Enrollment is the single most challenging aspect of providing employee benefits. The way the system works requires employees to sign up and register for their benefits during certain open enrollment periods. Enrolling properly is also a must, and many employees aren’t ready with all their information, paperwork, and options selected when the enrollment window opens.
In addition, benefits administration is one of the biggest struggles for HR departments, with over 48% of HR leaders planning to outsource benefits admin tasks in the next year. Fortunately, modern software and AI functionality offer the perfect solution: Automate open enrollement. With the right benefits platform, you can resolve nearly all your benefits enrollment troubles in a single efficient move.
Let’s take a deep dive into the seven top reasons to automate open enrollment this year.
1) Schedule Lead-Up Reminders for Your Team
One of the major challenges of open enrollment is readiness. Employees want access to their benefits, but few people are pros at tracking the calendar, preparing their paperwork, and enrolling on-time during the open enrollment period. HR teams often don’t remember to discuss benefits enrollment until the open enrollment period has begun.
Automation introduces the simple and beneficial option to schedule a sequence of lead-up reminders before open enrollment begins. Months and weeks before the benefits enrollment window opens, share reminders and helpful guides with your workforce to help them get ready for enrollment and gain access to their most valued benefits as quickly as possible.
2) Educate Your Employees on Their Benefits Options
Another common challenge in benefits enrollment is employee’s knowledge of their options. Gaining the full value of their benefits relies on knowing what they need to sign up for. Benefits administration is complex. However, conversational AI is remarkably good at summarizing complex policies and options into a more readable and easy-to-understand format.
AI-assisted benefits automation can help to educate your employees on their available benefits and how to prepare to enroll for the benefits options they want to secure.
3) Automate Personalized Enrollment Recommendations
AI can also analyze an employee’s data and recommend the best set of benefits options and packages for their needs. For example, AI may account for employees with spouses and children to cover, employees who are currently students or have student loans to pay off, or employees who have expressed previous interest in certain benefits like fitness programs or wealth management.
While the AI won’t always get every detail perfect, these reccomendations will give employees a helpful starting place and an easier time adding or configuring benefits to perfectly suit their needs.
4) Make Open Enrollment Self-Service Friendly
Automation has the unique benefit of introducing self-service to a once labor-intensive process. Self-service has become the preferred method for most modern professionals. We are all used to managing our accounts and services through online dashboards. Most enjoy the convenience of access, information, and the ability to handle matters personally instead of bothering or relying on another person to complete the necessary steps.
Automation is the ideal solution for benefits open enrollment because it makes the process self-service friendly. Employees properly informed and reminded in a timely fashion can log into their own accounts, select their benefits, and initiate enrollment without HR needing to put in endless hours working with one employee at a time.
5) Reduce Pressure On Your HR Staff
Benefits admin tasks are hard on HR staff. They are complex, time-consuming, and often inspire stress as HR struggles to ensure every employee has full access to their benefits. Automation is an effective way to lift the pressure from your HR staff by programming some of the tasks to take care of themselves (like scheduled reminders and emailed benefits package guides) while also empowering employees to DIY their benefits enrollment through self-service dashboards.
HR can comfortably fall back to the position of supervising enrollment and helping employees who have specific needs or technical difficulties. The workload can be significantly lightened and, at the same time, increase the total percentage of employees fully enrolled in their benefits programs.
6) Prepare Pre-Enrollment Submissions
When you automate open enrollment, it also becomes possible for employees to pre-load their enrollment efforts. They can prepare documents, build their desired packages, and upload all the necessary information before open enrollment begins. With pre-enrollment features, your company might see rapid and near complete enrollment within the first few days of the open enrollment period.
7) Boost Employee Morale with Easy Access to Benefits
Employees care about their benefits. Good benefits make them feel motivated and taken care of by the company. 1/3 of surveyed employees say that benefits were the primary reason why they applied for a new job in the past year. Therefore, smooth and easy access to benefits provides a valuable boost to employee morale.
Employees who struggle to understand their benefits or enroll in time may feel the company is not helping them receive their full compensation.
Employees who achieve hassle-free automated enrollment in their benefits programs know they are getting the full value of their compensation. This boosts confidence, dedication, and a feeling of connectedness with the company itself.
Automated Open Enrollment: Upgrade Your Employee Benefits with Platinum Group
Your employees deserve complete access to their benefits with a system that is easy to understand. Open enrollment has been a long-standing challenge, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right software solution like isolved Benefit Enrollment automation by Platinum Group, you can facilitate your HR team, empower your employees, and get everyone enrolled in their benefits the first time, every time.
Discover our benefits enrollment solutions today and explore the possibilities of open enrollment automation.
Platinum Group is a human capital management resource dedicated to improving your HR efficiency and employee experiences. Our platform, isolved, is a comprehensive software solution that will help you build, automate, and streamline your HR operations. Explore our full library of Guides, Independent Reports, and HCM Tools. For more information about Platinum Group, or to schedule a demo of isolved, please visit our website.