The perfect open enrollment process: does such a thing even exist?

COVID-19 has changed how businesses operate, the most dramatic of these changes is managing open enrollment for benefits. Gone are the days of handing out papers at in-office lunch meetings where an HR professional would walk the team through new benefit plans. Now, employers have to find creative ways to clearly lay out benefits to remote employees so they can choose their plans easily.

This year’s open enrollment process does not come with the additional pain of high increases in premiums, however, employees’ expectations of what makes a benefit plan appealing have changed. They are much more interested in benefits—their cost and how their coverage will hold up in light of the pandemic.

Here are some helpful tools to guide and create the near perfect open enrollment process:

1. Go Digital.

If your company is still processing Open Enrollment through paper, you’re behind the curve and could lose current and prospective employees. The employees of today expect automation—they want to be able to sign documents, change information, and make requests online or through a mobile app. Automation also does so much for your company in terms of efficiency and compliance. Be sure you’re using one of these automation tools, it’s an absolute must.

2. Be Bold & Vibrant.

It might be a little hard to build a great story and message through plain text but if you use videos and some cool graphics, you can really help employees understand what benefits are best for them and help them determine what programs compliment their family’s needs.

3. Explain Cost.

Be sure to clearly explain the deductions that employees will make from their paychecks. How frequently it will happen and that they’re pre-tax so they know they’re getting more bang for their buck.

4. Offer Voluntary Benefits.

More than ever, employers need to build a robust package that includes things like voluntary benefit programs. In the past some of these programs were seen as a bit silly but in today’s diverse workplace, employees want more options—disability, accident, cancer, critical illness are all great add-ons.

5. Tell Your Story.

Tell it loud. Be sure you build a comprehensive overview of your entire benefits package. Not just singular pieces of health and 401K. To your employees, it all melds together. Employees are going to measure these offerings as a whole. They may not know the key difference between Aetna and Blue Cross, but what they do know is the difference between what they pay when they go to the doctor and what and what comes out of their paychecks. Be sure to communicate this clearly to your people. Don’t be shy about reminding employees about the power of your benefit plans, both at open enrollment and throughout the course of the year.

–
Have questions about Open Enrollment? We’re here to help. Reach out to us at 818.377.7260 or marketing@corpstrat.com

The pandemic has changed so much for employers. Just a year and a half ago, companies were grappling with adjusting to remote teams, securing PPP loans, and the uncertainty of so much in the business world. Now that we’ve got something close to a new normal, the demand for employers to build robust benefit packages is even more challenging given the difficult climate we have in attracting and attaining people. Employees are expecting more and employers are finding it difficult to deliver.

That’s why we’ve put together our top suggestions for making sure your benefits hold up in a post-COVID world.

–

If you need help putting together a robust Post-COVID Benefit Package, we can help with that. Reach out to us at marketing@corpstrat.com.

Today we want to cover why it’s so important to have a robust Time & Attendance System for your organization. A lot of employers look at Time & Attendance Systems as this super simple thing: my employees clock-in, they clock-out, that’s the end of it. It’s understandable why you would want to believe Time & Attendance was this simple and easy. But we’ve found that what you don’t know can hurt you. This is one of the areas employers can really get hurt from a financial standpoint. Making sure you have the right Time & Attendance system that meets the needs of the organization is something you must invest in.

In a recent American Payroll Association Survey, they found that companies that lack a comprehensive Time & Attendance system had up to an 8% error rate in pay every payroll.

That’s more than four hours of wasted pay, per employee per payroll, that the employer’s paying for. That’s a lot of money. Think about that over a month or a year at x number of employees and do the math.

As an employer, I’m sure you understand the litigiousness of the employer/employee relationship. Wrongful termination suits are at an all time high. When ex-employees look for ways to go after employers, one of the easiest ways is through incorrect pay: missed lunch punch, incorrect overtime pay, no employee acknowledgement of time sheets, et cetera et cetera. And unfortunately in today’s world, the burden is on the employer to prove that they pay correctly, not on the employee to prove they didn’t.

This is why having a robust Time & Attendance System to help you reduce time errors, reduce overtime costs, increase compliance, increase efficiency, and put your business in a substantially better position is vital for success.

–

Want to get set up with our CorpStrat Time & Attendance System? Let’s talk. Email us at marketing@corpstrat.com