Written By: Shannon Johnson, Product Center of Excellence, Benefits
The time has finally come to open up the system to your employees so they can make their new elections. We will advise on you on how you can create and send out a mass email in the system notifying everyone that annual enrollment has officially started. We also recommend that you use this same functionality to send out reminder emails several times throughout the enrollment period. While there is not magic spell to keep employees from waiting until the last minute, these reminders do help. Employees can get useful information and complete their enrollments online. If they need assistance navigating the system or if they just prefer to talk to a “real” person to get their questions answered, they can call the service center for support. We do try our best to encourage your employees to complete their elections using self-service, but our agents can complete the enrollment for them if they see that it is best for the employee to do so at the time.
A number of clients choose to have their enrollment fairs (or meetings) during this timeframe. If you do have these meetings, please encourage your attendees to complete their enrollments right after the meeting while things are still fresh on their minds. We normally see spikes in the enrollment stats right after these meetings. So, it is an effective way to keep employees from waiting until the last minute.
Behind the scenes, we will schedule daily touchpoints with you so we have time set aside to review daily stats and discuss any common questions or issues that may come up. This keeps you in touch with what’s going on each day and allows us time to get your assistance in a timely manner.
It’s also important to note that once we start getting enrollments in the system, we can start sending test files to your vendors. This gives them plenty of time to review and provide feedback so we can make adjustments to the file if necessary. If multiple iterations of test files are needed, this extra time really helps.
It’s a very bust couple of weeks, but with good planning in our earlier stages, the Enrollment Period will go smoothly. Those unexpected items/questions always come up, but with good communication channels open between you and the service center, we will be able to address anything that come up.