Summary
Open enrollment may feel like the finish line, but it’s only the beginning. After employees make their elections, the real work starts: Helping them understand, use, and feel supported by the benefits they’ve chosen. This means confirming details, keeping communication going year-round, checking in with employees, tracking usage, and building on lessons learned for the next cycle.
For HR teams and business leaders, open enrollment can feel like a marathon. You’ve built timelines, answered endless questions, sent reminder after reminder, and finally crossed the finish line when all the forms are collected and elections are processed.
However, open enrollment doesn’t end when the paperwork is done. That’s actually when the most important work begins.
Employees have just made decisions about their health care, retirement, and financial well-being. If you close the book after enrollment, you leave them on their own to figure it all out. The result is confusion, underused benefits, and frustrated employees who don’t see the value of what you’re offering.
The real opportunity is in what you do after open enrollment ends. This is your chance to turn benefits from a once-a-year transaction into a year-round engagement tool that strengthens culture, builds trust, and shows employees you’re invested in their well-being.
Wrap up the details
Start with the basics. Make sure everything that your employees selected went through the system correctly. It sounds obvious, but missed elections, incorrect payroll deductions, or delayed ID cards can cause unnecessary stress and a lot of extra work.
Follow up with clear communication. Send each employee a confirmation of their elections and effective dates. Remind them when they’ll get their ID cards and how to access digital versions if they’re available. If you have a benefits portal, show them how to log in. If you don’t, provide a simple one-pager that lays out key contacts and quick steps.
These small touches send a powerful signal that you care enough to make sure their choices stick and they know where to turn if something goes wrong.
Keep the conversation alive
Too many employers treat benefits as a “see you next year” event, which is a wasted opportunity. Employees forget what’s available to them if they only hear about it once a year.
Break benefits down into bite-sized reminders that land when they’re most relevant. For example:
- January: Send a reminder about preventive care and encourage employees to schedule annual checkups.
- Spring: Highlight mental health resources during Mental Health Awareness Month.
- Summer: Remind employees about telehealth for urgent care while traveling.
- Fall: Share tips on maximizing FSA funds before they expire.
You don’t need to overwhelm employees with constant communication. A short, well-timed email or Slack post can be enough to jog their memory and show them their benefits are part of everyday life.
Check in with employees
Once the dust has settled, ask your employees how open enrollment went for them. Was the information clear? Did they feel confident in their decisions? What could be improved?
A simple survey or quick pulse poll can uncover unseen gaps from the HR side. If employees struggled with jargon, for example, that’s a clear signal you need plainer language. If they wanted more one-on-one time, maybe next year you could schedule office hours with a broker.
Checking in also builds trust. It shows employees that you actually care whether they understand the information, which makes them more likely to speak up the next time they have a question.
Track and learn
After open enrollment, pay attention to how benefits are being used (or not used). Because if people aren’t taking advantage of mental health programs, wellness stipends, or telehealth visits, you’re leaving value on the table.
Look at claims data, FSA/HSA activity, and HR inquiries. Are employees using the benefits you promoted most heavily? Are they calling HR with the same questions repeatedly? That’s a sign you need to adjust your messaging.
Keep a running list of FAQs, challenges, and success stories. That way, when planning for next year rolls around, you’ll have real-world insights to guide your approach instead of starting from scratch.
Take the feedback you gathered, the usage data you tracked, and the communication lessons you learned, and roll them into your planning. Maybe that means adding more visual aids to your OE meetings, creating short explainer videos, or reworking the language in your benefits guide so it’s easier to digest.
The starting point
Open enrollment may feel like the finish line, but it’s really the starting point. When you treat it as the beginning of a year-long conversation, you transform benefits from a compliance requirement into a culture-builder.
By wrapping up the details, keeping communication alive, checking in with employees, tracking usage, and building for the future, you not only make benefits easier to use but also show your team that their well-being is your top priority.
Content provided by Q4intelligence
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