Our Best Advice: Tips, Tricks, and Resources You Can Apply This Enrollment

For many of you, fall is open enrollment time, which means that right now, your team is likely in the midst of your busiest season. To lighten your load and inspire your communications, we’ve rounded up some of our best enrollment tips and tools for boosting employee engagement.

The fundamentals

Before enrollment begins, make sure you lay the foundation for effective benefits communication. These top resources will make it easy for you:

• Three steps to successful employee benefits communication: Start with the basics. We’ve pared down benefits communication best practices to three simple steps. See what they can do for your organization! 
• Creating results with benefits communication: For a more in-depth look at our three steps to successful benefits communications, download our white paper. Our tried and tested approach works for all employers—regardless of size—across all industries. We undertake all our client engagements with this very approach.
• Use employee personas to power up your communications strategy: When it comes to developing a benefits communications strategy that will engage your employees, creating messages that resonate with your audience is key. Now that the average workforce spans at least three generations, you need to deliver messages that will be relevant to each. This blog explains how personas can help you do this and offers key considerations to help you develop your own.
• 3 tips to personalize benefits communication: To give employees the benefits guidance they want and need, benefits pros need to reach the right people with the right messages at the right time. Personalizing communication is a highly effective way to reach specific employees with distinct needs. Read this blog for three actionable tips for personalizing your benefits communication this enrollment season.
• Beyond a two-week window: 10 ways to make annual enrollment a success in an era of health care reform: This informative webinar outlines 10 ways that you can make your annual enrollment a success, including how to frame tough messages, the nuts and bolts of creating jargon-free communication, and key considerations for developing a communications roadmap. Watch it now and keep using our proven strategies for year-round communication and engagement.

Tips for pros

Ready to build on your existing strategy and take your communications to the next level? We’ve got you covered with our best resources on how to market your benefits like a pro.​

• 5 Ways to engage employees in health education and build health literacy: Could basic health education be the crucial missing piece to your employee engagement strategy? Odds are, a good portion of your workforce is not as health literate as you’d like them to be. Health literacy has a direct relationship to health outcomes, which means it’s time to beef up your benefits communication with some educational health basics. Download our white paper for our top five ways to develop health education, build health literacy and—ultimately—improve employee health outcomes.
• 6 Tips for communicating wellness programs during open enrollment: Does your open enrollment communications plan cover wellness program promotion? If not, make sure you include more than just a casual mention of your wellness efforts. Such an important part of your benefits strategy deserves a prominent place during open enrollment. Read our blog for six tips to help you—and your employees—get the most from your wellness program this fall.
• 4 simple ways to explain HDHPs: Trying to drive enrollment in your high-deductible health plans (HDHPs)? Read our blog for four simple ways to explain HDHPs to your employees.
• 5 Ways to make your passive enrollment a strategic success: If you aren’t planning to make any major changes to your benefits this year, take advantage of this opportunity to strengthen the value proposition of your benefits, and help employees get the most out of the programs you offer. This blog offers five ways you can take advantage of a passive enrollment to strengthen engagement.

The expedited route

If you need it quick and easy, we have your solution. Below, you’ll find our best resources for creating benefits communications in a hurry.

• Enrollment energizer: Boost your benefits communication today: If you only have one hour to spare in your preparations for annual enrollment, spend it with us! You’ll gain fast and easy strategies you can incorporate immediately. In this webinar, we cover tactics for improving the quality of your enrollment communication, increasing employee engagement, and helping employees make better benefits choices.
• 4 Tips to get straight A’s during enrollment season: For less stress and more success this enrollment season, read this popular tip sheet! You’ll learn how to engage and educate your workforce so that employees take the time to understand the complexities involved in making important enrollment decisions.
• Our tip sheets from MetLife’s open enrollment toolbox offer actionable ways employers and brokers can improve enrollment communication. We created these back in 2010, but they feature timeless advice and strategies for improving your benefits communications.
  • Simple ways to make enrollment more effective
  • How to get started with social media
  • How to simplify benefits communications
• 8 Health Insurance Terms Every American Needs to Know: This 12-page guide offers plain-language definitions and simple visuals to explain the common health insurance terms and phrases that are key for making informed health insurance purchasing decisions.