It’s open enrollment season again, and you know what that means: The HR department is frazzled, your managers are hunting down wayward employees in the hallway, admins are bracing for a paperwork blizzard, and nobody can really explain what’s supposed to be going on.

With the proper preparation, open enrollment can leave your employees feeling better served by your HR department, and HR can act strategically to create new benefits opportunities for the employees that need them most. Moving from a traditional paper brochure open enrollment to a technology-centric benefits enrollment period can make all the difference.

What is Open Enrollment?

Whether your benefits are provided through an employer or within an individual exchange, all plans under the Affordable Care Act have what is referred to as an ‘Open Enrollment’ period. For the many of these plans, this period happens at the end of November.

During Open Enrollment, an individual can make any needed adjustments to their Elections: the kind of coverage they have, their deductible level, adding or removing family members, adding or removing voluntary benefits, etc. This makes it very important that plan recipients engage in the open enrollment period; after it has ended, only a Significant Life Event will allow them to make adjustments.

However, the complicated language and rules of benefits enrollment means that many employees will try to skirt the process altogether, causing headaches down the road.

Streamlining Open Enrollment with Technology

With a full-service business management software solution, employers have simplified this complex time of year for administrators, managers, employees, and HR.

Ease of Distribution and Collection

At the end of the day, you’re still trying to communicate with the people who are making the elections on that technology. If they aren’t insurance-savvy, employees can make decisions that negatively impact their health options.

Good technology simplifies communication as well as plan selection, and easing confusion as well as the burden on management: with an HRMS managing benefits enrollment, leadership can see reports of the employees who have made their benefits elections, and those who have not, and can focus their benefits communications with a little help from a good broker.

Most companies have multiple plans from multiple companies – multiple medical, dental, voluntary, and retirement options. They may also allow employees to use pre-tax plans to pay for these selections.

Technology helps companies deliver these in a way that simplifies the very complex. Mostly, Employers don’t have to spend time discussing or meeting with all employees about their health elections; technology can communicate with the employer whether this election has been made.

Further integration allows some employers to send this data to both their payroll department and the insurance carriers providing the plan, further reducing the administrative overhead involved in managing employee benefits election periods.

When employees are able to efficiently and confidently make informed benefits elections, employers win better productivity and engagement throughout Open Enrollment – and more confident, healthier employees year-round.

Losing sleep over Open Enrollment? CorpStrat can help you prepare for your next benefits enrollment period to go off without a hitch by integrating your employee benefits, HR management software, and payroll.