Good news for HR professionals frustrated with the avalanches of paperwork or the tangles of different spreadsheets needed to get employees signed up at open enrollment time. Now there´s a better way to conduct open enrollment: implementing a powerful software solution that successfully automates all the steps in the process.
The right technology will dramatically improve open enrollment by automating manual tasks, engaging employees with self-service, and optimizing benefits planning usage patterns. The resulting benefits are significant: saved time, increased productivity, and other bottom-line improvements such as cost savings and increased employee retention.
"Automating enrollment shaved days off the open enrollment process for us, not to mention significant dollars. Plus, everyone in our HR department is functioning more productively and strategically," according to the General Investment and Development group.
Why Automate? The Challenges of a Manual Approach
Open enrollment processes left to manual methods tend to be prone to data entry, handwriting, or transcription errors. Print processes are highly inefficient and waste time, effort, and paper. What´s worse is that these types of approaches also fail to "connect with employees," instead leaving them confused about their benefits plan options. For example, employees may see the organization´s entire benefits plan - not just what they´re eligible for. This inevitably leads to confusion, mistakes, and even envy if employees find a better plan they´re not eligible for.
Many HR professionals make the mistake of thinking they´ve already automated open enrollment processes with the use of spreadsheets or other applications patched together. While these partially automated systems may solve some of the manual challenges, they don´t deliver enough benefits for HR, the employee base, and the organization itself.
In fact, the most effective open enrollment solutions are the ones that are most comprehensive and most accessible: they should automate manual steps, engage employees at every step, and optimize other key processes along the way.
Streamline and Simplify Cumbersome Processes
When companies automate open enrollment, one of the first benefits they receive is the reduction of paper forms - and the errors that go along with them. Plus, paper can be lost or misfiled, so HR has no way of knowing whether they have the latest records on file.
The right open enrollment system - generally part of a larger HRMS or workforce management solution - can solve all of these challenges. With web-based self-service, employees can enter their own data, which is then stored in one central location. The need for paper is eliminated and everyone stays productive in the process.
HR benefits too. For example, employees only have to enter data once; then this information automatically populates the entire system. This frees HR from the administrative burden related to data entry and helps them increase the speed and efficiency of related tasks. Similarly, built-in wizards and checklists walk employees through open enrollment procedures, helping to minimize the amount of phone calls HR receives. All of this adds up to save HR valuable time so they can focus on more strategic tasks.
Automating open enrollment processes not only reduces errors, saves time, and increases productivity. It can have a positive impact on another critical area: costs. And it may add up to more than you think: "Using technology products to help streamline the open enrollment process can dramatically reduce the cost by as much as 60 to 80 percent," says Rob Maina, executive director of CIBC World Markets.
Engaging Employees Leads to Real Results
As you know better than most, the cost of employee benefits has risen dramatically in recent years, and employee health benefits are one of the fastest growing expenses. Companies´ attempts to control these cost increases have included benefits cuts or outright elimination, increases in cost-sharing measures, adopting consumer-driven health plans, and more. But there are inherent dangers in these approaches: ultimately, they lead to decreased employee satisfaction which ultimately leads to losing good employees.
Delivering employee self-service can address this challenge. Giving the employees web-based access to manage their own data, enroll themselves, manage life events, and more helps the employee be more productive while they´re at work. And because this can be anytime, anywhere, it´s a convenience that applies to the entire workforce - mobile, hourly, and even remote employees - that helps them feel more engaged and leads to increased retention.
Employees need to be able to access company´s healthcare plans and providers whenever they need to make a decision - at open enrollment and anytime afterwards. They can find out which procedures are covered, which doctors they have access to, or which pharmacies, hospitals, or other healthcare institutions they can use. They can find out about certain illnesses or conditions while still maintaining their privacy, i.e. maternity or sick leave policies can be accessed over the web from their own homes. Better still, surveys reveal that employees are more satisfied when they have proper tools/information at their disposal.
"Our employees really see self-service as a benefit," says Brenda McLey, director of Human Resources, Nebraska Book Company. "They have instant access to their own information. They can check what benefits they are enrolled in, research providers, and update their information - all without troubling HR."
Communicating Total Compensation
Organizations today spend an average of 35 percent of their payroll on employee benefits for their full-time staff. Yet many of them haven´t done enough to communicate these benefits to their employees, or make them appreciate the substantial cost this represents. One of the buzz words today is "total compensation" and employers need to make sure their employees are aware of their total compensation package.
Another welcome side benefit of an open enrollment solution is that it allows organizations to communicate this type of information to employees in a clear and effective way. Tools and features should be user friendly and flexible and may include:
Optimize Benefits Planning and Usage
Companies need to mitigate costs by planning early when it comes to benefits issues. They need to determine, if needed, the best cost-shifting strategies, whether it be premium increase, reduction in coverage, adding voluntary benefits paid for by employees, or some combination of all the above. They need to communicate any changes in plan design and coverage before open enrollment season hits, so that employees can be prepared and better able to react and select any other alternatives.
During the year, companies can create surveys to ask employees about their benefits usage, tradeoffs they would consider, benefits they´d rather not lose, and more. Then HR can run create and run reports to analyze benefits usage, trends, and patterns. All of this helps HR design the open enrollment plan for the following season. In a comprehensive HRMS system, these surveys and other communications can be created in the same online open enrollment tool for further consolidation.
The right HRMS solution allows an unlimited number of benefits plans with any number of tailored eligibility criteria. Once HR has to determine which ones would be most valuable to the employee population, it can run reports on this year´s plans, analyze them, conduct surveys, and readjust for next year´s open enrollment. Likewise, employers can monitor employee compliance with their policies and minimize operating expenses for the chosen benefit programs. In addition, companies will have all the options an employee has selected historically at their fingertips.
From the organization´s perspective, these improvements are not intended just to free the HR department to become more productive. They definitely have an impact on the bottom line. It has been said that U.S. companies incur expenses on average of more than $50 per employee on open enrollment material - such as printing and mailing brochures and worksheets -costs that can be reduced.
"Using traditional paper-based methods and interactive voice response (IVR) systems, we estimate the cost to be about $75 per employee per year," says Rob Maina of CIBC World Markets. "Using technology products to streamline the open enrollment process can dramatically reduce that cost by as much as 60 to 80 percent."
What to Look For
In finding the best solution provider for your company´s particular needs, look for the ability to integrate all the various steps in the process into an overall workable solution. Such a solution should be able to:
In Summary
Because human capital is finally being recognized as the most important asset of companies, human resource professionals are increasingly involved in key business decisions ultimately affecting the growth and prosperity of the forward-thinking companies they serve. Combined with the rising need to decrease expenses while increasing efficiency, companies are trying to align HR initiatives with corporate objectives and results.
"We recognized the importance of creating a strategic HR department focused on aligning employees with our organization´s goals," explains Alison Romaine, director IS of Palisades Medical Center. "The first step in achieving this objective was to eliminate time-consuming manual processes and focus on attracting and retaining skilled employees."
By properly automating open enrollment and encouraging employee self-service, companies can save effort, time, and money, and empower employees to make better choices and be more accountable for their critical health decisions. HR staff can become more strategic and have more time to do their job, motivate and retain their employees. Astute companies, if they haven´t already done so, should invest in automating open enrollment.