Open Enrollment is a stressful time for you and your employees. Employees are often overwhelmed by unfamiliar terminology, plan changes and deadlines, and thus require a lot of communication and education. The questions and concerns that come from this confusion can be a lot for HR teams to address while also managing OE. Arm yourself with these 4 time-saving hacks so you can spend more time making sure your employees have the best enrollment experience possible.

Our first tip may seem obvious but it’s important – be proactive and strategize for your open enrollment! Effective communication and ensuring your employees are aware of the start date and deadlines is half of the battle. Communicate early and often so everyone is aware of not only OE itself, but any webinars or meetings employees should be attending. Frequent communication through different channels will help with early enrolment and reduce the number of incomplete enrollments when it’s over.

Your OE plan should go beyond pre-enrollment communications. How can you educate your employees to make smarter benefits decisions? Implementing a decision support tool reduces the number of employee questions and maximizes the value they get from their benefits. These tools, like our own DecisionIQ, provide personalized benefits recommendations right within the shopping experience. This increases employees’ level of understanding of their benefits, thus increasing participation rates, all while saving HR time. Learn more about decision support with DecisionIQ in our free, on-demand webinar.

Using communication tools is essential to save valuable HR time. If you only send out one reminder, it’s likely to get lost in your employee’s inboxes. Diversify your communication strategy to include both email and text messaging in order to reach all your different employee populations. Best-in-class benefits administration software should also offer a mobile app where you can automate alerts and reminders as well.

Videos are another resource that simplifies the benefits education process. While employees value having multiple benefits options to choose from, it can also feel overwhelming. Statistics say that individuals retain information through video 85% more over text-based messages, so this is a great strategy to increase employee understanding.

Chasing down employee paperwork can be especially challenging, so anything that cuts out extra forms or enrollment steps will create significant time savings. Evidence of Insurability (EOI) is another common source of employee confusion, questions and HR headaches, however best-in-class ben admin software solves for this.

Automated EOI eliminates EOI paperwork altogether for both employees and HR teams. Single sign-on integrations allow employees to access, complete and submit EOI. Questions right from the benefits shopping experience. These forms are then automatically sent to the carrier without having to pass through HR. Not only does this eliminate printing and chasing down paper forms, but integrated processes such as this provide faster turnaround so there is less wait time for employees to have coverage.

Additionally, EOI workflows simplify the overall process and increase completion rates for a virtual-first OE experience – including more user-friendly instructions, using buttons versus text links to drive immediate action, and the ability to submit the EOI form even after the active enrollment period has closed. Watch this demo video and see first-hand just how seamlessly EOI integrations can work.

EOI isn’t the only common post-enrollment HR headache – Save yourself from stress later and start planning for dependent verification now. Ineligible dependents cost businesses millions of dollars in annual health plan expenses, so post-enrollment audits are important and generate cost-savings. However, this process is time consuming when done manually.

As you plan and prepare, consider implementing an automated dependent verification tool to not only save your company money but save you time as well. Our own DependentIQ can save companies up to $3,500 annually per ineligible dependent removed and save 70% of total manual HR admin time/effort. Learn more about dependent verification with DependentIQ in our free, on-demand webinar.

If you’re looking for more tips on how to prepare OE, download our complete ‘OE Playbook’ planning guide or schedule a product demo with our team today!