Open Enrollment Season is Here

The fall season is a time of change, especially for HR and benefit professionals.

Fall brings more than just daylight savings time change or the colors of the trees, it brings open enrollment. Each year HR and benefit professionals must provide employees with options for the next plan year. The list of activities for this season should include the following:

Summary of Benefits & Coverage (SBC). A new requirement for this year is the SBC, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). You must provide an SBC to all applicants and enrollees for all group health plans, except for those that are excepted benefits under HIPAA (e.g., stand-alone dental, vision, most Health FSAs). This requirement is effective for open enrollment periods that start on or after September 23, 2012.

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It's your time to help! Medicare's Open Enrollment Period (OEP) has begun — it's time to review a loved ones health care needs for 2013 coverage

Help a loved one get the Medicare coverage they need.
If you're helping someone on Medicare, now's the time to review their health coverage and find the Medicare plan that best meets their needs. The Open Enrollment Period (OEP) to enroll or change Medicare plans is from October 15th through December 7th.
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Workers flounder with health care decision

Open enrollment deadlines are just around the corner, and a new survey suggests the choices aren’t getting any easier for many workers.

According to a report from Aetna, Americans rank choosing health care benefits as the second most difficult life decision, behind only saving for retirement. Aetna’s survey shows those who stress over health benefits decisions cite confusing and complicated information (88%), conflicted data (84%) and difficulty knowing which plan is right for them (83%).

“The … results showed that consumers understand the importance of health benefits. However, they don’t feel they have the resources they need to make an educated decision,” says Mark T. Bertolini, Aetna’s chairman and CEO “We need to make the process of choosing and using health benefits easier for consumers.”

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Tip Tuesday! 3 Easy Ways to Improve This Year’s Open Enrollment

Healthcare reform is changing the landscape of employer based health plans. As plans become increasingly consumer based, workers are left with questions that will go unanswered unless benefits communication adapts to the new paradigm. As Jennifer Benz, founder and chief strategist of Benz Communications, an HR and benefits communication strategy boutique, puts it, “Clearly, the era of ‘we’ll take care of everything for you’ is over and ‘we’ll help you find your way’ is here to stay.” Consider these tips on how to engage and educate your employees when open enrollment 2012 rolls around, and beyond.

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Benefits confuse 3 in 4 workers: What you can do now

October 12, 2011 by Christian Schappel

One stat you’ll want to keep in mind when preparing for open enrollment: 76% of employees who make decisions about their benefits coverage say they’ve made mistakes selecting benefits options.

What’s worse: 42% say they’ve lost money because of those mistakes.

That’s according to the 2011 Aflac WorkForces Report, which surveyed 2,220 U.S. adult workers.

Clearly, employees are confused. Check this out:

• 74% say when thinking about their benefits choices, they sometimes, rarely or never understand everything that’s covered by their policy options — particularly when it comes to health coverage, and
• 59% of those who choose the same benefits every year sometimes, rarely or never have a full understanding of the changes in the policies each year.

What to do next

There’s still time to bolster your benefits communications this year.

Five best practices:

• Survey your employees. Before putting together this year’s open enrollment materials, find out what caused the most problems/confusion last year by surveying workers.
• Create an FAQ. Chances are you spend a lot of time fielding the same questions every year. Save yourself some time by taking those questions and creating a Frequently Asked Questions handout you can distribute during open enrollment.
• Communicate year-round. Handing employees a think packet of information is overwhelming, and many just won’t take the time to read through it thoroughly. One way to get employees to absorb everything is to give it to them in bite-size chucks throughout the year. Create a blog on your company intranet and use it to post one short (500 words max) educational article every week or so. You’ll also want to post a glossary of benefits terms on the intranet — but even with it, you’ll want to make sure you use benefits jargon sparingly in your communications.
• Explain healthcare reform. Not much has happened with healthcare reform this year, but employees are still hearing about it through the media. Keep them abreast of what’s going on — even if you have to say, “Nothing’s going on.” The aforementioned blog would be a great place to do this.
• Promote cost-cutting tactics. More employers say they’ll push more health insurance costs onto their employees in 2012. To ease the blow, explain how they can keep their out-of-pocket costs down — by switching to generics, participating in wellness programs and taking advantage of flexible spending/health savings accounts. This can ease a lot of the frustration associated with health benefits and help employees make decisions about their options more clearly.

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