Open enrollment season is really scary for many employees! Choosing their health insurance plan, calculating HSA and/or FSA contributions, and whether or not to choose dental or vision coverage is a burdensome task, and often approached with dread.
Here are some other fun facts (and their impact on your organization):
When asked to rank their preference for seven seasons, employees showed a clear preference for holiday season (73%), bathing suit season (48%) and back-to-school season (28%). They even preferred tax season (20%) over open enrollment season (15%). They did, however, rank open enrollment season higher than allergy season (9%) and cold and flu season (8%).
Given the choice, respondents said they would rather do the grocery shopping (76%) than complete open enrollment.
Another activity people would rather do than enroll in benefits is host a family gathering (65%).
Employees were pretty evenly divided (51% vs. 49%) on whether they would prefer completing open enrollment or buying a car.
75% of respondents say they’d rather do open enrollment than clean a teenager’s bathroom.
Why should I care about this?
I thought you would never ask. You should care because this reflects on you, the employer.
That’s right. Your employees are anxious because your open enrollment typically takes place in less than an hour. Employees are left doing the research on their own, knowing the decisions made will affect them for the entire year.
That’s pressure. And it doesn’t have to be that way.
If you don’t have a solid strategy to make open enrollment a valuable part of being employed at your company, call us to discuss how to make that happen.
Until next week,
Keith Leitzen
President, Reliant Edge Solutions, Inc.
Phone – 815.790.3482