonate.
Effective employee communication is an ongoing process, but it comes down to helping employees feel well-informed about their benefits options and confident about their choices. Reach out to us for additional open enrollment support.
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