Key insight: Learn why proactive open enrollment strategies increase benefit engagement and decision quality.
What's at stake: Passive OE risks lower utilization, higher costs, and misaligned benefit allocation.
Forward look: Embed registration tech and personalized cost tools to improve year-over-year benefit decisions.
Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review
After more than 25 years in the benefits space, Carrum Health's chief commercial officer Matt Eurey emphasizes one universal piece of advice: Leaders will see a difference with the right,
From a mandated enrollment process to creative
"How you're designing OE requirements to make sure you're getting the bang for the buck that you want, and in concert with that, the programs you're ensuring you're highlighting or mandating to weave into that OE process, is critically important," he says.
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Laying the foundation
Eurey recommends considering active or mandated enrollment, which can encourage employees to reevaluate which benefit offerings make the most sense for their needs and learn about new offerings being made available.
"Passive enrollments don't work," he says. "We measured, and 40% of our employees would not even enter OE if we did a passive enrollment. If you do a mandated enrollment, you bridge that gap exponentially, and you're able to actually drive default logic, whereas if [employees] don't do anything, I'm going to put you in the things that I think are going to make you a better user of the benefits program, which also benefits the employer [in regard to managing] the cost."
Refining your communications strategy
The next step is a smart education and communication strategy that boosts benefit literacy and engagement — the more fun, diverse and interactive, the better, Eurey says. During open enrollment in his former benefit leadership roles with companies like Lowes and Time Warner Cable, he organized raffles and other enticements, all which were accompanied by educational tools that taught people what the offered benefits were and why the company thought they were valuable.
"The first step was always, what am I trying to tell you, why is it important to you, and why is it important to the business?" he says. "If we were removing a plan, or if we were introducing [something new], we wanted them to not only understand what those plans were, and require them to watch a video or to click through modules to make sure they understood, but we also wanted to tell them why the business was supporting this."
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Taking advantage of tech
Eurey notes the importance of tech tools that help people make the right decisions year over year, including cost estimation solutions, where again, a proactive approach by benefit leaders pays off.
"We pre-loaded [employees] expenses from the prior year into those tools to make sure they had awareness on what would be relevant for them based on historical spend," he says. "But then we knew life was happening for those who were [for example,] going to have a child, [and [also gave them] consideration around what's going to be most relevant for you."
To keep momentum going, Eurey notes that registration links such as QR codes can be embedded in education tools, which encourages people to not only learn about best options, but sign up for them on the spot. All of this technology should be complemented by traditional mailers and any other forms of communication being sent to employees' homes, he says.
"[We did this] to make sure we highlighted the highest value, things that they could consume, and then to make sure they would actually go through the process of registration," Eurey says. "It would be one thing for them to select some stuff, but then if they don't download the app [or whatever the next step was], they're not going to use the tool, so we were prescriptive in that regard."
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The power of in-person employee experience
Getting people together and up to speed on their current health condition at benefit fairs and mobile screening events has been another successful enrollment tactic for Eurey. Giveaways and educational material were part of these, but so were real-time health evaluations that could identify things like issues like high blood pressure, which could then help guide employees' benefit choices.
"Those kinds of things make it meaningful," Eurey says. "Maybe they come out of the OE fair and understand they're down a bad healthcare path, and then maybe that informs what they ultimately elect and then participate in."
