You can never be too ready for Open Enrollment, so we wanted to share three strategies on how to make the most of your virtual Open Enrollment. In case you missed it, make sure you check out our pieces on how to improve your Open Enrollment readiness levels and what other clients are sharing about how they’ve prepared.
Today we’ll walk through strategies gleaned from psychology, a consulting firm, and industry experts.
Open Enrollment Tip #1: Increase “Face-to-Face” Interaction
In a recent Forbes article on increasing your team’s effectiveness, one of the recommendations was “increase “face-to-face” interaction.” That means (you guessed it) turning on video when the opportunity presents itself. This may be harder to achieve if you plan on hosting a larger benefit enrollment meeting, so consider hosting smaller discussion groups.
With this model, all attendees should be able to use video.
Why video? As visual creatures, eye contact is important for improving community and understanding, as well as sharing non-verbal cues. If someone has a question or is confused, their face may show it before their mouth says it. If you are moderating or leading a group meeting, you can tune into those cues and give people the chance to voice possible concerns.
Worried about distractions?
Most homes these days are a shared space for parents, kids, pets and more. To reduce distractions, have employees blur their backgrounds so there’s less movement. Or, if it’s available through you video conferencing platform, mute all employees at the start of the call. They can manually unmute their line if they have questions.
Both of these options reduce distractions while still allowing for effective nonverbal communication (and improved accountability).
Open Enrollment Tip #2: Set clear expectations for meetings
Most of us have grown quite adept at attending virtual meetings… or so we think. But regardless of how many conference calls you’ve had, there’s always room to improve.
When it comes to holding a virtual benefits meetings, you may want to send out a set of guidelines for what is expected during the meeting or how employees can contribute. The larger the size of the group, the more important it is that everyone has a shared understanding of how things will going to operate.
For example, if an employee wants to asks a question, you may prefer they just unmute their line and ask. But you may prefer they use a hand raising feature in chat and a meeting facilitator unmutes them. There are many cases like these were establishing a protocol before the benefits meeting is useful.
Getting started
As a starting point for your company, you can look at the Agile Team Agreement outlined by Payton Consulting, which describes working agreements as “guidelines developed by the teams as to how they must work together to creative a positive, productive process.”
Open Enrollment Tip #3: Seek an expert opinion
In Spring 2020, we released our first-ever guide on Creating an Effective Benefits Communication Strategy for a Remote Workforce. In this new ebook, you’ll find information on how to have a successful remote Open Enrollment experience, including:
- The five stages to develop your custom benefits strategy
- Key must-have pre-tax messages to include
- What causes low adoption rates (and how to fight it)
…and more. Download the guide today or contact your client specialist with questions about your plan if BRI administers your plan(s).
Want more? See what else BRI has to say about the future of remote work.
