Employee Benefits Market Check Survey: Annual Enrollment Opportunities

As the new year begins, many employers are doing a postmortem on how their annual enrollment process fared. Annual enrollment plays a critical role in a company’s benefits strategy. As product offerings become more diverse and robust, the activity must be as clear, efficient, and easy as possible.

We conducted a poll during a webcast on January 19 to determine where employers felt they could improve their enrollment experience. The results are in the chart below.

As you reflect on annual enrollment,
what opportunities do you have to improve in the future?

*Based on 191 employer respondents (allowed to select multiple answers)

Key Findings

By far, the key opportunity cited is to increase the education of the benefit program, with two-thirds declaring this as their #1 opportunity. This comes as no surprise as ongoing education has been a demand of employees for several years. Studies have proven that increased benefits literacy leads to higher satisfaction with the benefits program. It is encouraging to see many companies recognizing this as a chance to improve. Still, it is important to note that increasing the learning only during the 2-to-3-week annual enrollment window is insufficient. The intensified education should be a year-round endeavor. Doing so will ensure employees feel confident in their choices when enrollment time is finally upon them.

Beyond the education of the overall program, there were several other areas of opportunity that employers recognized. 22% of respondents stated they would move away from paper and to an online or mobile solution. Utilizing technology can directly address the benefits education opportunity noted above, reduce administration, improve the user experience, and provide better metrics, which will also help those businesses that said they want to establish enrollment goals for next year.

Employers open to reviewing their enrollment process and implementing changes will continue to improve their overall process and have employees confident in their insurance decisions and engaged in their total rewards package, and improve overall workplace satisfaction.

Should you have any questions or are interested in any industry-specific data, please contact your local Assurex Global adviser.