Benefits Strategy Season Is Here - Are You Prepared?

[00:00:09] Alrighty, welcome back everyone to another great episode of The Human Roll. So we are going to get into benefits strategy, right? If you are a smart HR team, you are already preparing for open enrollment season. So for the rest of the employee population, totally understand that open enrollment typically doesn't start until around like the November, October, November timeframe, if you are on a true calendar open enrollment benefits plan.

[00:00:38] But for behind the scenes, for all smart HR leaders, you are already getting the strategy ready. And I would like to say that if you are an HR leader and you have yet spoken to your benefits brokers, if they haven't reached out to at least have strategy meetings, if you aren't collecting your survey data and getting information from your employee population on what they like and dislike about the benefits package plan so that you can strategically plan

[00:01:08] And from a future stance on how to enhance your benefits, you're a little bit behind. So that's why I'm here today to just kind of notify everybody. Let's kind of get the ball rolling. Let's start understanding what's working, what's not working. And let's help enhance our benefits package to help with retention, right? We want to kind of alleviate turnover as much as humanly possible.

[00:01:31] If you haven't heard from your brokers already, definitely reach out to them to get a strategy meeting going and allow them time to go through the utilization and see what we're using, what we're not potentially using as far as like the enhancements within our benefits packages. This doesn't include just medical, dental, and vision, but we can get into some other employee work perks in just a little bit.

[00:01:53] So let's gather some information first before you get into your meetings with your brokers. So we really want to go through all of the enrollment data, how many people are not enrolled, meaning how many people waive coverage. If they're under the age of 26, we can kind of put two and two together. Maybe they're on their parents' plan, or maybe they just don't truly understand or think that they need benefits for a specific emergency situation.

[00:02:18] And that will kind of help bridge the gap around, could we increase our enrollment population and people understand the true benefits of what we're offering and what did open enrollment look like last year? Where did we miss, you know, the bucket on getting more employees engaged and enrolled and fully understanding things? And then what do people just not like about it? And then work on those enhancements now before you launch open enrollment in Q4.

[00:02:48] So also we want to go through like utilization data on how much our employees are using the benefits packages. Do we have perks, I guess, of some sort? So I know like even medical plans. A lot of times if employees go through tracking how much they walk, like bettering their health as far as not smoking and so forth, there are a lot of medical providers that will give $300 to $600 annually back to your employees.

[00:03:16] Sometimes that comes in like gift cards. Sometimes there are different platforms that do that. So that's something too to help push employees, especially if they're paying each paycheck out of, you know, their pocket. It can really, really help them understand how we can put money back in their hands. We went through like employee complaints too. So if employees are not utilizing it or having issues with certain carriers, we definitely need to track that through some survey data.

[00:03:40] But then any type of like leave trends, right? Or do we have a large population that is going on maternity or paternity leave? Do we need pet insurance? And then we need to just go through like turnover and retention themes. And if that does get back to, hey, we've lost a good bit of our population because maybe the other company wasn't paying them as much, but they had a more enhanced and robust like benefits package.

[00:04:06] We really need to go through that and sort through that and see how we can start using our benefits as a strategy to keep our employees and help us understand, help them understand all that good. Welcome to Don't Tell Me About Yourself, the podcast where old school hiring meets a modern reality check. I'm Lorna Erickson. And I'm Victoria Gates. And we're the co-founders of Expert Interviewers. Between the two of us, we've got 40 years of hiring experience. We've studied interviewing techniques.

[00:04:33] We've trained thousands of people globally to stop making the same mistakes over and over again. And we've got 340,000 people following us online because apparently everyone has a story about a bad interview. You know the ones. The illegal questions, the 45-minute monologues, showing up late with no apology. So every week we're tackling the biggest subjects in hiring. We bring real stories, real data, and real talk about how to make interviews actually work for everyone. Because great hiring isn't luck. It's a practice skill.

[00:05:03] So whether you hire, apply, or just love a good interview train wreck, the show is for you. So that's our preparation prior to our broker meeting. But within our broker meeting, we really need to know which specific questions to ask our brokers, right? So if we are getting into another year, our benefits being increased, costs being increased. Now, if you went through this last year, this was nationwide where benefits were extremely, extremely costly.

[00:05:32] I think they went up 13% to 16%, which was a big hit for companies and for employees, right? So this year, it's like, how can we manage the increase to be reasonable or none at all? And if the company can't take on that burden from a financial stance, we need to really be mindful on how our employees are going to take that. Because in the benefits world, the more enrollments you have, the lesser costs you can try to get the costs down.

[00:05:59] And if we have low enrollments based on our population, that could also become an issue. So we really need to go through what increases we are going to have to take a hit on, what's driving that, and just make sure that we do all that we can during open enrollment to alleviate those increases if possible. And then really just like benchmark trends, right? Across your specific industry and what people are looking for, what are your competitors doing?

[00:06:25] And like, just really making sure you are also being competitive in this space. A lot of times we will focus on like the product of the company to keep us competitive. But for our employees, especially from an HR stance, we really need to make sure we are doing what we can to put our employees first and go the extra mile and be that voice for our employees and listen to what they're actually saying. And then different funding models to explore. Fully funded, they're self-funded.

[00:06:54] I know sometimes self-funded can be a headache, but at times it can be beneficial from a cost component based on the population that you have. So I would say just explore all options when it comes to that. And let's not just totally disregard something. We need to, this is a time for us to like take a month or so to kind of go through these conversations, really fully understand where we're at at this point and what can get us to that next future level.

[00:07:21] And then what I briefly mentioned before, how can we better improve our education so that that helps our engagement? And that's the big piece is like benefits comes out naturally. Your people who do have preexisting conditions or who are going through, you know, in vitro or planning to get pregnant and so forth. Like with that piece, we know that we're going to have that population automatically.

[00:07:44] But for the population that might be teetering on being on their spouse's insurance plan based on costs, or maybe they don't feel like they need to see a doctor as often. So maybe they don't want to go that route. Those are the groups that we really need to educate and really make sure we are grabbing their attention. And that's more so that the cost is not such a turnoff, right? Because that's a bucket that would really help get us to that next level as far as like our enrollment data.

[00:08:13] And that looks really good for our carriers. You know, for those of you who don't know, carriers do evaluate those types of situations and those processes. So all of that really good things to get together and have planned to ask your brokers. And we are paying our brokers each month, right, through their commission. So just make sure we're also forcing them to work through this. Most brokers are great, right, when they're working. But we just want to make sure we're getting the best out of, you know, both ends from there.

[00:08:42] And let's get into benefits being a part of our retention strategy. So we've touched briefly on like the affordability aspect for our employees. But that is key, right? I mean, most of the time, the first thing they're going to see is how much it costs. Sometimes the carrier you're offering is also important for employees because they know that their doctors are in those specific networks already.

[00:09:07] But we really need to make sure that there's affordability aspects so that we don't have them just be turned away without even looking at the benefit summary that shows everything that these packages offer. And then from there, you know, we get into the communication of all the great enhancements and what everything includes. We don't want to have any confusion. So we want to make sure that if they do have questions, we're answering them accordingly.

[00:09:33] And then also, a lot of times they don't know what questions to even ask. So we want to just make sure that we're, you know, you don't know what you don't know type of situation, that we're going the extra mile with our communication to even tell them things that they may not even think about asking. Big key is that benefits are not just medical. You know, I know we focus on medical a lot. That is truly important.

[00:09:55] I mean, there's lots of laws of just ensuring the employers over a certain type of employee population are offering medical insurance at an affordable rate. But it includes, of course, dental and vision. But then I would say like employee assistant programs, right? There's tons of other work perks, even if you offer like 401k, although 401k, you can change your 401k enrollments outside of open enrollment. But while we're going through the benefits packages and enhancing things and reintroducing things to our population,

[00:10:23] let's just speak on all the perks that we offer as an employer and really get into especially employee assistant programs. For those populations where medical is, you know, costly or maybe they will use it, maybe they won't use it, maybe they're on their parents' plan. And if we can have employees see how successful the employee assistance program is, all the things that it assists with, right?

[00:10:50] And really dive into like short-term disability, long-term disability for those who, you know, may be getting pregnant and needing to go out and leave. The coverage of that, let's talk about life insurance and how important that is. And if we are offering HSA or FSA plans too and the benefits of that. And is the employer also contributing to that as well? Because essentially those are the employee's funds, right? Their money, it acts as a sole bank account.

[00:11:18] So, you know, we really want to make sure we are using this time to really discuss the benefits that we're offering and use it as a true strategy for our employees to keep them on board. Because I think the older you get, you start to realize that, yes, it's great to have a great salary. We all need, you know, compensation to survive.

[00:11:39] But if you have a really good dependable benefits package with really good carriers, with really good coverage, and just a reliability aspect of that, and just knowing that you have that as like a safety mechanism, that is really a true game changer for our employees. So we really want to make sure that we're staying aligned there. And then the next step is our payroll and benefits, you know, alignment.

[00:12:04] So if we are going to be making big changes, if we're going to be adding in HSA, FSA plans, if we're going to be changing our percentages, of course, changing the rates and stuff, whether we increase or decrease costs, all of that needs to be built into the benefits profiles and plans on the back end. But it does affect and route into the payroll world. And so I'm also a payroll person at heart. You guys know this, but, you know, I've said sometimes payroll does get overlooked.

[00:12:32] We know that if you're in the payroll space, you absolutely know that. But these are things that if they are wrong, they could really mess up on payroll. Employees complain about, you know, their paychecks. And most of these will be pre-tax deductions. Then it affects taxes too.

[00:12:46] So you want to make sure that as you're having these conversations and you're solidifying these plans, you know, just let your payroll personnel loop them in because it is going to be important for them to be in the know and them to be prepared and them to also have the cost of what plans are charging. So that when they are running that first payroll for the new year, the new plan year, they can make sure those rates look okay and maybe do their own audits to avoid any issues down the line.

[00:13:15] Now, if employee comes in last minute and realizes they selected the wrong plan with the wrong cost, you know, that's on the employee. We want to make sure we're communicating. We're sending confirmation emails. We allow the employees to review their information in the system. But from our end, everything that we can control, let's just have open communication across the board, which would be really, really important too. And another thing too, ACA integrations as well. So if you do not have that built into your platforms, please get that turned on.

[00:13:45] That would help tremendously with those forms and just tracking and going in and doing monthly reviews. So that's also a kicker when it comes to the benefits packages launch as well. And let's talk about future state thinking, right? Like how can we be ahead of the game? How can we help eliminate so much work and so much burden on our team? Because we already know everyone has full-time jobs. So this is, you know, another thing adding to their plate.

[00:14:11] I hate to say the two letters too, but the whole AI space, there's lots of companies, lots of vendors, all the HCM vendors that are embedding AI to kind of help along the way. And so let's just make sure that we are utilizing that to the best of the ability and properly being able to audit that. Because, you know, we can't fully trust, but we like to say trust, but verify over here and just make sure we're utilizing that and not too far behind with the world nowadays. And then personalization.

[00:14:38] We can really make our benefits personalized based on company logos and dropping in videos. And, you know, there are some brokers that have their own apps and stuff that they connect with. So your teams can get push notifications and we can just make sure we are sending out as much good information, FAQ documents,

[00:15:01] and just all the things for our employees so that they know and understand they don't feel like we changed benefits and didn't tell them they didn't even know, you know, and then they were surprised come, you know, Jan 1. So those are all really good factors, especially when we're looking into like decision support tools, kind of just help us make sure we're not too far off from our population.

[00:15:22] You know, like if we've taken surveys and we've gotten some good feedback on our benefits and our brokers are presenting to us what we're able to now offer in this new coming year, really maybe having AI kind of help with the comparisons of that. Like, are we missing the bucket? And if we do need to miss a bucket for one year, what are we doing to make sure that on future years we can get there to continue to satisfy our employees?

[00:15:46] Those are, you know, key questions and key thought processes that we need to keep in mind. And then just whole benefits design experience, like let's just make sure, you know, we realize we are in 2026. I know there are some populations where paper could be a factor and so forth. We want to kind of stay away from that, want to be innovative. We want to make sure we're utilizing the platforms that we are paying a lot of money for

[00:16:11] and just making sure employees are getting everything they need, whether it is, hey, look, we post something at a site on a board, or we also are sending out things to their emails. I'm not truly a fan of like text campaigns, but I know for some people that does work for their population. So, you know, forcing out text too, but really just getting people in the app. People should be clocking in and out. Hopefully we're at the point where people are clocking in and out from their applications. They are requesting time off from their applications.

[00:16:41] And so enrolling in benefits on their applications. And that just helps have the integration flow from the employee profile all the way to our carriers with less errors, right? Which is really, really helpful. It just helps the team as a whole and really just make sure we're, you know, staying ahead of things. So look, I mean, let's just say tactical. Let's stay ahead of the game. Let's make sure we are actually getting the inside knowledge from our employees. I think that's most important.

[00:17:08] We want to make them feel empowered and let them know that we do hear them and understand them and are listening to them and just are doing all that we can. And I would say, let's go back to being fully transparent too, because we know that sometimes we may not be able to get to a certain point. Now, you would know behind closed doors that that's because of budgets, you know, or it was too costly. We just couldn't do that this year.

[00:17:35] I would say, like, if we could just address that early on and say, hey, we understand this is listed as, like, a phase two next year because of this. We don't want to give them too much information, but just like, you know, let them know that, hey, look, we didn't just ignore this request. There was a reason why we didn't do that this year.

[00:17:53] Or actually, the carriers wouldn't allow this into a specific plan for this because we don't have enough enrollments and really just go on a whole roadmap of encouraging people to enroll and help getting your company to the next level. So that's not a nutshell. Let's just make sure we are staying ahead of our benefits strategy. I mean, it is June, so we should be having these conversations. We should be getting costs and everything by July and August.

[00:18:19] And then from there, I'm working on the communication and making sure we have successful launches for our employees. So if you need any questions answered, any concerns, feel free to run that by me. I'm still, you know, running Transcendence Consulting Group, and I help lots of clients with not just implementations, but also open enrollment seasons and prepping. And I'm in lots of conversations with, you know, my clients and our brokers now, too.

[00:18:45] So if you have any one-off questions or things that come up, please feel free to just drop me a note through LinkedIn. I can also put my email here on the screen, and we will go from there. So thank you so much for listening to me today. We will be back in another few weeks for another great episode. Bye.